The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, by Victor Hugo

Ayn Rand suggested reading this book for an example of great plot construction, and I can see why.  It integrated the actions of the major and minor characters beautifully with all of them coming together at the climax.  Hugo also has a beautiful style that gives wonderful details.  I especially liked the metaphor of the fly getting caught in the web.

 Hugo states at the end when justifying the addition of some chapters which were left out of the first edition that all the chapters are necessary and none are included without purpose.  This is a requirement of a first-class plot.  Hugo also wrapped up all the conflicts nicely during the climax which is very satisfying for the reader.  It reminded me of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiam.  Is Larry David our Victor Hugo?

Don't Stop the Carnival, by Herman Wouk

This book is about a New Yorker who buys a hotel in the Caribbean and runs it as sort of a mid-life crisis. I kept waiting for this book to have an interesting conflict. When it finally came in the middle of the book, it was over after about fifty pages, and then it went right back to pointlessness. The character development wasn't very deep, even for the main character. And the dialog of the natives was tough to read because it was mis-spelled the same way they mis-speak.

I guess I didn't like this book at all.

Previous Book Review List

Previously, I kept a list of books that I'd read on my personal home page. Click here for what I read from 1999 to 2007 with my very own 1- to 5-star ranking system.

The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown

Don't worry, this is a spoiler-free review. However, if I did tell you the big secret, you might not read the book. I mean, come on, that's the big secret?! Yeesh! I know Mr. Brown had a difficult task after The Da Vinci Code, but if he couldn't come up with anything better than that, maybe he should have tried a different genre. But then again, the book sold like a bajillion copies before it was even released, and I bought a copy, so who got the last laugh?

Literary-wise, the book had decent suspense but I never cared too much about the characters or even what happened to them. The only mildly interesting character was the bad guy, but he was such a wack-job, I didn't even like reading about him much.

I guess I'm done reading Mr. Brown. I had hoped I would learn something about how to create suspense by reading this book. However, the only thing that kept me reading was to find out what the "big secret" was, and now I just feel disappointed and let down that the book didn't pay off.

Plum Island, by Nelson DeMille

The book was billed as very suspenseful, so I read it to learn how it was done. The book is a basic murder mystery with the added suspense of Plum Island, an island off of New York used for biological warfare research. The book was a good story with a good deal of suspense, but it wasn't quite the page-turner that I had hoped for--maybe my expectations were too high.

Here's what I learned about plotting out a suspenseful novel:

• Reveal the information little by little; DeMille did this at the beginning with one clue per chapter.
• If it's necessary to set up an event in the middle to make the ending work, make that event part of a different story-line so it fits in and doesn't draw too much attention to itself.
  
• When DeMille introduced a minor question (like the significance of a clue), he answered the question a chapter or two later.
• For major questions (motive for murder, who dunnit), the action was tied into those questions. He also had the main character thinking about the questions and considering possible answers.
• After things go well for the characters, have something bad happen quickly to rebuild suspense. Happy, contented characters are boring.
• DeMille used only a little bit of foreshadowing. However, he was limited because the book was first-person and so we only knew what the main character knew.
• Pure action is boring. The only part that was boring to me was a boat chase chapter that was all action with no character development or mysteries introduced/revealed.
  

Pacific Vortex! by Clive Cussler

Clive Cussler is rich and famous and this is what he writes? That's what I thought about half-way through Pacific Vortex!. The fact that he uses the exclamation point in several of his titles is a good indication of his style--exciting things are happening so it must be exciting to the reader. Apparently it is for millions of readers, but it sure wasn't for me. Pacific Vortex! is about thin characters doing and saying ridiculous things. It has a lot of action, but I never really cared what happened to the people. It reminded me of an action-packed adventure movie that people yawn at because the action has very little significance.

I read this book to get ideas about how to build suspense in my writing, but it ended up showing me what not to do. This is apparently the first book in the series but was not released first because Cussler knew it was sub-standard. Maybe I'll give another one of his books a chance, but it's hard to imagine that the others are dramatically better.

Sparrowhawk One: Jack Frake by Edward Kline

When I read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I loved reading about Ragnar Danneskjold--a pirate who "robbed" from the poor and gave to the rich (he was actually returning stolen goods looted by the government in the name of the poor). I thought it would make great reading to have a book just about the exploits of Danneskjold, and perhaps Edward Kline did too (he's a fan of Ayn Rand as well). Sparrowhawk One details the life of noble smugglers in mid-nineteenth century England who live as criminals on principle by selling goods without paying the excise taxes.

While I like the premise of this book, the execution was lacking. Cline tells too much and shows too little. Instead of showing in a dramatized scene the bravery and skill of these smugglers, Cline relates in exposition years worth of exploits, resulting in unfortunate boredom in the reader. Cline also has noble characters, but instead of continuously dramatizing their virtues, he too often simply states their virtues and trusts the reader to take the author's word for it.

I know I'm being harsh, but it's only because this book could have been so much more. However, I'll shut up now until I can see how well I do at creating suspense and drama in my own work.

The Forgotten Man by Amity Shlaes

This is billed as a new history of the great depression, and, as a history book, it does present the facts of the time in great detail. The problem is that the material wasn't organized well, and I often found myself wondering why the author just told me something. Ari Armstrong had the same beef and wrote a great article in The Objective Standard which used the facts from Shlaes book to highlight the main themes to be learned from the Great Depression.

I was motivated to read this book because President Obama was and is pursuing the same types of activities that FDR tried in his New Deal. After reading this book, it was made clear that FDR's policies hurt the economic recovery rather than helped it, and I'm convinced that Obama's activities will have the same effect.

The Dirt, by Motley Crue

The blurb on the back sums it up best, "completely compelling and utterly revolting." I was never into Motley Crue as a kid, but Steve Dahl recommended this book on his radio show so I picked it up. He was right, it's a very entertaining book. The first half follows their rise to fame, where they do lots of stupid stuff and don't suffer the consequences. Then the second half shows the height of their fame and their decline, and we see karma catch up with them. What I liked most about this book was their honesty and introspection. And when they weren't being honest, the co-writer Neil Strauss did a good job of presenting differing versions of the event so the reader could see the spin.