But, I am reading. I have checked out several books from the library. You may wonder, if I have the time to read, why can I not write? Well, I can pick up a book and put it down. I don't have the be in the mood to read. I don't have to have silence, or a computer, no boy jumping on me. You get the picture.
The Enchantment of Lily Dahl blew big time. I kept wondering why I kept reading. I kept hoping it would get better. I kept being irritated at the writing. "Oh, I mention a burp, and a tampon! Oh, I am a serious writer! Let me add an amateurish detail about someone's past! Oh, wow, I am writing." It did make me feel better about my own chances of getting published, lemme tell ya.
I Am Legend was a revelation. This is a good writer and a good storyteller. I love a good story. This book was a collection of short stories, and the title novella. (Will Smith movie, you might remember it.) I can totally see how Stephen King (a darn good storyteller) learned from this writer. Richard Matheson. I will be reading more of his work, and have A Stir of Echoes in my bag right now. I love finding new authors... (not like that Suri Hustvedt who wrote that POS I mentioned. Gees, that author pissed me off with crappy writing... I am ranting.)
Dead Until Dark is the first of the Sookie Stackhouse series-- the books that True Blood is based upon. Nice vampire world storytelling, and not bogged down in the sex (unlike Laurel K. Hamilton, the woman who brought us a 90 paged sex scene that kinda sorta had something to do with the plot? Gawd, really, 90 pages. Cuz, we need to know each and every... sorry, ranting again, and I have learned how to skim her novels anyway.) So, the writing is light, and funny without overdoing it, and the plot skips along without feeling like you are bouncing from Important Scene to Important Scene. I like her characters so far....
The Passage is what I am reading right now. Wow. More of a vampire sci-fi tale so far, but man, can you get caught up in this. He is like a slightly more literary King. By that I mean, he tells a good story, and gets you caught up in the characters and the plot, but he also has a kind of Serious Author feel to him. This books reminds me somewhat of The Stand. I just wish he had a good editor.
Which brings me to my next rant. I come across so many fucking typos in novels!! It makes me a little insane. Now, the translations I read: Carlos Ruis Zafon, Isabel Allende, Arturo Perez Reverte... nary a typo. It makes me crazy to see typos. Laurel K. Hamilton? Typos all over the place. She even changes the spelling of character names in her series! Makes me insane!
Okay. Wow. Quite a bit of ranting going on. Lots of insanity. Maybe I need to put down the vampire books. Cuz, I just realized that the three books I mention... all have vampires. Gonna go suck down an iron pill.
Oh, and I don't recommend The Enchantment of Lily Dahl. No vampires.
1 comment:
Nice! hehe. We were going to make our weekly trip to the library, so I'll keep these in mind. I haven't read anything on my Kindle for a while and I miss it, though. Also, I keep falling into this trap of reading non-fiction even though I feel a pretty strong fiction deficiency in my literary diet...
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