Wednesday, September 10, 2008

white-knuckle-can’t-put-it-downedness

noun. A reader's infirmity far preferable to paper cuts and plagiarist's elbow.

Related terms: dumb-downed-ness, let-downed-ness, locked-downed-ness, non-look-downed-ness, put-downed-ness, stripped-downed-ness, take-downed-ness, upside-downed-ness, watered-downed-ness.

Real citation: "If you have never read Michael Marshall’s novel, The Straw Men, your life is surely poorer for it. One of the best horror thrillers ever written, it is comprised of two seemingly separate stories: one (told in third person) about a serial killer of children, The Upright Man, and the two people pursuing him; the other (told in first person) a man’s quest to discover a secret life that his recently deceased parents kept hidden from him. The plots are complex and are expertly woven by Mr. Marshall’s terrific prose to intersect at a point of commonality: the Straw Men. It is a novel capable of blending creepy with outright terror with white-knuckle-can’t-put-it-downedness that does not lose an iota of effect even upon re-reading."
(Jeff Marsick, July 16, 2008, Newsarama, http://www.newsarama.com/comics/080716-BSEStrawMen.html)

Real citation: "I'm not a big fiction reader, but I get a kind of white-knuckle-can’t-put-it-downedness when reading certain dictionaries... I wish I were kidding; I'm just a word-licking dictionary-humper to the bone."

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