You're Such A Dissapointment

Or: Books I Have Not Finished


I find that the more I read, the pickier I get, and the less I am compelled to finish a book if I don't absolutely like it. Lately this has resulted in a large stack of books sitting on my bookshelf that have not been finished. Here's a list of the latest disappointing books:

Truancy - Isamu Fukui
A book about government control and the public school system? With a really dark, amazing looking cover? Yes! I'm right there! Well, I only got six pages into it before I gave up on it. Great premise, not so great characters, and an obvious agenda. We get it! You're pissed at the school system - get over it! A seventeen-year-old with an axe to grind? No thank you.

Of Saints and Shadows - Christopher Golden
I keep telling myself that I'm going to finish this one, but I'm really not sure that I am. It's not the worst vampire book I've ever read, but not the best either. It skips around a lot to different characters, which is one trait in a book I've never really liked (with a few exceptions, of course). It has to do with a conspiracy in the Catholic church and magic and stuff. I'll probably return it to the library tomorrow.

Nothing to Lose - Lee Child
I love Jack Reacher. Love. I think he's funny as hell and is one of the best quirky characters I've ever come across. (His propensity for violence, for always stumbling into the wrong situations, his rules and sense of justice--priceless.) That being said, it felt like Lee Child just got bored and a little jaded with politics and took it out on Reacher. That and it's slow. Really slow. Usually I read these books in two days or so, which is very fast for me, but this one has taken me over a week and I'm maybe 3/4 of the way through it or more. We're getting to the stage where Reacher is proving all of his theories, but I'm just not interested. Hell, Echo Burning was better and I hated that book. This one also goes back to the library tomorrow. I sincerely hope the next one is better.

The Vampire Shrink - Lynda Hilburn
I've read some truly awful vampire books but this one takes the cake. Kismet (I'm sorry--Kismet?) is supposedly a psychologist and yet she is incredibly shallow and mocks her patients in her head. She has that Laurell K Hamilton girly squeamishness down pat (And I'm not feeling too friendly towards LKH right now either), her vampires and their world are shallow, stereotypical, and flat out boring, not to mention the lead vampire's name is Devereaux and is described as "yummy" and a "Greek god." Like hell. (I actually did finish this one today just to see how it would end, and it was just as bad as I thought it would be.)

Sleeping Dogs - Thomas Perry
I may actually finish this one, but I'm not sure. I had picked it up for my dad at the library a week or so ago and it looked interesting so I took it after he was done with it, after all I love books about assassins. This one, however, is a little slow. After reading Nothing to Lose though my sense of "slow" may differ a little. Fascinating premise, but maybe not heavy enough on the psychology to hold me? We'll see.