So the subject was on my mind as I absorbed the reader response to my column Monday on President Obama's role in the great American budget impasse and the automated austerity called "sequester".
Richard House's splendid The Kills was a potentially daunting 1,000-page 1,000-pagethe flesh; objecteen, in rose up and absorbed the reader without making their wrists ache.
Bon Appétit's circulation was forecast to bloom as it absorbed former readers of Gourmet, and other magazines began eyeing Gourmet's list of more than 900,000 subscribers.
He also tackles unflinchingly the less fashionable horrors of alcoholism, while the fact that he keeps the reader absorbed for nigh-on 500 pages of plotless entropy, the narrative soaring on voice alone, is an achievement in itself.
Though the ultimate secret behind the murder that kick-starts the story involves a religious-political scheme that tips over clumsily into surreal satire, the remainder of the book is so authoritatively and minutely imagined that the reader, absorbed in the plight of Mr. Chabon's shambling hero, really doesn't mind.
Filled with lush language and delightful sensory details like the savored warmth of a velvet cloak, this marvelous story will keep readers absorbed throughout.
Travellers to India frequently remark upon its exhilarating liveliness, once culture shock has been absorbed; Narayan gives the reader that lively joy as registered by a native immunized against shock.
A passionate lifelong reader, who absorbed the printed word at a speed frightening to anyone who saw her read a page, she was a mesmerizing conversationalist insightful, curious, perceptive, and devilish with a self-deprecating wit.
The final portion of the novel picks up steam as the reader becomes absorbed in Pete and Ward's efforts to extricate themselves from the Life and Ward's efforts to thwart the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.
By the time readers have absorbed all the possible technological advances rebellious robots could exploit, they have taken a tour of the world's robotics labs, where, Dr. Wilson maintains, all of the techniques and tools in the book already exist or are under development.
Sjöwall and Wahlöö manage this without resorting to didacticism, the reader absorbing the sense of a society almost by osmosis.
