Kathy Reichs is a surprisingly good writer for a geek.
You will probably enjoy it, and if you do, please post a review on Amazon. If you don’t enjoy it, please don’t post a review.
I got promoted from the second page of acknowledgements to the second paragraph, though I can’t recall much of what I did for this book other than determining that, though newspapers like to play things up as witchcraft or cult murders, when they get to court what really happened was that tweakers in Ozzy Osborne T-shirts got caught up in drug deals gone bad.
Feel free to skip tonight’s rebroadcast of the season finale of “Bones” because it is an abomination in the eyes of the Lord.
Simple enough for ya?
If you are too cheap to buy the book I will include the most important part:
One correction I must make, though. As anybody who knows me here knows, I’ve never had an opinion in my life. I traffic only in facts, even if I have to make them up.
The only reason I need is because I enjoy her books. Knowing someone (sort of) who occasionally contributes to her research, etc. is just a bonus.
But…man, don’t the coincidences in her books just get wilder and wilder…
As far as the re-broadcast of the season-ender. Well, maybe, maybe not.
What does she think of the series as it’s become? That’s something I’ve been dying to ask her, because Temperance is SO far from Tempe in the books that the only thing they share is their profession and name. I had a hard time with that in the beginning.
Once I picked up Bare Bones by the same author and read it. I have regretted it ever since. It sits in my Hall of Shame corner on the bookcase. It sucked bear ass.
Has Ms. Reichs learned anything since then about writing?
I just bought her first book, Deja Dead. I had never heard of Reichs before I started watching Bones about six months ago (and I recently finished watching the first season courtesy of NetFlix) and noticed that the show was based on her books.
If I like the book half as much as I like the show, I will no doubt start reading the rest of them (just what I need, another author to collect…I already have three bookcases of unread books).
I am, probably unsurprisingly, interested in this book because of an affection for *Bones *and also a personal/religious interest in the “Witch Hunts” and “Satanic Scares” of recent years. But I’ve never read another of her books. Assuming I can get past the fact that “my” Tempe (the TV one) is not the one in the book, will I be lost? Do the books stand alone well?
Whenever I ask (complain) about the series she trots out some boring statistic like, “You may not have liked that episode but it owned its time slot,” or, “It’s Fox’s #2 drama.” Sometimes she will pass my comment up to Hart Hanson, who responds with either, “You may say that Drano won’t dissolve a body in two days (Aside: I’ve had CLOGS Drano wouldn’t dissolve in two days!) but that episode owned its time slot,” or, “It’s Fox’s #2 drama.” I’ve given up on getting anything else out of her and bite my tongue before I say anything about her having sold her soul to Rupert Murdoch. (thinking) Make that “usually bite my tongue.”
FTR, I never get scoops but I once started a statement, “With Zach gone,” which got the response, “What makes you think Zach is gone?” Y’mean, other than getting his hands burnt off and him getting packed off to the loony bin? Well, take that as you will. All I know is that she seems to like to see me twist in the wind.
Also, before I completely gave up on what TV Guide calls scoops, I saw that Michael Badalucco (formerly of The Practice) will be one of TV Tempe’s new grad students. Hmmm, the age is right, he could be thinner and taller, and he’s playing a guy who after a life in another career goes back to school for forensic anthropology? Except for the last one, which I have only treatened to do, he could be me! So, despite any, “No, he’s not, you idiot!” or “You really are egotistical and crazy,” counterclaims she might make (but hasn’t), I will go to my grave convinced his character is based on me.
I’ll ask your questions when she’s less busy. She’s on a book tour. And you may want to avoid her website (http://www.kathyreichs.com/) if you are prone to seizures. God, I hate Flash.
Pretend they are different people who have the same name. Book Tempe is closer to Real Kathy than TV Tempe, except she is divorced. Real Kathy was 24 and already married five years when I met her. I never stood a chance.
The books stand alone, which is good because I haven’t read all of them. (Y’see, I’m not really into novels these days…) They are serial fiction, which has its disadvantages, as brownie55 and TroubleAgain noted. I prefer the writing in her first, “Deja Dead,” and for my money her voice has grown too staccato and it’s too predictable where she will place chapter breaks (almost like the placement of commercials). But her writing is okay and the science is much better than it is on TV. It ain’t great literature but it can be fun.
Personally, I agree. Booth’s dream, to be specific, though since “House” had already done that to death it seems like a cheap stunt. As I said in the original thread about it, the medical/forensic mumbo jumbo sounded more like him imitating Tempe than real mumbo jumbo. “It burnt off all his cartilage?!?!?” When we saw Zach’s hands bloody and charred but fairly intact? And that momentary explosion and fire did all that while leaving Zach alive and otherwise undamaged? And what was that gibberish about the stuff that blew up? And how did Booth recover enough from getting shot to serve on the honor guard of his own funeral? Had to be the dream of a non-technical person because otherwise that episode had more pseudoscience than a homeopathy website.
TV Tempe is me, that’s why, only on a different career path! Okay, you’ve convinced me, I’ll pick up the book and give it a shot. I have no problem with enjoyable reads that aren’t going to change the face of literature - most of my reading is historical fiction and chicks with swords fantasy.
Yeah, and ratings are all that matter. :rolleyes: I actually have no problem with the show, since I’ve managed to learn to mentally divorce the two. It’s scientific escapism for me, and I love the characters. And all the actors (for the most part) are HOT. WHEW!
But the last few *books * have really stretched my “suspension of disbelief” with the tenuously spun fine-meshed web of coincidence. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t gotten to the Patricia-Cornwell-throw-the-book-across-the-room point by any means…
I reached that point about eight pages into my first and last Patricia Cornwell book. Then when she started up with that bullshit Jack the Ripper theory…
I actually enjoyed the first few and then Scarpetta just became such a bitch I couldn’t stand to read the books anymore.
I was enjoying Bones until SKY TV had that fight with Virgin and I lost all my favourite shows and couldn’t manufacture enough outrage to switch to SKY.
Knowing someone (sort of) who occasionally contributes to her research, etc. is just a bonus.
Okay, you’ve convinced me, I’ll pick up the book and give it a shot. I have no problem with enjoyable reads that aren’t going to change the face of literature - most of my reading is historical fiction and chicks with swords fantasy.
I actually have no problem with the show, since I’ve managed to learn to mentally divorce the two. It’s scientific escapism for me, and I love the characters. And all the actors (for the most part) are HOT. WHEW!