Wednesday, August 03, 2005
What happened to all the books worth reading?
Outside of the latest Harry Potter (which may not count since it's an ongoing series) I can't remember the last book that I read that I was excited about finishing.
The latest is Housekeeping which frankly bores me. Saw the movie years again in Seattle & would never have considered reading it if I had not read some outstanding reference in a review of Robinson's latest tome. Just to spoil the film/novel for anyone, the film starts with the narrator's mother's car stuck in the mud. A couple boys help her get unstuck, so she gives them her purse & drives off a cliff. No reason. No background for the character's action, just needed to get her out of the way so the narrator & her sister would end up with their crazy aunt. Only nice touch was the grandfather placing a leaf of a specific type in that page of the dictionary - the narrator's sister turns the book upside down shaking out all the leaves.
Previous disappointments include See Under: Love and Guns, Germs & Steel - oh quit reading The Vulcans book - lots of info about the vulcans in the 70's, but very little insight. Not to mention some cliched military novel that didn't even cut it as a good airplane book. Looking back through previous postings, I see that listening to The Quiet American back in April was the last book I was excited about listening to. Before that....well it was before I started blogging back in December. Damn, have I really read 99.9983% of all the books I want to read? Depressing thought. Almost scared to even start Collapse & be let down once again.
The latest is Housekeeping which frankly bores me. Saw the movie years again in Seattle & would never have considered reading it if I had not read some outstanding reference in a review of Robinson's latest tome. Just to spoil the film/novel for anyone, the film starts with the narrator's mother's car stuck in the mud. A couple boys help her get unstuck, so she gives them her purse & drives off a cliff. No reason. No background for the character's action, just needed to get her out of the way so the narrator & her sister would end up with their crazy aunt. Only nice touch was the grandfather placing a leaf of a specific type in that page of the dictionary - the narrator's sister turns the book upside down shaking out all the leaves.
Previous disappointments include See Under: Love and Guns, Germs & Steel - oh quit reading The Vulcans book - lots of info about the vulcans in the 70's, but very little insight. Not to mention some cliched military novel that didn't even cut it as a good airplane book. Looking back through previous postings, I see that listening to The Quiet American back in April was the last book I was excited about listening to. Before that....well it was before I started blogging back in December. Damn, have I really read 99.9983% of all the books I want to read? Depressing thought. Almost scared to even start Collapse & be let down once again.
