Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Quick Reviews


There are a lot of factors that make a book “good”. Well-crafted writing, fleshed out, complex characters, good plot, and an engrossing story to name a few. Because I’m bored and being judgmental is always fun, here’s a sliding scale of good with some quick reviews.

10: Read to the end, keep to reread at least once a year
            Example: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. The shear effort alone is inspiring, and shows what ten years of effort can create. Hint: a diamond that mesmerizes people into obsessively combing your book for hidden messages.
            Plot: 10 Characterization: 10 Writing: 10

9: Read to the end, keep to reread when I have the time
            Example: IT by Stephen King. One of my favorites. Good story, good characters, threatening villain, and masterful writing.
            Plot: 9 Characterization: 9 Writing: 10

8: Read to the end, keep to reread sometime in a couple of years
            Example: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. A great book that I enjoy and am in awe of. I might not need to reread it fifty times, but it’s still fun.
            Plot: 9 Characterization: 6 Writing: 8

7: Read to the end, keep to reread although probably not for three or four years, if that
            Example: Moonlight Mile by Dennis Lehane. Actually, any of his books would go here or above. He’s got some of the best characterization around, although this book was weaker than the others. Good, but not a rabid-reread.
            Plot: 6 Characterization: 4 Writing: 10

6: Read to the end, keep because although I didn’t like it a lot, I might conceivably want to reread it again in the far distant future
            Example: The Thirteenth Warrior by Michael Crichton. It was interesting, but not something I’d read over and over again. I might take a peek at it because the style and story are worth noting.
            Plot: 5 Characterization: 6 Writing: 6

5: Read to the end, throw somewhere and probably forget about it
            Example: The Help, by Kathryn Stockett. Honestly, it wasn’t a bad book. I wasn’t a huge fan of the “White people solve racism” thing, but it was well written and had okay characters.
            Plot: 3 Characterization: 5 Writing: 6

4: Read to the end, throw somewhere if I can’t give it away
            Example: The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker. It was interesting enough to read once and I know I still have it around here somewhere, but I doubt I’ll ever read it again. The characters were very weak and the rest was only marginal.
            Plot: 5 Characterization: 2 Writing: 4

3: Read to the end only if I have to
            Example: A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving. It would be less painful if the author threw the book at my head. Nothing happening isn’t an issue if there’s still substance to the overall work, but there’s none of that here. Good writing, yes, but nothing but page after page of symbolism and talking about symbolism. Maybe it’s just me, but the characters don’t seem realistic, and that’s kind of an issue when it’s a character driven novel.
            Plot: 1 Characterization: 1 Writing: 6

2: Forget this. I don’t care.
            Example: Hannibal by Thomas Harris. He’s not a bad writer at all, but it’s like it took everything that was good about The Silence of the Lambs and crapped all over it. He took strong, interesting characters and made them weak. The plot was solid in the sense that an igloo in Florida during the summer is solid for a while.
            Plot: 1 Characterization: 1 Writing: 4

1: Burn every trace of the book from the Earth.
            Example: The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner. The story was filled with tension and conflict. It just wasn’t focused, believable or interesting. And the characters…they were just words on a page, not “real” people.
            Plot: 1 Characterization: 0 Writing: 1

0: I hope I never have to find out. I might have to nuke the site from orbit, just to be safe.

If you don’t get that reference, you need to watch more movies.

7 comments:

  1. This post cracked me up! It's funny how books can inspire so much passion of one kind or the other. I have a love/hate relationship with books. There've been a few lately that I really have hated and I"m always thrilled to run across one I love (it doesn't happen as often as I'd like.)

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  2. This was so much fun to read :) Love your rating system~ it made me think of where the books on my shelves rank. I've definitely got a few that I read over and over.

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  3. Um... I never -plan- to reread anything and rarely do. It doesn't matter how much I like it. There's just too much stuff I've never read for me to plan to keep something to read it again in some distant future which will probably never come. The rereading part, not the future.

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  4. There's still a lot you can learn from the awful books. File those under "what not to do".

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  5. Funny post!

    Thomas Harris destroyed every bit of credibility with the ending to Hannibal.

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