On Thursday, March 18th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Which do you prefer? Lurid, fruity prose, awash in imagery and sensuous textures and colors? Or straight-forward, clean, simple prose?

(You thought I was going to ask something else, didn’t you? Admit it!)

I like vivid imagery as much as the next person, and I really appreciate it when an author can surprise me with a description, but I’m not a particular fan of lurid writing. I find it gets tiresome after a while. Give me a Diane Ackerman book – fiction or non – and I’m a happy woman. Give me Michael Perry, Kathleen Norris, or Madeleine L’Engle, and I’m completely satisfied. But even though all of them are extremely descriptive writers, none of them is particularly lurid or fruity.

Well, except when they’re writing about actual…fruit.