Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading

Friends;
The audio book I'm listening to is by a/the book reviewer for NPR, Maureen Corrigan: Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading. It is reviews of the various books she has read - if you like her NPR reviews I suppose you'll like this 7 CD book. I have to drive with my dictionary open - if there is a common word that can be replaced with a graduate level literature lecture word, then she selects the later.

Maybe I wouldn't need the dictionary if I'd read some of the books to which she refers but I haven't heard anyone use "sysaphean" task in quite some time (ok, never). And I don't think I've ever heard the word "fictive". It isn't a big word but who uses it? I looked it up in wiktionary and sure enough, the very first definition is "fictional" - why not use it in place of fictive in one or two places?

The author is/was a literature professor and spends a lot of time comparing her theory on "female extreme adventure" to the male extreme adventure: Quindlen's Black & Blue to The Perfect Storm with many other examples. But I didn't sign up for a class in Extreme Adventure: Male or Female. I'm "just a reader" who hoped for some brief reviews of many of the books she has read.

Maureen must have been writing for a very small, specific audience but if you are looking for some interesting book suggestions you might plow through these CDs. I'm going to try to make it through the remainder of the CDs as she has some interesting biographical information tossed in. I'm really glad I didn't try to major in literature in college now and, after listening to her "faint praise" of her mother, I'm glad she isn't my daughter! And I'll bet we'll never be friends although I can use one obtuse word in a sentence: pedantic.