Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series started as a really fun and interesting set of mystery novels. She was way ahead of the medical examiner craze (predating CSI and all its clones), and her characters were well-conceived to the point where I wanted to meet them, work with them, be their friends, etc. However, the last several books have steadily declined in quality. It’s like she’s not even trying. What can we put these characters through? Oh, how about bringing someone back from the dead? More job losses/job changes, that’ll mix things up! I have the newest one on loan from the library but it’s been sitting on my bedside table for two weeks unopened. I’m worried it’ll be crap like the last few.
Since children’s and mystery/crime are what I read most of the time, I’ll add Artemis Fowl. Those books are really popular, but I read the first and was completely unimpressed. Among other things, I’m sick of the fantasy cliche that humans aren’t alone on earth, but they’re so dumb that the other life forms/races/whatever need to protect them from that knowledge. JK Rowling does this in a good way, but Eoin Colfer’s fantasy world just didn’t do it for me.
For that matter, the movie version of Mr. Roberts is far more enjoyable than the book of the same name, that the play the movie is based upon was written from. How that happened I’m not sure, but it is.
Over the years I have read quite a few books on libertarianism, gun ownership, individual liberty, etc. The authors of these books were always talking about the “classic” novel Atlas Shrugged. And one of my very favorite novels (Unintended Consequences) was constantly compared to Atlas Shrugged. So I thought, “Hmm. Guess I better read this thing.”
She’s doing exactly that. Her last Pern book was co-authored with her son, and he’s now written his first Pern book by himself. She benched herself and sent in the relief pitcher.
Heh. My lit professor loved this book, and harped on how brilliantly the monotony of the nothingness was presented. Seriously. He felt the major success and genius of the book was creating a mind-numbing atmosphere of hopeless boredom, free of stimulation or variety. Darkest bleakest Africa.
In that case I wish to nominate my tax return of last year for the National Book Award.
I’d also like to submit David Copperfield for this list. I have to read it for class and that’s the ONLY reason that book hasn’t gone flying into the nearest stump grinder. The ratio of Stupid to Halfway Intelligent in this book is way overbalanced.
