The Dinosaur Hunter, by Homer Hickam

I'm a big fan of Homer Hickam, with The Keeper's Son and Rocket Boys two of my favorite books.  Unfortunately, I didn't like The Dinosaur Hunter.  The book just never got going until about the 85% mark.  (I read on a Kindle which shows the percentages.)  Until then, the reader just doesn't know what the book is about or what the main conflict is.  There's a mystery of dead cows, a mysterious dinosaur fossil hunter, a conflict between Montana ranchers and government agents over land use, and an unrequited love between the main character and his female boss.  But none of these take center stage and none of them drive the action.  The hero never really responds to or takes action against any of these possible conflicts, except until the end of the book.  I think Hickam could learn a lot from Larry Brooks' Story Structure Series.  Hickam is a good writer who could be great if he mastered story structure.

The Book of Vice, by Peter Sagal

This was an interesting and entertaining look into some current American vices such as gambling, stripping and sex clubs.  Sagal is a witty writer keeps the prose light.  He has some interesting psychological theories on why people are attracted to vice, and it makes for interesting food-for-thought.

Juliet, Naked, by Nick Hornby

Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, About a Boy) is a great writer, and I enjoyed this book.  Hornby lets us get deep into the character's head, similar to the way Stephen King does, and I like that.  We really get to know the three main characters:  Duncan and Annie, who are in a stale relationship, and Tucker Crowe, a retired rocker.

My only complaint is that Hornby could have done more with the situations.  He set up some good conflicts, but they didn't pay off like I thought they would.  (I suppose I have the same complaint about High Fidelity, a movie I wanted to like but couldn't.)

A Cure for Night, by Justin Peacock

You know the drill:  big-time New York firm publishes first-time author and I analyze according to Larry Brooks' Six Core Competencies.

Concept:  What if a new public defender was assigned to help on a murder case?  This weak concept kept me from really enjoying this book.  At times it was tough to be motivated to keep reading, but I plowed on hoping the stakes would be raised.  They ultimately were, but not until about the 90% mark, at which point it was too late.

Theme:  The theme appears to be redemption.  Or maybe it's lack of concern for truth in the legal system.  Either way, it wasn't too moving.

Structure:  The four part structure of set-up, response, attack and resolution was followed, but with such a weak concept, it didn't deliver too much drama or tension.  At the first plot point, the stakes didn't change for the hero, they just got another piece of the puzzle for the case they were defending.

Character:  The hero and his partner were reasonably developed.  The defendant as well as other minor characters were also drawn well.  This element was probably the strongest of the six in this novel.

Writing Voice:  Although there was nothing special about the style, it was well done overall.

Scene construction:  This was well done too, but not much happened in the scenes because of the weak theme.

I suppose I was underwhelmed by this novel.  It wasn't really lacking in any of the areas except for concept, but that was enough to sink the novel.  Surprisingly, the ending was quite good and a real page-turner.  It's too bad larger stakes for the hero weren't introduced earlier so as to add dramatic tension throughout the novel.

Fragment, by Warren Fahy

This book is ridiculously bad.  It appears to have been published by a major New York publishing house (Delacorte Press which is part of Random House) and it's by a first-time author, so I'll analyze is according to Brooks' six elements of fiction as I did with Calumet City.

Concept:  What if a new island was discovered which had completely different animals?  What if the animals were more vicious than the others in the world and threatened to take over the planet if they escaped?  The only thing this book has going for it is its high concept.  Unfortunately, Fahy makes it completely unbelievable, which is the danger of a very high concept.  But it can be done, such as with Crichton's Jurassic Park.  Fahy doesn't even come close to making his concept plausible.

Theme:  Fahy goes on about protecting the planet from humans or other intelligent beings (typical environmentalist ideas), but the book didn't really demonstrate this theme with the plot.  The plot did demonstrate free will vs. determinism, but that's such an obvious choice that this theme didn't really add to the book.

Structure:  This was terribly done and it shows that Fahy knows nothing about dramatic tension.  The main characters don't have a big choice to make until about 80% of the way through the novel.  But even when this moment comes, Fahy doesn't build the tension or develop the conflict.  About half of the book reads like Wikipedia and appears to have been included so we can all appreciate how smart Fahy is about biology.  Another third is pointless action, most of which are characters being chased by vicious island creatures with no tension because we don't care about the characters.

Character:  Even worse than the structure is the characterization and dialogue.  The characters are worse than stereotypes because they are so juvenile.  Here is perhaps the most laughable dialogue in the book:

"I wish you were my girlfriend, Nell," Andy blurted.  Now it was Nell who was blushing.  "Thanks, sweetie."  She tousled his hair.  "But I'm nobody's girlfriend." 

These aren't fifth graders talking, they are grown adults in their late twenties!  Then there are countless action scenes where characters just say "Wow!," "Look at that!," and "I can't believe what I'm seeing!" to make us think it's exciting.  Needless to say, it doesn't work.

Writing Voice:  At least Fahy doesn't try to be fancy with his writing--the writing voice is pedestrian at best.

Scene Construction:  Many of the scenes are pointless and don't move the story forward.  But since there's no structure, the scenes can't really have a mission, can they?

Once again, this book is ridiculously bad.  Surprisingly, it was published by a major New York publisher in hard cover, then as a paperback.  It has also been optioned as a movie.  Did all this come from an interesting concept that they thought they could market by comparing it to Jurassic Park?

Starvation Lake, by Bryan Gruley

I liked this book. It's another book by a first-time author which got published by a major New York publishing house, so I'll analyze it according to Brooks' elements as I did with Calumet City.

Concept:  What if a reporter in a small town started to dig up the past of a town hero?  What if the hero had done something terrible?  What if the town people didn't want to dredge up the sordid past?  This concept was good enough to keep me interested, but no more.

Theme:  One theme was being honest with yourself and not running from the truth, although more could have been made out of it in the resolution.

Structure:  The basic structure of set-up, response, attack and resolution was followed, but not rigorously. The ending tried to tie together several minor details in the story as part of the big picture, but it was unnecessary.  Some of the details didn't need to be tied to anything, but trying to make them fit with the main story just begged plausibility.

Character:  This is the book's strongest element.  We get to know well not only the hero, but several other characters even though the book is written in first person.  I think the key here is that we get the motivations of the other characters and enough of their background so we care about them.

Writing Voice:  This element is also well done.  There are several hockey scenes that I thought would be boring play-by-play action scenes, but they aren't.  Gruley makes the scenes part of the dramatic nature of the story in that we are learning something about the characters.  We are also hearing what the hero is thinking throughout them which puts the action in context and makes us care about it beyond just the results of the game.

Scene Construction:  This element is well done too.  The scenes get quickly to the point and they reveal one more piece of information to move the story along.

Overall, Starvation Lake was well-written.  My main complaint is that the concept wasn't higher.  It's so hard to find a book that has a high concept that is also executed well.

Calumet City, by Charlie Newton

This was a disturbing read, but well done in most aspects.  I've become a fan of Larry Brooks' storyfix.com site which aims to help writers get published.  One intriguing point he makes is that to get published by a major New York publisher, an unknown writer must be proficient in the six elements of fiction:  story structure, writing voice, concept, theme, character and scene construction.  Thus, I sought out first-time authors published by major New York firms, and that's how I found Calumet City.  To see if Larry's assertion holds water, I've analyzed the novel according to the six elements below.

Structure:  This is one of the weaker elements in the six, but the book still has the standard structure.  The basics of structure are:  set-up, response, attack & resolution.  Calumet City has these elements, although they don't occur at the points that Brooks suggests.  In the set-up, we learn that the protagonist, Patti Black, is a tough, decorated Chicago cop who grew up in and now patrols the slums on the South Side of Chicago.  She becomes involved in a case that involves her past (she was abused as a child) and corrupt politicians.  Her response is to try to hide her past while figuring out what is going on.  Once she realizes she can't hide her past, she doesn't trust her colleagues to understand and so goes on the attack to stop a killer by herself.  The story is resolved well enough, but a twist at the end makes it less satisfying because the main bad guy that was built up throughout the book turns out to be a non-factor.

Writing voice:  This is probably the book's strongest element.  Charlie Newton uses first person, present tense for Patti Black, and it is very effective at getting inside the head of his gritty, determined heroine.  It works so well, I didn't even realize the whole book was in present tense until about a quarter of the way through!  (I had the opposite experience when King used present tense occasionally in Under the Dome where I found it very distracting.)  Using a writing style that is so personal also allowed the reader to identify with Patti Black and to feel her confusion and angst throughout the story.  It also added to the disturbing nature of the novel when she dealt with child abuse issues.

Concept:  The concept is fairly well done, but is also disturbing which might make it more interesting for big New York publishers:  What if a female cop had to investigate a case of child abuse (including rape) where the suspect is the foster father who abused her as a child?  What if this suspect was also connected to powerful, corrupt, local politicians?

Theme:  There was no dominant, explicit theme, as with most novels, but this one touched on justice, friendship, trust and adoption.  It was done well for this type of story.

Character:  Since this was written in first person, we really got to know Patti Black well and she was definitely a well-defined, three-dimensional character.  The other characters were much less defined, but it didn't detract from the novel.

Scene Construction:  While reading the book, it seemed that the scenes were not delimited very clearly and the whole novel seemed to be one long adventure as we followed Patti through her investigation.  However, in thinking back on the book, I do recall specific scenes with definite locations and narrative missions that were accomplished.  Because Newton did such a good job of getting the reader into Patti's head, it almost seemed like the book was taking place in her consciousness rather than the locations in Chicago.

Overall, I would say Calumet City does execute well on the six elements of fiction as described by Brooks.  However, I have to say I ended up not liking the book because of the elements of child abuse.  I just didn't like being inside the head of a character reliving her abusive past and her fear that the abuser was at it again.

Screenplay, by Syd Field

I read this because Larry Brooks suggested it in Story Structure...Demystified because it was inspiration for Brooks' book.  Unfortunately, this book did not contain much new information that I didn't already pick up from Brooks.  I suppose if one is writing screenplays, it has some useful information.  But for writing novels, not so much.

Whisper of the Seventh Thunder, by Larry Brooks

I really like Larry Brooks' website storyfix.com.  He gives great advice on how to structure a novel to create drama and suspense.  In addition to structure, he also stresses the need for stories to be good or great in terms of character, theme, concept, scene construction and writing voice (he calls these the Six Core Competencies).  WARNING:  SPOILER ALERT BELOW!  (But why are you even reading this?  Didn't you see the line at the top of the page telling you to go away?!)

Since it seems that Brooks' has the basics figured out, I was really looking forward to reading his latest book to see the theories in action.  Maybe my expectations were too high, but I didn't like this book as much as I thought I would.  Below is my estimation of how the book measures up against the Six Core Competencies.

 

Concept:  This is a "what if" question that should present an interesting situation that will make the reader pick up the book.  In this book, the question is:  What if an author wrote a novel which accurately predicted the Apocalypse as described in Revelations?  Even though I'm an atheist, I was willing to suspend disbelief for this premise.  However, one inherent problem with this concept is that if God is all powerful and has prophesized the events that will happen, there's no point in trying to stop it because it will come to pass no matter what the hero does.  This stole a lot of potential tension in the book.

Theme:  I think the ultimate theme was "to have faith" and perhaps my atheism prevented me from getting into the book.  However, the theme was not strongly connected to the plot (in my opinion) so it wasn't the major problem.

Characterization:  The most deeply drawn character was the hero, Gabriel Stone.  He lost his wife in a plane crash which shook his faith and led him to write his book.  Once that was done, he wasn't motivated by much except to get it published (although this had only been his goal since his wife died, and the writing of the book seemed easy, possibly because it was dictated by God).  Once the story gets rolling, he's motivated to avoid being murdered and later on to save a potential love interest.  Unfortunately, these motivations are recent on not very deep (except, perhaps, the not wanting to be killed part!).  Besides Stone reacting to his new situations, he's not really driven toward any grand goal.  In the end, he is charged with preventing the Apocalypse, but this doesn't motivate him to act--only saving a pretty girl he only recently met does.  The motivations for the other characters are not developed in any great depth and they were not compelling for me (and I had trouble keeping several of them apart as a result).

Structure:  This is the subject Brooks writes the most about on storyfix.com.  He states there should be four main parts to the story:  the set-up, the response, the attack, and the resolution.  The book is divided pretty cleanly into four parts, but I think Brooks tried to break the rules and got himself in trouble.  The set-up was fine, although it didn't establish a strong motivation for Stone.  But in the second quarter, the response, Stone is in danger of being killed, but he doesn't know it!  As a result, he doesn't respond to it.  Instead, he sits around his house, is almost killed when it burns down (he doesn't know it was meant to kill him), and sits in a hospital.  Toward the end of the 2nd quarter, he starts to react to being targeted when he finds out the truth, but it's around the 40% point in the book.

I have another problem with the structure/plot.  Not only are there  too many sets of bad guys with different agendas, but they keep changing their plans.  They want to kill Stone, then protect him.  They want to publish his book, then destroy it.  They want to kill the Antichrist, then protect him or her.  I was confused for about half of the book and even when it was done I wasn't really sure who was working for whom or what their motivations were.

It seems that Brooks was attempting too much with the structure to the detriment of the book.  It as if he presents the undergraduate view of story-telling on his website, but wanted to show us what graduate-level story-telling was like with his novel.

Finally, one point in the resolution was hard to get past.  A nuclear bomb destroys some (most?) of Israel.  Then, a few days later, Stone tries to clear out a hotel by telling security there is a bomb in the building, and the building has the first major Jewish presidential candidate sleeping in it, but the security guards don't immediately clear the building!  The plot needed the guards to doubt Stone, but this was just not believable.  There were ways to make this work, and I can't figure out why Brooks didn't work harder on the plausibility of the major plot events.

Scene construction:  The scenes were well written and overall the book was easy to read (except for my confusions with the bad guys).  I think Brooks does this well and it made the book easy to finish.

Writing Voice (aka Style):  There's nothing too fancy about Brooks' style, but that's way better than the other extreme of purple prose (something he points out on storyfix.com).

So I guess I'm trying to say I was disappointed with Whisper of the Seventh Thunder.  Perhaps I should try reading it again.  Now that I know the story and characters better, I shouldn't be too confused and perhaps I'll pick up interesting parts of the story that I missed the first time through.  Or maybe I should just write my own damn novel if I think it's so easy (I don't, actually).

Under the Dome, by Stephen King

I think my infatuation with Stephen King's writing just ended.  I loved Misery, The Green Mile and The Shawshank Redemption and so my expectations for Under the Dome were high.  Unfortunately, King's latest novel suffers from the same problem as The Stand--the huge investment in time is not rewarded by the ending.

I enjoyed the beginning of the novel where a small town in Maine is trapped under a dome.  A political struggle ensues between a power-lusting local Selectman and a visiting ex-soldier picked by the U.S. government.  The first quarter of the book does a good job setting up the confrontation between these two, but then the plot slowly fizzles after this.

In the third quarter of the book when we want to see the ex-soldier on the attack and fighting back against the bad guy, he spends most of the time in a jail cell while minor characters run around mostly responding to the bad guy.  When the good guys finally do show some initiative in the fourth quarter, much of their plans are overtaken by other events and they are never really controlling the situation.  The final resolution was also not satisfying and was too deus ex machina for me--the final resolution was not set up in the first part of the book and was not even really connected to the main story.

One final complaint was that I wasn't really drawn to any of the characters like I was in The Stand (a very comparable book).  The bad guys were actually portrayed more fully than the good guys in that we understood their motivations better.

Its too bad, really, because I had been looking forward to reading this book for quite some time.  But perhaps that is part of the problem--my expectations were just too high.

Story Structure... Demystified, by Larry Brooks

I stumbled upon the blog at storyfix.com because of a post critical of Stephen King that popped up from a Google search.  A few hours later, after reading quite a few posts, I downloaded a sample of his book, Story Structure...Demystified, onto my Kindle.  Later that night I bought the book.  How's that for internet marketing?

Ever since I've thought about seriously trying my hand at writing, I've been looking for principles of good writing, especially in creating suspense with a good plot.  Well, I think I've found it with this book.

Brooks doesn't claim to have discovered these principles.  He's merely adapted them from screen-writing principles so they apply to novels.  What I liked most about his presentation is that he not only tells us the principles, but why they work.  He also gives many examples, including a detailed analysis of The DaVinci Code, which I found very useful.  I won't go into the principles here because his blog has a good overview.

All That Remains, by Patricia Cornwell

This was the first Patricia Cornwell book I've read, and it will probably be the last.  It was hard to be motivated to finish it.  Here's how I broke it down:

Plot:  It was a standard murder mystery with a few sub-plots thrown in.  However, it was all just about solving the mystery and there wasn't any back-and-forth between the hero and the killer.  Another problem was that the hero was an outsider to the investigation which gave her little impact.  Finally, the key break-through happened by coincidence which is never very satisfying.

Characterization:  The hero had a back-story, inner dialogue and internal conflicts, but none of it made the character come alive for me.  Perhaps it was because these things weren't integrated well with the plot.


Style:  The style was fairly pedestrian.  The few attempts to be more literary, for instance with descriptions at the beginnings of chapters, stood out as awkward because they were inconsistent with the rest.

Theme:  There wasn't really a theme, but I don't think the author was really trying for one either.

The Long Walk, by Stephen King

I read that this was Stephen King's first novel, written when he was 20 and in college.  As I understand it, he later revised it and published it as a "Bachman Book."  I read it mainly to compare King's early work (which is where I'll be when I get back to actually writing instead of just reading) to his later work, which I think is excellent.  I wanted to see the degree to which King developed his ability, and perhaps give myself hope that I could do the same.

The Long Walk was well written in terms of style (which could have been accomplished while editing later), but lacked the depth of character and plot which are present in King's later novels.  The Long Walk refers to a walk to the death run as some kind of national sport in an alternate reality of the United States which has somehow become a dictatorship.  The novel starts and ends with the Long Walk which makes a nicely delimited plot for a beginning author to work within.

Overall, my reading of The Long Walk accomplished my purpose.  I saw that King's ability to create interesting characters and plots developed as he wrote.  It gives me hope that I can accomplish the same with lots of practice.

Unmasking Europa, by Richard Greenberg

I read this non-fiction book as background for a potential adventure book for kids (my own kids are into space right now).  Unfortunately, it didn't give too many details on the planet that I didn't already know.  Instead, the book focused on the battle between Greenberg's academic lab and NASA.  While it was interesting to see how "big science" is inefficient and sometimes downright corrupt, I was more interested in the subtitle of the book, "The Search for Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon" and in this regard the book delivered very little.

The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie

This first novel by comedian and actor Hugh Laurie was pretty good.  It had some funny lines, a decent plot and we got to know the main character in a more-than-superficial way.  Having said that, I wonder if the book would have been better under a pseudonym.  The main character, especially when being comical, sounded just like Laurie so it was hard to separate the character from the author.  I understand why they published it with Hugh's real name--to sell probably 100 times more books--but for me it took away from the experience because it was hard to get lost in the world created by the book..

The Green Mile, by Stephen King

Once again, I was not disappointed by Stephen King.  This book was originally published as six "chap-books," about one every month.  Except for the first one, they all ended with a nice cliff-hanger and started with a nice re-cap.

King, as usual, gets us into the story and really caring about the characters.  I think this is what impresses me most about King.  It's not that the characters are particularly good or heroic, and they are not necessarily passionate valuers.  Perhaps its that they are honest with the reader, and with themselves.  That is one contrast with Blood Orange--I felt that the main character wasn't honest with herself and, by extension, with the reader.

Even though the book has a religious theme, I didn't mind even though I'm an atheist.  I ended up caring about the characters and their values and the religion was more of a plot device than a theme for me.  It seems a lot of the suspense and mystery in King's stories deal with the supernatural.  I wonder why.

Roses are Red, by James Patterson

This was my first James Patterson novel.  I liked it okay in the beginning and middle, but the end turned me off to James Patterson.  Roses are Read is an Alex Cross novel with the police psychologist pitted against a "mastermind" criminal.  When I thought the climax of the novel would pit Alex against the mastermind, I enjoyed it.  But the end had two too many plot twists which threw all the set-up in the middle of the novel out the window.  It was very unsatisfying.

The characters were pretty thin, even the main one, Alex Cross.  He had personal conflicts (friction with his girlfriend and his child had an illness) but they were not tied well into the main conflict of finding the mastermind, so they were more distraction than addition to the suspense.

Even though it was easy to read and enough of a page-turner to get through it quickly, in the end it was completely forgettable.

Blood Orange, by Drusilla Campbell

This wasn't my kind of book, so perhaps my review isn't really fair.  It focused a lot on a failing marriage and a woman's insecurity with her place in life.  I found it a bit creepy at times to be inside the head of the main character.

Some of the major plot actions seemed contrived and did not flow naturally from the action.  The author attempted to explain the actions, but it strained credibility.  I'm not saying I could do better, but I'll certainly try.

Overall, this was a strange read for me.  It had all the elements of good fiction--good prose, an plot with a mystery and a good amount of action, characters with conflicts--but it just didn't come together for me.  In this book, the writing process poked through and I never got immersed in the story.  It seemingly has the same elements of a great Stephen King story (like The Green Mile, which I'm reading now) but it just didn't work.  It would be good for me to figure out the difference between these two works.

The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker

Penn Jillette recommended this book, and I'm glad he did.  The Mezzanine is an ode to the active mind.  The book essentially has no plot--the sum total of the action involves buying a new pair of shoelaces during a lunch break--and I suspect many people wouldn't like this book.  But for me it was interesting to read what the main character (really just the author, I suspect) thinks about the little details in his life.  Many of his thoughts demonstrate a healthy curiosity about the world and the little technological advances made in our advanced society--things like plastic vs. paper straws, the mechanics of escalators and the proper way to fill a napkin dispenser.

Baker also has a wonderful way of writing about seemingly mundane subjects in a way that makes them come alive, such as his description of popcorn popping:

I felt somewhat like an exploding popcorn myself:  a dried bicuspid of American grain dropped into a lucid gold liquid pressed from less fortunate brother kernals, subjected to heat, and suddenly allowed to flourish outward in an instantaneous detonation of weightless reversal; an asteroid of Styrofoam, much larger but seemingly of less mass than before, composed of exfoliations that in bursting beyond their outer carapace were nonetheless guided into paisleys and baobabs and related white Fibonaccia by its disappearing, back-arching browned petals (which later found their way into the space between molars and gums), shapes which seemed quite Brazilian and intemperate for so North American a seed, and which seemed, despite the abrupt assumption of their final state, the convulsive, launching "pop," slowly arrived at, like risen dough or cave mushrooms.

The Breathing Method, by Stephen King

This is the fourth and last story in Different Seasons.  I had read that it was the weakest story of the set, but I liked it as much as the others (perhaps because I had low expectations going in).  I didn't care as much for the story within the story--The Breathing Method--but I did like the outer story of the club which was a metaphor for getting lost in the world of fiction.

The Body, by Stephen King

This is the third story in Different Seasons and I enjoyed it (I also enjoyed the movie which was based on the story, Stand by Me).  The book started by saying "The most important things are the hardest things to say."  Was this story about one of those important things?  Like that childhood friendships usually don't last?  Or that it's hard to recreate that kind of magic as an adult?  Was it that you shouldn't let your friends hold you back?  Was it that you have to find your own way in life with honest, independent thinking?

I liked the inclusion of short stories in the narrative (ones that King actually wrote earlier when he was learning the craft), mainly because I could see that King wasn't born a fantastic writer; he honed his craft with years and years of practice--a good lesson for any aspiring writer just starting out.

The Caveman's Valentine, by George Dawes Green

This one was tough to get through because I didn't like it.  My thought is that great literature needs to skillfully integrate plot, theme, character and style.  Here's my take on those four areas:

Plot:  The story is built around a murder mystery, but the main character trying to solve the case doesn't do much intelligent to solve it and basically stumbles across the solution.

Theme:  No theme is clearly demonstrated.  For a while I thought it was going to delve into how most people are content to go along with the world as other people have created it, but the story never went there except for a few rants from the main character.

Character:  The main character is a schizophrenic homeless man living in a cave.  The author has a tough assignment with this protagonist because he has to make the guy crazy enough to explain his homelessness but sane enough to solve a murder mystery.  The author didn't pull it off, in my opinion.

Style:  This may be what turned me off most:  many of the descriptions bordered on and went beyond comprehension.  I suppose this was to let us know what it was like to be in the mind of a schizophrenic, but it also smelled of avant-garde artsy crap like James Joyce.  Aside from these semi-coherent descriptions, the writing was okay but nothing special.

Apt Pupil, by Stephen King

This is the second story in Different Seasons by Stephen King.  While I didn't like it as much as The Shawshank Redemption, it was still very good.  In typical King style, he draws us deep inside the main characters and, although we don't learn to love them--or even like them--it's hard not to be at least interested in them.

Even though this novella is about 70,000 words long, it moves quickly and the pacing is excellent.  I'm looking forward to reading the next story, The Body, upon which the movie Stand by Me was based.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

I can't believe this is an international best seller.  The dialogue is wooden, there's way too much description (how many times do we need to hear that the protagonist had coffee?  and why do we care what chair he sat in?), and the murder mystery never builds any suspense.

I read on Wikipedia that Larsson wrote this and other books just for himself in his spare time.  This one read like it, and it's shocking that the book wasn't heavily edited before publishing.  At 100,000 words instead of 200,000 the book may have been more bearable.

The Shawshank Redemption, by Stephen King

This is a great novella in the compilation Different Seasons.  The story starts out slow but then really draws you in and keeps you reading.  I don't know how King does it, but he is really a great story teller.  I should read it again to get clues to his method.

While My Pretty One Sleeps, by Mary Higgins Clark

This book was cliched and contrived.  Mary Higgins Clark does not have an original or creative writing style.  The book was set up as a who-dunnit with multiple characters who could all have committed the crime.  However, it was so obvious that these suspects could have done it that it was obvious that none of them did it.  The real killer ended up being one of the minor characters with no real clues pointing to him until the last third of the book.

This was a very disappointing read.

Misery, by Stephen King

I really enjoyed this book, perhaps because it is about a writer and King gives many insights into the writing process as well as the life of a writer.  It wasn't as scary as I thought it might be but it was funnier.

The novel was plotted well with good pacing.  I enjoyed the metaphors such as the author's pain as pilings that were exposed by the tide being pulled by Annie as the moon.  I think one of the most enjoyable aspects was getting deep inside the character of the author and King did a good job of not interrupting the magic.

I saw the movie years ago and almost didn't read it because I didn't like the movie.  I'm sure glad I gave the book a chance--it's one of my favorites.

One for the Money, by Janet Evanovich

This was a by-the-numbers murder mystery reminiscent of Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane and Robert B. Parker, although the protagonist is a woman new to the job of being a bounty hunter.  It was an entertaining quick read but short on theme and character development.

Case Histories: A Novel, by Kate Atkinson

I read this book on Stephen King's recommendation:  "Not just the best novel I read this year [2004], but the best mystery of the decade. There are actually four mysteries, nesting like Russian dolls, and when they begin to fit together, I defy any reader not to feel a combination of delight and amazement. Case Histories is the literary equivalent of a triple axle. I read it once for pleasure and then again just to see how it was done. This is the kind of book you shove in people's faces, saying 'You gotta read this!'"

Based on the above, I went into this book with high expectations--maybe too high. The three stories did come together, but as far as I can tell, they weren't necessarily linked.  They were simply being investigated by the same private detective who was hired by someone involved in each of the three stories.  When the stories did overlap, it was coincidence and not the particular circumstances that drove them together.  I suppose the stories may have some common thematic elements, but without the stories being intertwined, it wasn't enough to impress this reader.

I was also disappointed in the writing.  Too much of the action was given as the remembrances of the characters.  And when action was given in real-time, the scene typically ended right when it was getting good.

I did have one good insight while reading the book:  a good way to write convincing women characters is to read women authors who write honestly.  Case Histories: A Novel did deliver in this last regard.

The Bone Collector, by Jeffery Deaver

Barely competent writing.  Scientific inaccuracies.  Thin, under-developed characters.  And unrealistic plot-twists.  That about sums up The Bone Collector by Jeffery Deaver.  (The incomplete sentences such as the ones above are sprinkled throughout the book.)

At least it was a quick read.

The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White

This was a very quick read and very useful.  It covered about thirty principles of good writing clearly and concisely.  The following are things I need to work on:

- Omit needless words (rule 13)
- Avoid a succession of loose sentences (rule 14)
- Use a variety of sentence types
- Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end (rule 18)
- Avoid weak conjunctions like 'and' or 'but'
- Put statements in positive form (rule 12)

I got my version on the Kindle for only a dollar.  It seems to be quite an old version because they also recommended using hyphens in to-day and to-morrow!

On Writing, by Stephen King

Right after I finished The Stand, I started reading On Writing because I liked the former so much.  Unfortunately, reading the book on how King writes made me like The Stand less!  My problem is that King writes without knowing where he's going.  He starts with an interesting situation and then starts writing, a process he likens to uncovering a fossil.  I think to have a strong theme, you have to know the theme and the ending before you can start writing; the author's job is then to construct the events which lead up to the climax and demonstrate the theme.

King relates how he had a lot of trouble finishing The Stand because he wrote himself into a corner and didn't know how to get out of it.  He finally had a Eureka moment and it all came together.  Unfortunately, the book reads like that too--when the climax finally comes, it doesn't feel like the book was inevitably leading up to that final confrontation.

As for On Writing, I learned a lot from reading it, and I really appreciated King's honesty.  He highly recommended Strunk and White's Elements of Style and I read that next.

The Stand, by Stephen King

I liked The Stand.  It is the first book I've read by Stephen King, and I was surprised that he was such a good writer.  I liked the depth of the characters, the broad scope of the action, and the way King wrote so the reader felt he was in the story.  It was also fun to get inside the heads of his characters.

For me, The Stand was lacking when it came to theme, something about the danger or recklessness of applying technology to warfare.  Or maybe it was that all organized societies drift toward destructiveness, and so we shouldn't have organized societies?  Regardless, the book suffered as so many other well-written ones:  they don't culminate in a meaningful theme.

Watchers, by Dean Koontz

     Continuing my survey of best-selling authors to learn from them, I read Watchers by Dean Koontz.  Several reviewers mentioned a great conclusion and I was expecting all the story lines to come together into a complex resolution.  However, the secondary characters only came into the main story in a sequential fashion and were dealt with quickly, which was disappointing.

     The most interesting characters are Lem Johnson, a government agent, and The Outsider, a lab-created intelligent killing machine.  These two characters are the only ones with internal conflicts of values, but neither of these inner conflicts is explored in any great detail.  The main characters, Nora and Travis, overcome personality obstacles early, but after that they only face external obstacles from the other characters.

Sock, by Penn Jillette

This novel by Penn Jillette (from Penn & Teller) is more autobiography than fiction.  There is a thin plot around the hero catching a serial killer, but the book is mostly rants from Penn which I enjoyed.  The story is told from the point-of-view of a toy sock monkey which is a novel device.  It is made even better at the end when we are told the sock monkey is a metaphor for god, i.e. an imaginary friend that you feel closer to than real people.  I don't think I'm giving away anything because we had to be told the metaphor instead of it being demonstrated by the plot.  It's a great idea--it's just too bad Penn didn't show it as part of a nicely developed plot rather than telling us his thoughts disguised as a novel.

On a cool side note, I read this book on my new Kindle.  At first I thought my Kindle was broken because random ink splotches appeared on a few of the early pages.  Then I realized that Penn put fake printing press mistakes into the e-version to make it look more like a real book.  Very cool.