So Many Books, So Little Time by Sara Nelson

This memoir caught my eye at a recent trip to the library, and I couldn't resist the chance to delve into the experiences of a so-called "passionate reader". Well, 41 pages later (I tried, but it became a dreaded chore to even try and make it to 50!) the book fell out of my hands as I slipped into a coma.

I can't imagine how anyone could find this book interesting, to be honest. I hate to use such damning words, but there it is. So Many Books, So Little Time amounts to little more than the stream-of-consciousness of an obsessively self-analytical person with very few original thoughts. I am sure Sara Nelson is a nice person; in fact, I think she and I could probably find quite a bit to talk about if we ever sat down together to discuss books. The problem is that in this book she comes across as unrelentingly dull. I can tell her strength is as a book reviewer; the few glimmers of high-quality writing in here are the paragraphs she devotes to summarizing and describing the books she has read. In between, though, there's little to recommend this book. Nelson fails to make me care about her project to read a book a week for a year; she does not say anything terribly interesting or thought-provoking when she rambles on for paragraph after paragraph about why she reads, why other people read, how she reads, how she chooses her books, how she discusses books with her husband, the history of herself as a reader, blah blah blah.

Next!

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets by Eva Rice

I picked this one up based on the strong recommendation of the Bookseller to the Stars, who named it his book of the year for 2006. With such a rave review, I thought I might enjoy this title described as an "old-fashioned good read". Unfortunately, the book utterly failed to grab me.

The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets is the story of a friendship between Penelope, the youngest female member of an aristocratic family that has fallen on hard times post-WWII, and Charlotte, a girl she meets at a bus stop one day. Penelope and Charlotte strike up a friendship, and... well, that's about all you get in the first 90 pages. At some point I just put the book down and never picked it up again. Penelope as a character seemed utterly dull, without hope of redemption from dullness within the next 90 pages. Charlotte, who was supposed to be so amazing and sophisticated from Penelope's point of view, also seemed pretty uninteresting. Unfortunately, nothing exciting happens to either of these girls during the first few chapters - tea with Charlotte's aunt, a dinner party at Penelope's crumbling mansion, and a walk in the snow... zzzz... - so I didn't feel compelled to keep reading.

Body Double by Tess Gerritsen

I really like Tess's blog, and read it regularly, so I thought I'd give one of her books a try. I have to admit that I had limited success. Why? Well, to put it briefly, this book scared the crap out of me.

And I only read the prologue!

Sorry, Tess - your thriller-writing abilities are just too good for this scaredy-cat.

Newfoundland by Rebbecca Ray

Short, deep sentence fragments. Quaint and heartfelt imagery, excessive use of commas, fear of linking sentence clauses with conjuctions.

Books like this, they bug me.

Goodnight Nobody by Jennifer Weiner

This is exactly the kind of book I feared to hold in my hands when I avoided reading "chick-lit" for so long.

In the first fifty pages of Goodnight Nobody, I was treated to enough descriptions of people's clothing to make me run away screaming. When you include the excessive description of hair styles, skin, facial features, decor, architecture and the tiresome dropping of brand names left, right and center... well... ARRGGHHHHHH!!!

To give you an idea of how focused on (IMO) the wrong kind of description this author is, let me share with you a passage from page 10, where the protagonist finds a body:

"Oh, God!" I clapped my hand against my mouth and grabbed onto the countertop to keep myself from sliding to the floor. Kitty had gone for the same upgrades that Ben and I had picked. Her countertops were granite, her floors were pickled maple, and the French doors leading to the garden had leaded glass insets. There was a Sub-Zero refrigerator and a Viking range, and between them was Kitty Cavanaugh, facedown on the floor with an eight-inch carbon-steel Henckels butcher's knife protruding from between her shoulder blades.

Umm... hello? You just found your pal stabbed to death on the floor, and you're taking a moment to assess her decor choices, drop a couple of appliance brand names and notice what kind of knife the killer used? This would be the kind of reaction I'd expect from a hardened crime scene detective with a curious preoccupation with kitchen decor, but it doesn't ring true from a suburban mom who has presumably never seen a murder victim in her life.

Unfortunately, though this may well be an interesting mystery, the writing style didn't pull me in. Even if I could get past all the descriptions, I didn't think the people in this book felt real. They all seemed like shallow caricatures: the suburban stepford wives, the world-weary cop, the distant workaholic husband, the single best friend who can't find a husband but is great with your kids... etc, etc.

So I'm going to close this one, and give Jennifer Weiner one more chance with Little Earthquakes.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

"I go to the cinema," said Kay; ... "Sometimes I go in half-way through, and watch the second half first. I almost prefer them that way -- people's pasts, you know, being so much more interesting than their futures. Or perhaps that's just me..."

This book is set in WWII-era London: that's one point in its favour. It's written by an author who has been glowingly recommended to me: point two.

Nothing interesting happens in the first 100 pages (see? I was generous and gave it double the usual time to prove itself to me): minus one point. The characters are dull: minus two points.

Oops, this book is a zero.

Seriously, though... I expected a lot more from a writer who has had glowing critical praise and commercial success. I didn't expect a book that was, frankly... just plain uninteresting.

These people, Kay, Viv, Duncan and Helen, all seem to lead very dull lives in post-war London. There are occasional hints that they had more interesting pasts, but for the most part they do boring things (described in far too much meticulous detail), and they have boring, stilted conversations; neither seems to do much of anything to move the story forward. They have boring love affairs that are full of petty jealousy and boring friendships that are full of insecurity.

It looks like if I'd stuck with this book for another 60 pages, the book would have taken me back to 1944 and perhaps given me a little more interesting information about these dull people's mysterious pasts. I wonder what it would have been like if I'd taken Kay's advice and started the story halfway through; but then, what if I found out that their pasts were just as boring as their future seems to be?

Well, perhaps that's just me.