Re: RARA-AVIS: SMALL CRIMES AND DRAGON TATTOO

From: Brian Lindenmuth (blindenmuth@gmail.com)
Date: 20 Nov 2008

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    Al you and I spoke about this once before when Kill Clock came out. I called it your Donald Goines book. My reason for doing so was that it was once determined that Goines books were the most popular in prisons by far and away. Someone once speculated that the average sentence length in a Goines book was something like 7 words and since most inmates had no more then a middle school education his books were the easiest for them to read. That they could relate to them was a bonus.

    There is no official study that I know of but it's interesting nonetheless.

    --- In rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com, "Allan Guthrie" <allan@...> wrote:
    >
    > There are thousands of people who find that shoddy prose gets in the
    way of
    > a good story -- me being one of them -- but there are clearly
    millions for
    > whom it's of no consequence. What's also interesting about
    Patterson's style
    > (shoddiness aside) is that it looks to me as if he writes (or
    perhaps it's
    > more accurate to say that he edits) for struggling readers without
    > explicitly saying so. In other words, if you have a reading age of
    only a
    > ten-year-old, you'll most likely get through a Patterson novel pretty
    > easily. And given the extraordinary number of adults who have very poor
    > literacy skills these days, that gives him a potential readership
    that most
    > crime writers don't have. That's just an observation, though. I've no
    > evidence to back that up. Although he does tick most of the boxes on
    the
    > 'reluctant reader' checklist I was given by a publisher when I was
    > commissioned to write a novella for adults with a reading age of
    eight or
    > above.
    >
    > Al
    >
    > ----- Original Message -----
    > From: "jacquesdebierue" <jacquesdebierue@...>
    > > Thanks, this is an eye-opener for me... for some reason unrelated to
    > > his bestsellerdom, I've never felt tempted to pick up one of his
    > > books, which are everywhere (though I had no idea that he sold so
    much).
    > >
    > > Best,
    > >
    > > mrt
    >



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