A Life Spent Reading

I tried to get into this book, because someone close to me really really wanted me to read it. But I confess to failure.

It’s not that there’s really anything strikingly wrong with the book. The plotting is okay. The writing could be tightened up some, but it’s okay. The author’s descriptions are okay. It’s just that there’s also nothing really right with it either. No particular beauty of language, no particularly horrifying killer, no mesmerizingly engaging characters. I read, but I didn’t feel the need to read. And when that happens, anything that goes wrong with a book will cause you to put it down. (It’s not like there aren’t other books out there clamoring for attention.)

For me, that happened in chapters four and five, when the characters started behaving in not-so-true-to-life fashion. In chapter four there is a mini-crisis when an actress screams at the sight of a pool of blood. This happens on a movie set, mind you, and I just have trouble swallowing the idea that a grown woman, one who’s been exposed to make-up and make-believe for a living, would be that taken in and freaked out by some stage blood. Or that her scream would throw everyone into such a security frenzy if she did.

Then in chapter five a brother grabs his sister as a sort of prank as she walks in the door to her home, startling her and causing her to drop her laptop. Once she realizes it’s him and not some stalker, she playfully tries to slap him, then gives him a hug…then starts cooking him dinner. The computer is never mentioned again. The people I know would be a bit more worried about their technology than that. In fact, they’d be furious.

That was it for me. Stopped reading after about 60 pages, and wondered how in hell this book made it to the NYT bestseller list. Then again, as somebody once said, no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.