Thriller - S.J. Watson - Before I Go To Sleep (2011)

This one I borrowed from my friend Nadia, along with a few others. To paraphrase her selling of it to me, it's basically a thriller version of the movie Fifty First Dates.

If you've never seen that particular Adam Sandler movie, allow me to elaborate further. The main character of this book has a mental condition that does not allow her to transfer the day's short-term memories into long-term memory. As a result, every day she wakes up not knowing what happened the day before, or even in the years since she developed this condition, or (since memory is a tricky thing) who she is.

Upon sneaking to see a doctor about her condition years after it has developed, she has begun writing a journal about her day, including things that she has found out about herself and her long-suffering husband. But things are starting to come back to her, and they are not fitting up with what her husband is telling her. So she is beginning to wonder what else he is lying about, especially since he seems to be the only source of information for her.

I have a few problems with this book, but unfortunately time has given me an opportunity to become kinder towards it.

First off, this book is touted as a debut novel, and it shows; the dialogue-based explanation in the prologue and the Bond-villain style speech by the Big Bad at the end is amateur hour through and through. Even the assurances constantly of when the main character is writing in her journal are unnecessary; we get she's hiding it from her husband. You don't have to keep fucking telling us what she's doing to hide it from him.

The reviews coating the cover put its fast pace on a pedestal, and honestly it's because it's the only thing it really has going for it. The pages really do flip quick, but the coincidences required for this story to work out really challenge a reader's ability to suspend disbelief. It feels written, and everyone knows that writing that feels like writing is garbage sauce. It needed a few more rewrites before it went out to public eyes, but it didn't get that. So we have a lacking novel with a fast pace that is good only because it's stay will not be long.

Sorry, Nadia.

5.0/10

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Fantasy - George R.R. Martin - A Dance with Dragons (2011)

Jesus, I am terrible at this write-the-review-when-you-finish-the-book shit. Fuck. Anyway.

I picked this up the same time I did A Feast for Crows, but just didn't get off my ass to read it until now. Now I'm all caught up on Mr. Martin's Song, and now I understand a little better how the HBO show is going to handle it.

It's hard to talk about this book because even the mention of certain characters may result in spoilers, depending on what book of this series you're on or how far into the show you are. But, how Feast was about half of the characters, this book is primarily about the other half of the characters: what is going on with them concurrently with the events in Feast and their own reactions to events from that book. But that all goes out the window at about the halfway point of this titanic tome. At that point, the two spreads have met back up and you begin to see characters from the other book pop up more as they becoming interspersed with the characters this book was purported to focus on. So you will see a Jaime chapter. You will see some Cersei. And you will see some [REDACTED].

Damn it George, why did you have to make it seem like so many characters are dead while others are actually dead? You make it difficult to talk about your work without bringing down the wrath of the internets.

The moral of most of this story is that if the economy has been gutted for whatever reason, shit gets fucked real quick.

I can't even really tell you whether or not you should read it or buy it though. This being Book 5, you either are dedicated to the series at this point, or it's not what you want, or you feel it's too long to get into now.

8.5/10

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Biography - Mason Currey - Daily Rituals: How Artists Work (2013)

I've actually been procrastinating on this review for a few weeks now. Because of that (and the fact that I am in the middle of Dance with Dragons now), some of the details are a little shot. Apologies.

I preordered this book as a birthday present to myself and received it about a month later. I plowed through those other books you saw me read before deciding that enough was enough and that I really wanted to read this one.

Being nonfiction, there isn't a lot for me to say about it. It does deliver what it promises: any known details of the daily routines of various creatives and thinkers--primarily writers, for obvious reasons--along with photographs where appropriate. I'm not ashamed to admit that some part I thought were kind of boring, but when the subject matter is real people, the truth comes out that not everyone is exciting.

To be perfectly honest, this was a book that I had been wanting for a while for a different reason: a list of different styles of approaching a creative workday to try out for myself. Don't do this. Please. Or at least have a little sense about it. Know if you are a morning person or a night person first. Don't do silly things like work from midnight to dawn just because this book says Thomas Wolfe did. Eat real food, not exclusively donuts and cereal like some of these people.

All in all, it is very interesting, both the details within, and the people included. It just wasn't amazing. But maybe I'm subconsciously grading it on a different curve than it deserves.

8/10

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