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.