Over At The NY Times Bob Harris says Out of laziness, haste or a misguided effort to sound “literary,” reviewers use some words with startling predictability. Each of these seven entries is a perfectly good word (well, maybe not eschew), but they crop up in book reviews with wearying regularity. poignant; compelling; intriguing; eschew; craft; muse; lyrical;
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a zany madcap romp
I consider those to be kiss-of-death review words. If the NYT uses those 7 for great books, any or all of mine denote the craptastic. Have you ever seen a book/movie review that called the work “a zany madcap romp”? Please, tell me what it was.