Speed-Reading Book Nerd Reviews

More on ratings systems

On a related note to this:

Apparently some author blogged this weekend about the Amazon reviews system, basically saying that anything other than a 4 rating is a NOT RECOMMENDED review and that either you should post a 4-star or no review at all. This made me really glad that I stay the hell away from doing reviews on Amazon. Mostly because I get my review jones out over here under my own control and I can say a lot or a little as I feel like, but also because uh, some things need to be clarified. And I had no idea that giving someone a 3 there might as well be a one star, this is total crap review and I personally am totally sinking your book. Geez, really?

And again, three or 3.5 stars here does NOT mean "NOT RECOMMENDED." It is recommended, but with some reservations, or "this wasn't quite for me but it wasn't bad" qualifications. It's not a 100% yay, but it's usually about a 70-80% yay. "NOT RECOMMENDED" here is 2 or 1.

So there you go.

This is a good point.

Ratings systems and their issues.

So, for the record, this is what my star ratings mean:

5 stars = FREAKING EPIC, gigantic story, everything works well, my mind is blown that a human being thought this up.

4 stars = love this book, it's just not as humongous in scope as a 5. But it's totally awesome and everyone should read it, it's a keeper.

3 stars = mixed feelings (this is where the "I think others might like it, it's just not for me" reviews are likely to go). Not that bad, but has some issues, or it's an okay story but nothing really stands out to me as being memorable. It was a pleasant enough read for a few days, but I'll probably just end up giving the book away rather than rereading it again.

2 stars = generally pretty terrible, but not 100% so. There was at least one thing in this book that made it not totally horrible. This book isn't really recommended to all and sundry, but you might get some value out of the one thing if you try.

1 star (rarely seen here): It's a wallbanger. Nothing is redeemable about this book, it's utter crap, and I probably only finished reading it so I could do an awesome bitchrant about it and I can't justify doing that to books I didn't finish.

The More You Know!(TM)

Rereleasing

A Little Ray of Sunshine and The Fortune Quilt are being rereleased. Just figured I'd give a plug.

An Off-Topic Rant: Creepy Serial Killer Narration

I like mystery novels and all, but it seems like virtually every modern day mystery has to have:
(a) the creepy prologue where a hot young girl gets introduced and then slaughtered by the creepy criminal (see previous rant)
(b) frequent chapters narrated (er, in third person) by the creepy pervy serial killer guy.

I'm starting to get REALLY TIRED OF THOSE.

Seriously, this is how every pervy serial killer chapter goes:

"He gazed lovingly at his next target, [heroine of novel]. He gazed at her long legs, her trim body, her nice tits. He thought of how much he'd enjoy fucking her and then killing her, watching the light go out of her eyes as he tortured her mercillessly for hours, because he knew she'd really be enjoying it. How dare she date someone else, she was HIS dammit, and he was getting hard just thinking of her death. The pressure was building inside him, he must fuck and kill, and then it would go away. For awhile. Then he'd fondle her souvenirs [i.e. underwear or body parts]. Then it would come back and he'd have to find another target."

Seriously, all of them, ever. It's creepy, and it's getting ANNOYING. I just want to yell out, "I AM REALLY TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT WHAT GETS YOUR DICK HARD!" It also makes me grateful to be a woman without raging testosterone. And it also makes me feel like all any woman ever boils down to is a hole to shove the dick into (and then kill). Lovely! Yes, I know I'm bringing it on myself to read murder mysteries, but they don't ALL do this. I'm sure it's not helping much that 2 out of 3 books I am reading right now have both the Creepy Serial Killer Prologue and the Creepy Serial Killer Chapters all over the damn place, but... It's unpleasant, and I'm not even sure it really adds to the mystery story other than to creep you out. Which I guess is the point if it's a "thriller," but unless I'm learning clues to the bad guy's existence (Jeffrey Deaver usually does this pretty well), I don't really CARE about reading about how the killer feels. We know bad guys like to fuck and kill. Duh. We get it. But the more you read this crap, it's so damn repetitive!

You know what? I miss the days when the focus was on the mystery, and the people trying to solve it. I'm tired of the serial killer chapters.

 

An Off-Topic Rant: Prologues Are Just Confusing

I think I'm going to be doing some off-topic rants here, because I am just feeling annoyed with my reading material and want to gripe.

I don't have a problem with epilogues, but I strongly dislike prologues, and would ban them. Here's why:

A prologue, as I define it, is a first chapter of a book that starts out with a different story (different time and place, at least Distant Prologue) than where the actual story is going to start in the official Chapter One. It is usually either:

1. tangentially related to the main story, and won't be picked up again for the most part after the prologue ends, or
2. it cuts ahead in the main story, showing either a chase scene, a murder, or the narrator/hero/ine in massive danger.

Let's group them, shall we?

The tangentally related ones usually feature a random woman being murdered. You meet her, then she dies. Or once in awhile it's a guy. Sometimes it's narrated in the most vague sort of way by the killer itself. If it's not a murder, it's a chase scene or some vague bad guys are doing something you can't figure out. Frequently, the main character or characters in the prologue are nameless. The key thing is that you probably won't have ANY idea what this has to do with the main plot of the book until the book is about 3/4 of the way through. It's pretty much a strange fragmented story tacked on to the front of the book.

So why is this bad? Because the reader (a) is getting a whopping dose of false advertising when they pick up the book, because your prologue isn't at all what the story is about, and they may or may not buy/like the rest of the book based on that, and (b) THE READER HAS NO EFFING CLUE, FOR MOST OF THE BOOK, WHAT THE PROLOGUE HAS TO DO WITH GODDAMNED ANYTHING. Why are you starting out a book with the reader doing a whopping, "Huh?!?!" It's irritating. I do not like it. This is the number one reason I usually hate prologues.

Then there's the flash forward, or Action Prologue. Usually this one is done because the actual story starts out slow and non-action-y, and someone (maybe the publisher for all I know) wants it to start with a bang, so thus we have this fast-forward scene that starts out with thrilling action... and then you cut the tension immediately by starting the actual story where it starts, unexcitedly, two days earlier. To some degree there is also some "uh, what the fuck just happened?" going on, but since the flash forwards usually start out with the narrator/hero/ine, at least you know who one or more characters are going in. It's not quite as baffllng on the reader as the tangentials.

To be fair, some stories actually work well starting out with the main character dead/in jeopardy and then we roll back, but a good chunk of the time it just feels like they needed to start out less boring, rather than telling the damn story as it should go. (Battlestar Galactica did this a LOT.) For example, Private Scandals starts out like this, as did many 1980's romance books just like this, but does it really add to the story to know that Angela is going to end up dead? Do you wonder why? No, because Angela is awful and clearly deserves it. Do you wonder whodunit? No, because once you find out Deanna has a stalker it's pretty obvious. It's just there to get someone to read the book. Hope you like where it really stars...

I think I've mentioned before that I think the worst prologue I have ever seen is in Crystal Dragon. I went into great whopping detail about why over there, so I won't do it again.

The best (which is what prompted me to write this rant) prologue I have ever seen? Running Hot by Jayne Ann Krentz.

This book starts out with many of the tropes I've mentioned above: there's action, someone gets killed, and the featured character is nameless. However... within a few chapters of the original story, you actually find out WHY and HOW this prologue fits into the book. You don't wait until 3/4 of the book is done to find out the nameless woman's name. Hell, you hear a name for her, but find out that after the events of the prologue, she needed to change it. Which makes sense (though you never do hear her original name, which is odd). You figure out very early on that what happened to the bad guy in the prologue will tie in to this overall story. And suddenly, a prologue makes sense! And works! Who woulda thunk it?

The Last Unicorn(PegasusKitten)

You must listen to this story. I'll probably get around to reviewing Clash Of The Geeks at some point, but dear god, Wil Wheaton's story in it was awesome. 

Flipped, the movie

As far as I can tell this flick is getting NO PUBLICITY WHATSOBLOODYEVER, which is a real shame. But Rob Reiner made a movie of Flipped. I just saw it. It is the best and most accurate of an adaptation of a book I have ever seen in my life. Very few changes, book dialogue is used throughout, plot is 99% the same. The only "major" difference is that the movie is set (mostly) in 1963, but considering how the book was pretty timeless (everybody isn't on the computer 24-7, the most "modern" aspect is that the twins are in a punk band), it really works. It also makes the "box lunch" scene make a lot more sense in context.

So, if it's playing anywhere near you, go see it. It's a sweet movie.

Sometimes you're just glad you quit reading a series

On the one hand, I feel sad stopping reading a series because I feel guilty for abandoning the characters, and I wonder what they're up to. And then on the other hand, I'll read what they are up to in future books after I abandoned the series and think, "Thank gawd I got out when I did ,because man, that SUCKS." (Anita Blake...sigh.)

Apparently the Queen Betsy series, which I used to love, has gone into severe suckdom. I think I am glad to be out of it now.

Whither the dumb, possibly British, heroine?

I just gave up on reading a book (again, I don't know if it's fair to review something I didn't finish) out of sheer irritatedness at the bimbo heroine. Why is it that it seems like British books do this even more than the American ones do?

The heroine is one of those wannabe novelists who can't put down words on a page and daydreams about her future fabulousness that will never happen. Same as everyone else, right. She lies that she has a better job than "media lackey." She pouts because a girl she knows always does better than she does and actually bothered to put words down on a page and get a book deal. (Well, she did the work and you didn't...) I don't know how I am supposed to have sympathy for the girl who's always outshone if she's always outshone with good reason.

Left alone in the office and instructed to go fish a article off her boss's computer, she finds his illicit cheating e-mails...and stupidly manages to post the e-mails in the middle of the article (how?!) and send it off to the publisher and nobody proofs it or anything. Right. Then she magically gets a job offered to her on a platter by this random famous author (who somehow hasn't managed to read the news? and met you once?) and I was all, "Oh, for fuck's sake, DO NOT HAND THIS BIMBO A SWEET JOB WHEN SHE CLEARLY DOES NOT DESERVE IT." And chucked it.

You know, I liked Bridget Jones, idiot heroine, but that's because she was funny (if well, nothing else, I have to admit).  I liked Queen Betsy, idiot heroine, because she had some good personal qualities despite the dumb. I do not get the idiot heroine when she isn't even funny. And I flat out get annoyed at being told that she deserves better when she clearly isn't doing the work for it. Frankly, I couldn't stand to wait around while she gets (probably) Colin Firth on a platter too. Oh yeah, and her relatives constantly calling her a cutesy nickname that sounds like a disturbing plastic cheese product was just getting on my nerves.

In case you haven't guessed what with the much lower starred reviews than usual around here, I have a GINORMOUS pile of freebie books I have acquired from people over the last couple of years, none of which I had any strong motivation to read upon looking at the back blurbs. Since the pile is now humongous and is eating pieces of furniture, I have decided to spend the summer trying to read the damn things so I can get them out of my house (pretty much the same thing that this guy is doing with his box). Let's hope there's more unexpected treasures in there like Then She Found Me instead of more turds like this one.

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