The Reading List

I usually knock out a book a week, but I haven't written about them in quite some time. Here are my latest conquests.

First Time Director by Gil Bettman
Some solid advice worth the gander. Set politics are complicated, and there was some interesting stuff here.

Beauty Bites Beast by Ellen Snortland
Amazing, required reading for all women and the men who love them. Fantastic self-defense techniques, and analysis of our society's myriad of reasons for keeping women defenseless. Proud to have Ellen supporting PISTOLERAS.

Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
My cousin loves this book and forced me to borrow it...and I have to say, it was a fast, fun read. The eponymous title refers to a twenty-year old fry cook who can see dead people. The prose is self-conscious at times and I found the unreliable narrator shtick to be cloying, but I was fascinated enough by the plot to keep going. The chapters are divided into movie-scene length, and the book is clearly aiming for adaptation. Nothing wrong with that. I'd like to see some of these supernatural creations onscreen. All in all, a worthwhile yarn.

Ruins by Scott Smith
A long, long book about vines eating people. I don't know who Smith blew to get good reviews for this novel. I found the plot despicable. Smith's sentences are as beautifully constructed as they were in a "A Simple Plan", but I didn't give a damn about the characters. It simply wound down to its inevitable, horrible conclusion. That's fine for brilliance like "The Shining"...but King gave us iconic imagery, genuine scares, and constantly surprised us. Smith gives us...well, how many ways CAN a plant eat undeveloped lead characters? According to him, six ways. Blech.

And by the way, how much is Nip/Tuck sucking?