Boneyard reviews (part 2 of Rehabilitation of Reader)

This is a continuation of a Rehabilitation of Reader blog. I’m trying to keep it to 5 to 6 reviews per blog. When I started this journey, I wanted to read for at least 2 hours every morning. It’s now become a thing with me. Testing out different writing styles and subject matters has been fun. 

Next up: The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury.  Interesting concept; a man with tattoos that are live, telling stories. I love this book. A great way to compile short stores. My favorites were the Veldt (which seems to be a lot of people's favorite.) Rocket Man, Marionettes, Inc., The Long Rain, The Highway, and the Fox and the Forest. His focus seems to be on Mars, lots of stories centering on Mars. Not such a fan of this, but it didn’t hang me up too much. I think since I started this journey, this is my favorite book of the bunch. I definitely recommend this book; the only thing stopping me from highly recommending this book is too many stories centering on mars. That’s the beauty of short stories—you’re not married to a whole novel.  This is cintintuation

Boneyard 3, No Recommendation 2, Recommend 2

I have been told that my writing relies on too much dialogue. (Like there’s something wrong with that.) One of the  things as a reader is I love heavy dialogue stories. I’ve read a lot of Elmore Leonard and enjoyed most of his works.  So I did a Gemini search, which returned the following:

These writers are often cited as the gold standard for realistic, rhythmic, and high-stakes conversation.

• Elmore Leonard:

• George V. Higgins: 

• Richard Price: 

The Experimental & "Dialogue-Only" Novelists

Some authors push the format to the limit, removing almost all narration and description.

• William Gaddis: 

• David Eggers: 

• Manuel Puig: 

Literary Minimalists & Intellectuals

These authors use dialogue to convey deep subtext or complex philosophical ideas.

• Ernest Hemingway: 

• David Foster Wallace:

• Cormac McCarthy: 

The Wits & Satirists

For these writers, dialogue is the engine of humor and social observation.

• Jane Austen: 

• Oscar Wilde: 

• Douglas Adams: 

Not bad company. So I read Hemingway’s, Hills Like White Elephants from the Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. No fat here. It’s all dialogue and beautifully written. Not too much to say about this one, other than I will be reading more Hemingway. Recommend. 

Boneyard 3, No Recommendation 2, Recommend 3

I watched the series on Stepen King’s 11.22.63. The idea that you could go back in time and change the past is an idea right up my wheelhouse. In my books, I specialize in extraordinary things happening to common people. I loved the series 11.22.63, so I was looking forward to reading the book. Maybe the watching the series first was a bad move. The book is just shy of 900 pages. That's right 900 pages. I have to admit, I was intimidated. What am I getting myself into? Because I know the story, I was fascinated with how it was adapted for the screen. My  first impression was, King takes a long time to progress the story. “One Last Thing”, (a character says, oh and one last thing.) that happens with a few characters, can go on for 5 to 15 pages, even if they're on the verge of death. It was clear to me, he was in love with the late 50s in America. He focused a lot on smoking, but not just smoking, but the kind of cigarettes the character smoked, like it was Lucky Strikes, and how good everything tasted, which I’m sure it did, my memory a little foggy on that. (I was 2). This went on and on. (This also happened in Billy Summer, but not to the same degree) I thought, Stepen King is the anti Hemingway. Where Hemingway writes clean and economized, King is all about the fat and bloat. I've come to the conclusion, King is the Martin Scoresse of books. Both are amazing at what they do, they just don't know what needs to be cut to keep the story moving along. This book needs a serious story editor.

At roughly page 120, I skipped to 689, where he was about to stop Oswalt from killing JFK. An amazing thing happened, from that point forward he rehashed the whole story up to that point. Basically, the whole story was told in 120 pages. Sure I missed some small details, but not enough to matter. So if he could tell the story in 120 pages, how long did the story really need to be? 

I hated this book. I am now on book page alert as this also with Lee Child’s book 61 hours. If the book is over 350 pages, I’m not wasting my time. 

To the boneyard on this one.

Boneyard 4, No Recommendation 2, Recommend 3

The Girl on a Train, by Paula Hawkins

I can’t tell you how much I loved this book. The writing is engaging, and the story engrossing. I love the way Paula would string words together. She makes a great case for AA as the main character has a drinking problem. Things are witnessed and then it comes back around told by another character's perspective—good technique. Totally in, hook line and sinker.

Then the book turned, slowed down. I got tired of getting a weather report every time it went to the Rachel character. Most of the time she uses the weather as a backdrop, and as these three women move through the story, it comes to a crawl, it’s work to read. It is not going anywhere, or at least not going anywhere fast. I’m thinking, and this is not good when your reader is wondering about your motivations, is she trying to make a page count, dragging things out? The great words strung together are no longer there. It’s definitely not engaging, engrossing anymore. I just wanted it to end. At page 271 of a 321 page book—I gave up. Whatever was going to happen, I didn’t care anymore.  

To the boneyard. Sad—I really did love the first part of this book.       

Boneyard 5, No Recommendation 2, Recommend 3