Theme
It is unlikely I will ever read Anathem by Neal Stephenson, but I adore the lexicon Adam Roberts has created to review it. My favourite pair of critical neologisms:
RIDDER. An individual who reads a book in order to rid themselves of an onerous spoilbinding. In most recent usage, a person in thrall to a narrative, and usually somebody doomed to the disappointments of anticlimax.
SPOILBINDING. A tekst that binds its ridder to its unfolding narrative by withholding ‘spoilers’.
It seems to me this really gets at something of the way people experience, for instance, Babylon 5 or Harry Potter. As if the only reason to read is so that you can’t be spoiled. As if the fear of spoiling is justification to not talk to people who haven’t read. As if narrative surprise is the only literary pleasure.