Franchise Fiction - Richard Castle - Naked Heat (2010)

I've already talked at length in my previous post about how weird it is to be giving authorial credit to a fictional entity, so let's just move on, shall we?

This entry into the series is much longer than its predecessor and flows differently, as if a different writer worked on this one from the last one. While each chapter in the previous entry ended like a commercial break, this one seems to be in love with ending chapters with the characters knowing one important piece of information that the reader will have to read on, even one more sentence into the next chapter to find out.

I'm not a fan.

Don't get me wrong, the story here was, at least for me, more compelling than the previous one, possibly because of the long suspect list to keep you guessing. But this "the characters read a name and then move into action; you want the name? Better read the next chapter" thing is bullshit. I wouldn't have such a problem with it if it just happened once or twice. But as the book goes on and the stakes get higher, the author relies on this device as if it was the only thing he has ever learned from creative writing classes or critiques.

Maybe there's a person out there that eats that shit up. It doesn't appetize me. It just gets my frustrated. Granted, I'm easily frustrated, especially by books, but it feels so much like a cheap trick that I want to rebel against their manipulation. I actually stopped part of the way through for a week to get over being mad about this.

The real lesson here is, if you have a trick, don't overuse it. You'll just piss your audience off.

7/10

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Franchise Fiction - Richard Castle - Heat Wave (2009)

I also borrowed this bad boy from Nadia (which I never would have forgotten because of the mildly saccharine inscription just inside the cover written by her husband). I expressed an interest in watching this show, but at the time that it started it fell off the radar, as many shows did when I moved out.

First off, let's talk about the really weird universe ABC is trying to create with this book. It is a real book that was written by a real person. But everything--acknowledgements, copyright, accolades, even author photo (Nathan Fillion himself)--points to it being the work of this fictional character. So I genuinely had to do some digging, and found this article where an exec asserts that it was the labors of a fictional person who created the book.

I understand the logic of a ghostwriter. Many of those teen novels everyone liked (for example, Sweet Valley High) were written by ghostwriters to share the load. But the dedication to this "fact" is really kind of astounding, if you think about it. The problem is you may end up spending too much time thinking about it.

When you actually read the book itself, the real writer of the novel appears, although not in name or face. This was clearly written by one of the show's scriptwriters. That isn't to say that it is formatted like a script or lacks in description or anything like that. It really does just read like a novelization of an episode of a somewhat humorous crime-drama. Each end of a chapter even feels like a commercial break. But some of the effort put forth by those making sure the book exists doesn't really translate into the effort of writing the book. The Richard Castle allegory in this book is a character named Jameson Rook. Rook? Really? That's hardly trying at all. Was Fortress taken?

At less than two hundred pages, it flies by rather quickly. And I do give them credit for including a scene that could never be on network TV in a million years. But the book is average. And you can't really shake the feeling that some poor bastard is being stiffed with this position that ABC is taking.

7/10

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Chick Lit - Alexandra Potter - Calling Romeo (2002)

This is another title I borrowed from my friend Nadia, two of four. I don't exactly recall why she wanted to lend this one to me, but I'm sure it wasn't to write this scathing review of it.

But scathing it shall be, because it is vile.

First off, note that the genre up there is chick lit, which I will let Wikipedia define here. If that page doesn't give you pause in regarding the novel, allow me to compound it: this book is chick lit for realz. There are more designer names dropped than an outlet mall, and the whole idea list for this book is like a Sex and the City fanfiction checklist. Unmarried, independent women in enviable, high-powered, and creative careers with men issues? Check. Male characters who talk about their feelings and relationships as if they actually give a fuck? Check. Heavy descriptions of clothes and other fancy luxury items, but almost nothing else? Double check. Trying to have it all? Checkity check check. Using too many references to Romeo and Juliet in order to justify the title, including rival advertising companies respectively containing the names Capulet and Montague? Oh yeah.

Mary Sue main character? I think the ink is bleeding through on this checkmark.

I wasn't kidding earlier when I said that it felt like fanfiction. I personally cannot believe anyone actually published this drivel, let alone the fact that this author has eight more novels. The main character, Juliet, is early on established as a victim of shitty-boyfriend-disease (because only the shittiest of boyfriends forget Valentine's Day, right girls? >:( ) and has her high-priced clothes ruined by a fancy car running through a puddle near her. As it goes on, she starts an affair with the guy who soaked her because she felt neglected by her boyfriend and yet didn't say anything to him about how she felt. Like he's supposed to be a mind reader.

There are a couple other storylines here too, but I have to get spoilery in order to talk about the biggest crime of this novel. This is your last warning.

Six chapters (and chapters in this novel are surprisingly long if they are past the average of a page and a half) before the end of the book, her boyfriend, who had decided to stop taking her for granted and proposed, discovers she had been having an affair. Up until this point, it looked like not only was she able to have her cake but also fuck it too, and she was going to get away with it. I was overjoyed to learn that he immediately left her, made her move out of their shared domicile, and didn't want to see her again. Finally, she was getting her comeuppance for this indiscretion.

And then, in the last chapter, on the last page even, he takes her back and they all live happily ever after.

FUCK. YOU.

And the typos! Holy shit. There were so many, including "tirarmsu" for tiramisu. Did an editor even run through this at all? I cannot understand what happened. Somebody failed here. And I can't help but place at least 70% of the blame on the author. You did a bad job. I don't give a shit how popular you are or how many reviews say that your work is hilarious and brilliant. This was garbage.

I can't believe I bought this for my friend's birthday. I am so sorry for that, Nadia.

1.0/10

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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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Writing - Sage Cohen - The Productive Writer (2010)

I want to take a brief moment to talk about GoodReads.

Until a few moments ago I had an account there, and I used it primarily to try to get those precious book recommendations. Unfortunately, you have to rate 20 (!) book in order to begin getting those recommendations. This is one of the reasons I had a problem with it. When I go to Barnes & Noble, the receipt will come with a short list of products suggested to me based on what I just purchased. Why can't GoodReads do that with just the books you just read? I get that it is free, but it was mostly useless.

I bring it up in this book review because I rated this book on there as low, and it was disseminated to my various social media profiles, particularly Facebook and Twitter. Then, someone asked why I didn't like it. I had intended to write this review, so of course I wasn't going to detail it there (or even on GoodReads, which is a feature it has, I guess), but it gave me pause. Wasn't my rating these books as I read them, in order to get the recommendations that I still hadn't earned, giving away the content of my blog, which I wasn't wanting to do?

So, long story short, GoodReads is not for me, and it took me being within 3 books of getting recommendations for me to realize it.

But I digress. The Productive Writer.

I picked this up after that tough first therapy session I mention in my review of The Fault in Their Stars. I expected it to be about heightening your productivity as a writer, which is something I am interested in since my current productivity is firmly planted at zero. I was wrong. But could you blame me for the assumption, when "productive" is one of the words in the goddamn title?

This book really should have been called "The Marketing Writer" because that is what it is about. There is almost nothing about how you have to actually write to be productive. For god's sake, the very first chapter is about developing your "platform". Ms. Cohen is a business writer and a poet, and the former is at the reins here. She gives her own examples of how you develop your platform and business presence, but she only talks about her nonfiction works in these examples. When it comes to fiction, she brushes it off as easy. Um, no. How about telling us how to determine "what you have to offer an audience" when you are writing a fiction novel? Whatever happened to just writing?

The beginning of each chapter is prefaced by a list of things that a "productive writer" does, usually things covered in the following chapter, but they are usually things not actually having to do with being productive at all. I think this woman is confusing productive with well-marketed. Not everyone wants to be a freelance article writer. But this book is making that assumption anyway. Some of us want to get help with writing, not with becoming a self-promoting typist.

Hey, maybe you want to be that. More power to you. This book will do well for you. But if you actually want to be a productive writer, I would say look elsewhere, because this book will have you doing everything BUT writing.

2.5/10

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