The Books That Didn't Quite Make It

I'm certain that I will surprise no one by confessing that I read a lot. Obsessively. On my way to and from work. At lunchtime. Before bed. More or less any time that hasn't been dedicated to my work, social life, housework or writing. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that every book I read is good. And seeing as I usually blog about the books I have read and loved, today I thought that I would do something different and blog about the books I have read since I started this site and either did not enjoy or did not finish. And so, in no particular order, here are some of the books that didn't end up being reviewed.


Article 5 - Kirsten Simmons (Never finished)

This book gets top billing, simply because it was the one that inspired this post. It's difficult to say what I didn't like about this dystopian tale of post war America, apart from the fact that it failed to draw me in. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm part of the generation who grew up waiting for the next installment in the Tomorrow series by John Marsden, but the characters and situations in this book seemed rather dull by comparison. 

Sing You Home - Jodi Picoult (Never finished) 

Jodi Picoult has written some fantastic novels in her time. My Sisters Keeper, The Pact and Nineteen Minutes are fine examples of her ability to show that there is more than one side to every story. Unfortunately, Sing You Home isn't one of those great novels. Maybe I'm just getting older and my tastes more discerning (this was actually the first Picoult novel I have read in many years,) but every character in this book felt more like an urban myth of what it is like to experience a stillbirth, be a lesbian, convert to a fundamentalist sect, or to conceive a child through IVF.

Never Knowing - Chevy Stevens

An absolutely brilliant idea for a thriller. Imagine being adopted by an abusive family and then, when you grow up deciding enough is enough and that you're going to search for your biological parents. Then you discover that your biological father is a serial killer. What could have been a brilliant story (or at least a decent page turner,) is let down by less than believable characters and an unnecessary twist at the end.

Into the Darkness - VC Andrews

Okay, I admit. I'm a huge fan of VC Andrews. Every time I tell someone that Flowers in the Attic isn't very literary and I wouldn't really recommend it, I'm actually secretly urging them to indulge in this awesome guilty pleasure read. The problem is that after the real VC Andrews died, her family hired a ghost writer to complete her unfinished work and then write additional novels in her name. In the past twenty years, more than sixty novels baring her name have been published, all of varying quality. Into the Darkness is easily one of the worst in what the ghostwriter calls the "VC franchise", telling the story of a young woman who falls in love with the boy next door, who only she can see. Oh, and he turns out to be a ghost and she ends up in therapy.


Comments

365_books_a_year said…
I read Article 5 and it was a 2 star book for me. I felt like it was too cookie cutter of a book. Like she made a list of elements of a dystopian novel and checked off as many as she could without writing engaging characters or having any really compelling plot elements.
16 June 2012 at 06:23
Kathryn White said…
Yes! That's exactly what was wrong with Article 5. It wasn't that I hated the characters or the situation, just that there was not enough in them to hold my interest. It was a different experience from reading say, The Hunger Games, where I felt emotionally involved with the characters and enjoyed watching Katniss as she grew and matured in the most brutal of situations. Granted, it's a tough job to write a book and not everybody is going to love it, but I felt that the author of Article 5 was capable of something far greater.
17 June 2012 at 16:15
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean...
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu...
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A...
Read more