Book Report

A few weeks ago I found myself sitting in the Miami Airport with a bit of a dilemma on my hands... I had already finished all four books I'd brought on vacation and still had a lengthy wait in the airport and an even longer flight. So I did something I rarely do, I bought a book... okay, so anyone who knows me at all knows that isn't in fact rare at all, I'm a bit of a book-a-holic; what is rare is that I paid retail price for a book I'd never heard of by a pair of authors I'd never heard of either, normally I go with recommendations or positive reviews. But hey, it was about an Egyptian curse... or something like that... and I'm a bit of a fan of Egyptian lore so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Well, I've just finished the book and the results are in... awful, awful, awful. It made it all worse that I checked amazon.com and the book has a really high rating so a lot of other people must have enjoyed it, not to mention that it's a New York Times Bestseller (as much as that counts for any more, seems like everything is a NYT Bestseller). I found it to be as formulaic a book as I've ever read; the characters were weak and one-dimensional, the plot was predictable at every turn, and even without the predictability the mystery and suspense had climaxed and were on their way down three-quarters of the way through. On top of all that every antagonist got his dues, every protagonist made out well (except for a sloppy attempt at a last sentence shocker), and the dialog was sappy and unoriginal.

I've just recently started James Patterson's Along Came A Spider as well as a book called The Alienist by Caleb Carr that I picked up at a yard sale for 50 cents. Both are already much more interesting, and I hope they continue to prove better written than The Book of the Dead by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child.

Oh yeah, and the count-down is on for Harry Potter this Saturday!!!

Labels: books

posted by Brett at 7:56 PM