I'm looking over...

[pyat]

My lawn has been replaced with clover. Perhaps I'm a bad homeowner, but I prefer it to grass.


Father's Day breakfast this morning, at Cora's Restaurant in Ancaster.

We went to the bigboxbookstore after, and took turns shopping and watching the girls. While searching for a replacement copy of Orwell's Keep the Aspidistra Flying (mine was eaten by a dog), a mother and her teenage daughter and a store employee wandered into the O's. The daughter, who was about 14 and looked very spunky, was looking for George Orwell books. The employee handed her Animal Farm.

"I've read that one already," she said. He found Nineteen Eighty-Four. "That's the only other one we have," he said. I noted that there was a copy of Burmese Days on the next shelf, and moved on. The store employee then spotted a collection of all Orwell's novels, and the girl said she wanted that, or Ninteen Eighty-Four.

"Nooooo, I don't think you'd like it," said the mother.
"I liked Animal Farm," said the girl.
"No, I mean you'd find the ideas too complicated," her mother replied.
"I've tackled some pretty complicated books," said the girl.
"No, I don't mean hard words. I mean the political ideas are too complicated. It's from another era, really," said the mother.

I did really want to say something like, "Hey, I read Nineteen Eighty-Four when I was eleven, and understood enough of it to make it worthwhile. And who are you to disapprove of someone trying to read something complicated, or outdated?"

But I didn't, and instead went to look for some G.K. Chesterton books they didn't have in stock.

Comments

[postrodent.livejournal.com]

Yes, "cheerful" and "charming" are definitely not the terms that I was searching (perhaps fishing?) for. Apparently the copywriter never read the book -- even two pages in, you'd never think of using those adjectives. Your theory does seem to have more to it than the Law of Fives. It's a bit of a stretch to see Colon in Bowling, but Nobbs is a dead ringer for Nobby - both of them larcenous, disreputable, dirty, with a faint smell of Other about them.