Though the book is filled with interesting tidbits about famous travelers from the past, its appeal is entirely secondhand: a glib recycling of others' thoughts and observations, tied together by gross generalizations, cloying and not-very-funny commentary and the author's own tiresome accounts of vacations he has taken himself.
As women who know each other acutely well, they understand the Wellman language they speak here -- an amalgam of poetic speechifying, sudden stray thoughts and glib malarkey -- and their mutual fondness is so palpable it irritates them that they can't solve each other's misery.
But after listening to the first 30 episodes of the radio series (it starts up again in May), which bring the story up to about 300 B.C., I've had second thoughts about that glib analysis.
You may have loved The Corrections or White Teeth, but you may have been too caught up to notice the points in them where the authors are being glib, intruding upon their characters' thoughts, or generally stuffing plot after plot into the work just to see how many plates can be kept spinning in the air.
I am not being glib, I really did have this thought.
In his next thought, he depicted this as a glib educational exercise to me and blamed me for making everyone here sit through it.
We thought we were being glib.
Put the Speaker in a comfy chair, and rein back that glib David Cameron, making him ask only gentle questions about great thoughts Gordon might have had on the global economy.
The argument may be a little glib, but the practice of literary criticism is about stimulating thought and encouraging us to refine our responses; the appropriate response is usually 'Yes, but... ' In studying how fiction works, Wood shows how the critical mind ought to work.
In the end the show struggles to reconcile its own contradictions: gushing and detached, glib and deeply romantic, a play of ideas that rejects deep thought.
Too slick and glib, to use her love affairs to restore her faith in love: that thought is there mysteriously.
