While I have been neglecting my web site I have not been neglating my reading. As I hope you have noticed, all of the reviews of books on this site are positive. We don’t review a book or recommend one that we didn’t like.
I find that once I like an author I tend to read everything they write. In my search for new wirters to add to this list I go to the library,(the store is too expensive), and pick up books that look promising. Sometimes,as it has over the last few weeks, I can’t find any books that I really like. Some of them are written very well but are annoying.
One book had a criminal who freelanced as savior of missing children. This tough, imiginitive anti-hero had all the right ingriendients I usually enjoy. However, author intrusion was a royal pain in the neck. Evey few pages the hero, who generally spoke very little, would rant about stupid conservatives. ( my being conservative didn’t help). I stuck with the book for all but thirty pages and then relized I dind’t care how it turned out.
Another book started as a victorian mystery where the rich lady of the house encounters a sherlock holmes like private investigator at the strange death of her husband. On top of an engaging female herione who has just been set free of the eras strick code of female conduct, the book had a wonderful sense of humor in the first couple of chapters. The problem with this story lay in the false promise of a good mystery. The book was well over 400 pages and when I stopped reading at page 200 and something their still had been no meniton of the mystery. The author wrote exclusively about how the relationships of the herione developed after the death of her husband. This would have been fine had I not been waiting anxiously for them to get on with the mystery.
For the time being I will go back to known territory. I am reading the next Thursday Next novel and I will have a very positve review soon. By the way I would love to hear some of your ideas on what I should read next. Please put in your two cents It’s worth a lot more than that.
Thanks for reading.
Jim
While I believe that any book given the right time, the mood, the reader, can be a good read, I find myself reading that first page and making a hasty decision. Even with excellent writing I find myself quickly putting the book back on the shelf if I ask too many questions.
If the page is full of beautiful and elegant description, setting a mood, time and place, I find myself screaming “Do something!”, “get on with it.” If the page starts off with a pistol shot and fleeing heroine with gruesome mysterious villians chasing for too many pages I find myself yelling. “Why is she running?” “Who’s chasing her?” “Where and when is this story taking place for goodness sake”?
So a good read is a good balance for me. I want it all, action, description, all my questions answered. And above all else it has to have a central character that I can like reading about. He or she does not have to be some ideal hero but they have to be interesting. I can hardly ever read a book centered in the business world with a character that is greedy and scheming.But give me an everyman character who is up against the wall astounded by his sudden inexplicable ordeal and surrounded by villains wonderfully described time and place and I’m in it until the end of the book