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Post by Sprague Dawley on Jun 17, 2024 2:32:25 GMT
Randomly picked up an enormous book by Robert Ludlum. Never bothered with him and the whole John le Carre spy malarkie but I can see there's a reason Bobby L sold a bazillion books. He knows his way around a story and the pacing is CUSTOM BUILT for adapting to movies. It's as if its pre-planned that it will be a movie ffs.
The dialogue can be cheesy and shonky and the TooKool4skool Alt Lit twitteratti "novelists" would surely sneer and sniff at him with disdainful snootiness but damnit I'm in!
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Jun 17, 2024 2:54:45 GMT
My 2024 Mid-Year Rankings:
1 Stephen King - 11/22/1963
2 Martin Amis - Night Train
3 Kazuo Ishiguro - Never Let Me Go
4 Kazuo Ishiguro - The Remains Of The Day
5 Nick Hornby - Fever Pitch
6 George Orwell - Coming Up for Air
7 Kazuo Ishiguro - Nocturne
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Jul 19, 2024 11:16:42 GMT
Richard Russo - Straight Man.
Fun and flippant novel about tenured university arseholes and their academic wankery and chicanery. Spoilt fucking shithead babies the lot of them. You meet some of the absolute WORST fucking dickhead people in these places.
I can safely say that the author must have loved the telly show "M*A*S*H" when he was younger. I say that cos all the dialogued conversations between the main character and anyone else in the book sound just like Alan Alda's cynical glib arsehole character "Hawkeye" talking to another Hawkeye. NEVER a serious answer, just being a flippant sarcastic dick.
Oh shit, "Lucky Hank", the telly show with Saul Goodman. Book version was the base for that but book is way better than the telly show. 8/10
ps where do I start with: Joyce Carol Oates?
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Jul 27, 2024 6:15:10 GMT
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Aug 19, 2024 9:08:49 GMT
Robert Ludlum - Prometheus Deception
Never had any interest in the spy malarkie books. Gave this one a burl on the strength of the Jason Bourne films. Sure enough, this book reads exactly like a film. In fact its more film than book. When you read Stephen King books you think "this would make a great film". As I read this book I thought "the clearly targeted purpose and focus and objective of everything about this book is to get it made into a film."
The dialogue veers between clunky and mills and boonie. The exclamation marks achieve the opposite of their intent and drain scenes of excitement. "It was the killer!" FFS. At the risk of sounding like a literatii snobbe, this is a book for 12-year old boys. In fact I cannot imagine any female of any age being interested in this book.
Still though, duder knows how to put together a story. I thought I'd read about 50 pages then looked at the page number and it said 130 pages.
7/10.
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Post by Sprague Dawley on Sept 17, 2024 9:44:18 GMT
Stephen King - Full Dark No Stars
Four bleak-as-shit short stories from 2010 that I absolutely chundered through.
Although the last really short one right at the end didnt grab me
8/10
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