Things that make you go "eh".
My friend Dawn wrote a review of the King of Torts by John Grisham. She summed the book up with an eloquent "eh". Obviously, this book didn't do very much for her.
Being a somewhat voracious reader myself, I have stumbled across dozens of books that left me going "eh", sometimes leaving me with a sour taste in my mouth. Books that have so much promise that you get all giddy and excited, only to finish it and end up wishing that the author had at least consulted you before ruining such a promising story.
The Last Man Standing by David Baldacci is such a book. This book started off so intriguingly with an elite swat team getting ambushed and all but one of them dying. But then it delved into a stupid revenge plot, bad coincidences, and horrible Bag Guys. Here is the description of the plot:
"It took ten seconds for Web London to lose everything: his friends, his team, his reputation. Point man of the FBI's super-elite Hostage Rescue Team, Web roared into a blind alley toward a drug dealers lair, only to meet a high-tech, custom-designed ambush that killed everyone around him. Now coping with the blame-filled words of anguished widows and the suspicions of colleagues, Web tries to put his life back together with the help of his psychiatrist, Dr. Claire Daniels. To do so, he must discover why he was the one man who lived through the ambush -- and find the only other person who came out of that alley alive... a ten-year-old boy who has since disappeared.
Web's search leads him from inner-city Washington, D.C., to the rolling hills of Virginia horse country -- while people connected to him are violently silenced. Acting on his instincts, Web believes he knows where the killer will strike next. Only this time, he may not survive the attack. Last Man Standing is an explosive psychological thriller about a man desperate to find answers -- from the secret terrors he has kept from himself to his unbearable guilt. His fight to save himself and those he cares for will come at a high cost... and threaten everything he has grown to believe in. With vividly realized characters and a breathtaking pace, this is another spellbinding novel from David Baldacci, one of today's best storytellers."
See? It sounds good, right? Wrong. This plot is so lame that even a movie producer would turn it down. What's worse is that this is the same author who wrote the novel Absolute Power which was later made into a movie starring Clint Eastwood. Both the movie and book version of Absolute Power are excellent. So what happened?
I don't know. I know that a lot of prolific authors seem to lose steam as they get older. Maybe the fountain of ideas just dries up and becomes a stagnant puddle of fly specked water. Authors whose earlier works I love like Dean R. Koontz, Michael Crichton, R. A. Salvator, Robert R. McCammon, and Tad Williams, seem to have lost something over the years. Their work have become preachy, as is the case of Koontz, or stupid, like Salvator's work. Williams seems over reaching while McCammon has become boring and unfulfilling.
This is not a case of me the reader becoming jaded or looking back fondly at old stories through rose colored glasses. I have reread each of these authors over the past year and the old books that I loved so much are just as good today as they were when I first read them. Newer works by these authors still suck.
This is the case with John Grisham. His early works were good stories, as evidenced by the number of high quality movies that have been made off of them. His recent stuff is crap.
Jurassic Park was a great book, but Michael Crichton left a lot to be desired with the Lost World.
My wife says that I'm too critical. She thinks that I see flaws in everything. The fact is that the better the story is, the less that I have to be critical about. The movie Shawshank Redemption and the novella that it was based on, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King, were flawless. They are powerful stories masterfully told.
Phantoms, the novel by Dean Koontz, was also a masterpiece. The movie sucked ass. Why? Because they cut out so much of what made the book great. The script was bad, the casting was worse, the acting was horrible, and the movie flopped as a result.
The movie and book industries are suffering huge losses in the past few years. Why? Because they, for the most part, provide popcorn fluff entertainment that have a one time lifespan. A good book or movie is something that you'll want to take down and read or watch every now and then.
When I was in 4th grade I read Rambo: First Blood Part II by David Morrell. That book is so good that I still have that original copy. I didn't even really like the movie.
I guess that I wish that authors and those who make movies would take more time to make quality stories rather than a quantity of not very good ones. Please take your time. Don't leave us going "eh".
Being a somewhat voracious reader myself, I have stumbled across dozens of books that left me going "eh", sometimes leaving me with a sour taste in my mouth. Books that have so much promise that you get all giddy and excited, only to finish it and end up wishing that the author had at least consulted you before ruining such a promising story.
The Last Man Standing by David Baldacci is such a book. This book started off so intriguingly with an elite swat team getting ambushed and all but one of them dying. But then it delved into a stupid revenge plot, bad coincidences, and horrible Bag Guys. Here is the description of the plot:
"It took ten seconds for Web London to lose everything: his friends, his team, his reputation. Point man of the FBI's super-elite Hostage Rescue Team, Web roared into a blind alley toward a drug dealers lair, only to meet a high-tech, custom-designed ambush that killed everyone around him. Now coping with the blame-filled words of anguished widows and the suspicions of colleagues, Web tries to put his life back together with the help of his psychiatrist, Dr. Claire Daniels. To do so, he must discover why he was the one man who lived through the ambush -- and find the only other person who came out of that alley alive... a ten-year-old boy who has since disappeared.
Web's search leads him from inner-city Washington, D.C., to the rolling hills of Virginia horse country -- while people connected to him are violently silenced. Acting on his instincts, Web believes he knows where the killer will strike next. Only this time, he may not survive the attack. Last Man Standing is an explosive psychological thriller about a man desperate to find answers -- from the secret terrors he has kept from himself to his unbearable guilt. His fight to save himself and those he cares for will come at a high cost... and threaten everything he has grown to believe in. With vividly realized characters and a breathtaking pace, this is another spellbinding novel from David Baldacci, one of today's best storytellers."
See? It sounds good, right? Wrong. This plot is so lame that even a movie producer would turn it down. What's worse is that this is the same author who wrote the novel Absolute Power which was later made into a movie starring Clint Eastwood. Both the movie and book version of Absolute Power are excellent. So what happened?
I don't know. I know that a lot of prolific authors seem to lose steam as they get older. Maybe the fountain of ideas just dries up and becomes a stagnant puddle of fly specked water. Authors whose earlier works I love like Dean R. Koontz, Michael Crichton, R. A. Salvator, Robert R. McCammon, and Tad Williams, seem to have lost something over the years. Their work have become preachy, as is the case of Koontz, or stupid, like Salvator's work. Williams seems over reaching while McCammon has become boring and unfulfilling.
This is not a case of me the reader becoming jaded or looking back fondly at old stories through rose colored glasses. I have reread each of these authors over the past year and the old books that I loved so much are just as good today as they were when I first read them. Newer works by these authors still suck.
This is the case with John Grisham. His early works were good stories, as evidenced by the number of high quality movies that have been made off of them. His recent stuff is crap.
Jurassic Park was a great book, but Michael Crichton left a lot to be desired with the Lost World.
My wife says that I'm too critical. She thinks that I see flaws in everything. The fact is that the better the story is, the less that I have to be critical about. The movie Shawshank Redemption and the novella that it was based on, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King, were flawless. They are powerful stories masterfully told.
Phantoms, the novel by Dean Koontz, was also a masterpiece. The movie sucked ass. Why? Because they cut out so much of what made the book great. The script was bad, the casting was worse, the acting was horrible, and the movie flopped as a result.
The movie and book industries are suffering huge losses in the past few years. Why? Because they, for the most part, provide popcorn fluff entertainment that have a one time lifespan. A good book or movie is something that you'll want to take down and read or watch every now and then.
When I was in 4th grade I read Rambo: First Blood Part II by David Morrell. That book is so good that I still have that original copy. I didn't even really like the movie.
I guess that I wish that authors and those who make movies would take more time to make quality stories rather than a quantity of not very good ones. Please take your time. Don't leave us going "eh".
posted by Keko at 07:16
2 Comments:
This is probably why I am shy of picking new books. I have a tendancy to find a book I like and reread it periodically. I am not as bad as my husband, who has read the Belgariad by David Eddings about 10 times I think.
I am also a critical reader, and movie watcher. I blame it on all those literature classes I took in High School. I even pick apart books that I like. I can tell you exactly what I liked about the book, plot, style of writing, etc. I don't think it inhibits my ability to enjoy the book, just makes me really see it.
I had an online friend who was obsessed with Eragon by Christopher Paolini. I found the concepts in the book fascinating, but the writing style and some of the character motivations left me a little dry. It felt too much like a D&D campeign to me. This didn't stop me from enjoying the world, or the twists that he threw into the plot. I will say that he wrote the novel when he was very young, and his subsequent novel Eldest did much to correct the criticisms of the first book.
I guess that you should more of the books that I try to give you...
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