I am also, by the way, done with my habitual reading of a book clear to the bitter end. By page 587 I had had enough. Sorry, Lori.
I will say that the book started off well enough, and I certainly enjoyed the picturesque writing. I almost felt I was traveling in Europe with this fine old chap and his daughter. But a travelogue is far shorter. I know, because I just read one on Japan.
But when I finally got to the part where (SPOILER WARNING) we find out that Dracula has kidnapped Professor Rossi in order to have him catalog Dracula's ancient and growing collection of books...that was it for me. I almost started laughing, it was so ridiculous. I almost started crying, I'd been reading so long! I thought it just had to get better so I began reading the book by skimming the second half of the left hand pages. It didn't get better.
On the way to the library to return the book I summed up the whole novel for Michael in about 4 sentences. Lane suddenly joined the conversation (he'd previously been torturing Joshua in the back seat) to say, "That's the way books should be." "What?!" I said incredulously. "You'd like to read such a stupid book?" "No," he answered. "I mean that books should only be about 3 or 4 sentences long. Who needs to have all those extra words that don't mean anything when you could have the whole story done in less than a paragraph?!" With this book he was dead on.
I will say that the book started off well enough, and I certainly enjoyed the picturesque writing. I almost felt I was traveling in Europe with this fine old chap and his daughter. But a travelogue is far shorter. I know, because I just read one on Japan.
But when I finally got to the part where (SPOILER WARNING) we find out that Dracula has kidnapped Professor Rossi in order to have him catalog Dracula's ancient and growing collection of books...that was it for me. I almost started laughing, it was so ridiculous. I almost started crying, I'd been reading so long! I thought it just had to get better so I began reading the book by skimming the second half of the left hand pages. It didn't get better.
On the way to the library to return the book I summed up the whole novel for Michael in about 4 sentences. Lane suddenly joined the conversation (he'd previously been torturing Joshua in the back seat) to say, "That's the way books should be." "What?!" I said incredulously. "You'd like to read such a stupid book?" "No," he answered. "I mean that books should only be about 3 or 4 sentences long. Who needs to have all those extra words that don't mean anything when you could have the whole story done in less than a paragraph?!" With this book he was dead on.
1 comment:
Lane's comment is too funny, the perspective of a non-reader, one who appreciates TV and video games.
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