I rarely make the mistake of thinking that if I don't get a book, it must of necessity be the book's fault.
I know exactly what you mean. I was bored to tears by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude...I mean, I literally didn't get past the hundredth page. And that thing was a Nobel Prize winner! That usually turns up on those lists of books you have to read to consider yourself a well-read person. See, that's a case where I know it's just me. The whole magical realism thing that Marquez was doing? Did nothing for me. But I could see that it wasn't the book itself.
Now, Sawtelle isn't by any means an utter piece of shit like say, Twilight. I wouldn't even say that it struck me as badly written, like your experience with The Historian. There is a good story here and it was engaging and entertaining and I did finish the book. But I kept waiting for all that great stuff the critics were talking about to happen...kept waiting and waiting, holding my breath for it, and then boom. Book's over. Where was all the great stuff? Did I miss it? I was especially irked by this book because it promised so much of the exact sort of great stuff that I love and then none of it was there. Or a little tantalizing hint of it would be there and then just fizzle out to nothing.
More than anything I was disappointed by Edgar's journey in the wild, which was described by critics as "harrowing," "riveting," and a "fight for survival," yet it was NONE of those things AT ALL. It was, like I said, a camping trip, and not a particularly interesting one. Now, for heaven's sake. Writing about harrowing journeys is one of my own favorite things and I'm just some fanfiction shmuck but even I know that a harrowing journey should be harrowing, not something that reads like an old Boy's Life story. I just don't know what these critics are talking about. I don't know what book they're writing about.
A friend of mine who's a voracious reader laughed when I mentioned I was reading Sawtelle. He called it "the greatest book ever that no one actually liked." And I think he's got a point. I know my neighbor absolutely loved it (and I don't know what the hell I'm going to tell her about it) and I'm sure other readers did too, but this book really seems to be one of those inexplicable cases of mass critical orgasm over something that, in a few years, will probably be considered pretty average.
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I know exactly what you mean. I was bored to tears by Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude...I mean, I literally didn't get past the hundredth page. And that thing was a Nobel Prize winner! That usually turns up on those lists of books you have to read to consider yourself a well-read person. See, that's a case where I know it's just me. The whole magical realism thing that Marquez was doing? Did nothing for me. But I could see that it wasn't the book itself.
Now, Sawtelle isn't by any means an utter piece of shit like say, Twilight. I wouldn't even say that it struck me as badly written, like your experience with The Historian. There is a good story here and it was engaging and entertaining and I did finish the book. But I kept waiting for all that great stuff the critics were talking about to happen...kept waiting and waiting, holding my breath for it, and then boom. Book's over. Where was all the great stuff? Did I miss it? I was especially irked by this book because it promised so much of the exact sort of great stuff that I love and then none of it was there. Or a little tantalizing hint of it would be there and then just fizzle out to nothing.
More than anything I was disappointed by Edgar's journey in the wild, which was described by critics as "harrowing," "riveting," and a "fight for survival," yet it was NONE of those things AT ALL. It was, like I said, a camping trip, and not a particularly interesting one. Now, for heaven's sake. Writing about harrowing journeys is one of my own favorite things and I'm just some fanfiction shmuck but even I know that a harrowing journey should be harrowing, not something that reads like an old Boy's Life story. I just don't know what these critics are talking about. I don't know what book they're writing about.
A friend of mine who's a voracious reader laughed when I mentioned I was reading Sawtelle. He called it "the greatest book ever that no one actually liked." And I think he's got a point. I know my neighbor absolutely loved it (and I don't know what the hell I'm going to tell her about it) and I'm sure other readers did too, but this book really seems to be one of those inexplicable cases of mass critical orgasm over something that, in a few years, will probably be considered pretty average.