Gave up after ten pages of Gone Girl last week, a bit frustrated at being the only person on the planet who cant get through such a massive best-seller. But when we first saw things from Amys point of view at the party where she meets Nick, I knew I couldnt spend another moment in this loathsome womans company. Its okay for an adolescent to view life as a movie in which theyre playing a starring role but for a grown woman to do it is really tedious and frankly unforgivable. Much the same happened when I tried to read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. 30 pages in, the penny dropped that they were investigating the alleged embezzlement of EU agricultural subsidies and I lost the will to live. Im not saying either of these is a bad book. I cant make that judgement, since I didnt get through them. It was obvious even after 10 pages that Gillian Flynn is a skilled and polished writer of prose. All Im saying is that neither of these books held my attention, despite their enormous popular success. These experiences do have a positive side to them. They remind me of what a massive compliment it is when someone reads one of my novels all the way through. Anyone who does that has earned the right to think and say anything they choose to about it (Though I was a bit miffed by the critic last week who thought the secret religious sect in Prophecy were called The Priory. I thought Id made it fairly plain that they were The Most Holy Order of the Gospel of St John and the priory was where they lived). Ive been doing a lot of running recently, partly taking advantage of the (suddenly departed) dry, mild weather; partly because its when Im running that my story ideas tend to develop. Ive got three or four novel ideas and 30, 000 words of one I stopped writing in January on the laptop. Its whether to go back to that one, working title The Lucifer Chord, or to embark on something completely new. New is always more exciting, but I dont like to leave things unfinished. Its a dilemma Ill ponder over for a few more days. Thats not procrastination (he lied), its planning...
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 09:26:29 +0000
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