Sometimes when I'm reading a book, the descriptions are lost on me. Sometimes I miss them entirely and I create new descriptions. That happened to me when I was reading Harry Potter for the first time (I think I've only read the first and last three). When I read the first three my reading skills were still developing, and I couldn't really process information. I'm pretty sure Harry was blond in my first mental image of him.
Sometimes I ignore the descriptions on purpose. Captain Holly Short will never have a crew cut. Never. Whenever I imagine her with a crew cut, her awesomeness level drops a little. And I don't know about you, but I find it hard to imagine Butler being 50+ years old, even though the book mentions it every twelve seconds. He's always going to be mid-30's to me.
And am I the only one who finds those white fruits with red insides freaky? The juice is described as warm and soft, and maybe sweet. Warm and soft definitely sound like human flesh adjectives, and after that, sweet just makes it terrifying. The faeries are EATING humans. But you know, I wouldn't put it past the Unseelie court.
I think every book should be published with a list of characters and their descriptions—and maybe even an artist's rendition—in the back of the book. It would make my life a whole lot easier.
On that note, I'm way excited for the Artemis Fowl movie, but I'm also not looking forward to it because then I'm going to have to see 50+ Butler and Crew-Cut Holly. And Mulch Diggum. I'm really not looking forward to Mulch.
You are not alone. I read this book (Ella Enchanted) in the third grade and I read "daring" as "darning" which made a little sense since they were sewing. Plus, i'm always replacing words I don't know/like with other words, and mispelling stuff (which sorta counts).
ReplyDeleteI don't think Butler got old until the "I died but Holly brought me back to life" bit in the series. I'm pretty sure he's 30 in the first book.