I've been reading a lot of books recently that have been a mixed batch, and I found myself contemplating books from the past that I have enjoyed... which of course comes to books that have bugged the living shit out of me.
What I find infuriating is books that seem to follow by one rule, then break it apparently for the sake of breaking it, just to return to it later. (That makes no sense, but bear with me.) In his book 'Hannibal,' Thomas Harris has a section containing pages and pages of dialogue - as if he were writing a movie script. Then suddenly, it seemed like he realized that he was supposed to be writing a book and so he would then provide ten pages of detail on the elegance of Tuscany, the succulence of Etruscan grapes, the blah blah blah beauty. Then another ten pages of dialogue, then fifteen of dense prose regarding the relationships of characters that, realistically, most people who are reading 'Hannibal' already understand. I mean really, it's the third book in the series, and the second one spawned the only horror movie in history that gleaned Best Actress, Best Actor, and Best Picture Oscars Awards. Even if people haven't read the first two books, there's like a 99% chance they've seen the movie. They don't need fifteen pages on the history of Clarice and Hannibal, because nobody gives a shit. Mind you, I haven't read this book since the month after it came out, but I remember it sucking. Big time. Sad, because 'Silence of the Lambs' was fecking brilliant.
The reason I started thinking about bad books was the new Stephen King book, 'Cell.' Phenomenal premise. Bad book. In essence, the first 150 pages were a lot like 'The Stand' but with a cell-phone-induced zombie fever instead of a government-created supervirus. But where 'The Stand' had great characters and a wonderful cross-country journey that martialed forces of good and evil and ultimately led to a standoff that turned the whole world on its head, 'Cell' had milquetoast characters and a journey from Massachusetts to Maine. There was good and evil and seeing each other through dreams and some shades reminiscent of 'Firestarter' and 'Salem's Lot' and even 'Tommyknockers' - which, I might add, is not a good book to refer back to, as it sucked. Ultimately, the solution to the battle of good versus evil came directly from the plot of the South Park episode 'Die Hippie Die.' Apparently you turn off the radio and the zombie powers sort of vanish. And the somewhat immune zombies and the normals went off to live their separate happy ever after existences. Blech. How dull is that?
I used to like Stephen King so much. His writing style is still great but I just think he's run out of stories.
Somebody find me a good book. I've read too many crappy ones or just so-so eh ones of late.