strolx, folx

[realthog]

I'm reading a copy discarded by an Arizona library of David Butler's The Men Who Mastered Time (1986, Heinemann, London); quite how this book made its way to the Scottsdale (AZ) public library is beyond me.

Pages 10-13 are enlivened by a jolly good description of a cricket match at an English boys' public school in the 1940s, the main protagonists being the lads who'll grow up to be the book's primary protagonists: a Pakistani fast bowler and an English batsman. It's engrossing stuff and wonderfully well described.

At the end of the section, I discovered just now, some previous reader has waggishly pencilled:

There will be a quiz tomorrow on what happened in the last 2½ pages.

I hate to break it to you, Mr Arizona Public Library Man, but now you've experienced what much of the rest of the world does when novels assume readers understand even the first tad about baseball or American football.

Comments

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Or, worse, lacrosse.

[realthog.livejournal.com]

There are things worse than lacrosse?

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Not really.