Be Excellent To Each Other

You wouldn't appreciate how much field research goes on behind the scenes. *Belch*

Seriously.

The last book I read that I genuinely hated was Conman, by Richard Asplin. The writing style isn't bad exactly but the main character is almost completely unsympathetic in his selfish stupidity and the surprise ending is head-slappingly predicable from roughly 20 pages in. I wanted to throw the bloody book across the room.

I was disappointed with The Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart. For some reason I thought it was going to be funny, but it wasn't.

Once you get over the initial conceit, it gets tedious pretty quickly.
'Oh, he's written down: 1 - make tea; 2 - make coffee; 3 - hold black mass; 4 - clean the car; 5 - read; 6 - sleep..... [rolls dice]... oooo... a 3! Bring on the virgin!'

I'd forgotten all about that book... it's one of the few I've read. Not sure if it was because I'm such an infrequent book reader, but I found it really heavy going. I imagine it'd make a decent enough film though.

Never having read it before, I am 2/3rds of the way through To Kill A Mockingbird. Jeepees, it is a bit good. Probably one of the best books I have ever read.

I better have mentioned The Hunger in this thread.

I did, everything is fine.

I thought it was quite good although I think I too expected it to be a pure comedy (it was years ago).

It’s a damn good job that, like the matrix, he never wrote a sequel.

I can’t believe you lived so long without reading this

Me, neither. Although second born was almost called Scout.

Since this thread was active last, I have tried to read Catch-22. And it is indeed a pile of shite. The writing style is... ugh. And it jumps around too much.

I've read a couple of Neal Stephenson books too, I enjoyed The Diamond Age and Cryptonomicon, but anyone else feel that, despite being one of the best at writing action scenes, he seems to avoid them at all costs in his later books?

I think you might have the wrong thread.

When I saw this thread title I thought of Catch 22, and then realised I'd already had a good moan about it some years ago.

I too have never read To Kill A Mockingbird. One day I shall get round to it. Other than kids books, I have barely read anything at all for many years, which is something I really should try and rectify.

The portable door by Tom Holt

I’ve been looking for some authors that I haven’t read before and I’d seen some recommendations for Tom Holt. Looking through the list of over 70 items he’s written, I went for The Portable Door as it’s the first in a series and the reviews I’d seen were mostly positive e.g. SFX one line review, “The best similes since Douglas Adams.’”

From page 1 I wasn’t keen on his style. On page 3 I found the first of the supposedly good similes.

“But he stayed where he was, while the thin girl excavated the talons of her left hand, like Carter and Caernarvon questing for dead Pharaohs.”

“Oh, it’s obvious what you’re thinking,” she said, “from that soupy expression on your face, and the way your shoulders are sagging. Like someone sat down in front of a radiator and you’re beginning to melt.”

He couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he said, ‘Oh,’ instead. She pulled the grin back into a little frown, like someone reigning in an unruly terrier, and scratched under her right armpit.

I’d have to say ridiculous rather than anything comparable to Adams.

And there were lots of sections with lots of words but noting acthually being said, particularly in the early chapters.

I found the characterisation shallow, with many introduced too quickly.

The conversations were often inane and it felt like he was trying to hit word count rather than engage the reader.

The Portable Door in question didn’t appear until around half way through the book, by which time I was struggling to keep going.

I was considering giving up on it, but pushed on to see if it got any better and if there was a satisfactory ending, but I found it a let down.

I thought the plot didn’t achieve its potential

My overall feeling is that it was like a novel for adults written by Enid Blyton.

But he’s obviously popular, so maybe he was over hyped and the basic problem for me is his style.