Project Gutenberg — Crome Yellow, by Aldous Huxley
I have been listening on a walkman to this novel. Full of ideas, some are insightful but sound preposterous in the plumb-in-the-mouth reading of the characters (they are all slightly absurd). I liked the suspense created around the meaning of a word, here is a quote:
“One suffers so much,” Denis went on, “from the fact that beautiful words don’t always mean what they ought to mean. Recently, for example, I had a whole poem ruined, just because the word ‘carminative’ didn’t mean what it ought to have meant. Carminative–it’s admirable, isn’t it?”
“Admirable,” Mr. Scogan agreed. “And what does it mean?”
His assumed meaning of inner glow after wine is shattered… and we are revealed the true meaning, first in german translation and also from the context. I checked it in Noah as I walked.