More Shout Outs and Books I Didn't Like

To start, yesterday I thanked many of my friends who were kind enough to send lovely holiday cards to me and offered all of you a look at a slide show that featured pictures of each of them. Today I want to also mention those who were kind enough to send me e-cards of various types. I received quite a few of those, and loved each and every one of them. I also got a variety of directed emails and other communications over the holidays from friends and acquaintances throughout the world. It's been such fun to get back in touch with all of you once again.

Several of the cards I received were Jacquie Lawson e-cards. Her animations
are always quite lovely and very fun to watch. 

Now for some this 'n that. Yesterday I discussed writing techniques and pushing yourself to pour your writing off your mental stove and onto the physical table by actually writing it down. That's a pretty essential thing if you want anyone else to read it. But what happens if you put it out there and people don't like what they're reading? What do you do then?

Perhaps the person owning this room might want to consider a general
clear-out? Selling, donating and actually throwing away books (I know -
it's heart-wrenching to throw away a book) might help make this a
welcoming room again. 

Well, not everything will be loved by everyone. There's not a book out there that is universally loved, not even the great historical ones. Even the Bible has its poo-poo'ers. So I have a question for you on this slightly warmer Friday. Have you read (or more likely started to read and then abandoned) a book lately that just didn't pan out? A book that you opened with high expectations of being entertained, only to close it in disgust a few pages or chapters into it, knowing that you wouldn't pick it up again? I've had two of these within the past week and I'm not very happy about them.

This book was a disappointment. I won't bother
with the rest of it, nor will I buy/read the rest
of the series.

The first of these I had high hopes for. It was written by Larry McMurtry, whose "Lonesome Dove" series I found highly entertaining. But I started reading "Sin Killer", one of what he promises to be a quartet of books, and I turned to a different e-book within twenty pages of reading. The characters bored me, the multitude of odd names confused me, and the dialong's dialect really disturbed me. If I was rating this one, I'd give it one star, and that's pretty darned lousy.

This book had such promise and parts of it were really wonderful. But
when it came down to it, although the main characters were well
developed, the love interest fell totally flat and that killed one of the
major characters for me. 

The other book was one I had high hopes for. It was an interesting twist on the traditional fairy story with marvelous illustrations. The book, called "The School for Good and Evil" was written by Soman Chainani with illustrations by Iacopo Bruno. I loved the illustrations, but about fifty pages into it I started to look at the page count and wonder how they were going to fill up the remaining pages. But I forged on. After half of the book was read, I finally gave in and flipped (electronically, of course, since this was an e-book) to the final three chapters of the book. Reading those, which often will push me back to see how the characters arrive at the conclusion, told me why I didn't like the book and I finally gave up on it and downloaded something else instead. Here, the two main characters were actually well portrayed, but the love interest! Oy! The love interest was as flat and uninteresting as dried mud. No. I'll rate it as 2.5 stars because I liked the illustrations a lot, but as a story, it left me totally bored.

Some book deserve to be abandoned. But just because you don't like a book
doesn't mean it's a bad book. Someone else may love it. Leave it for
them to find and give a good home (or just archive it if you have an e-reader). 

Have you read any books lately that you put down in disgust? Have you abandoned a book that you thought had such promise? Share one or two with us here. After all, not every book can be a winner, and not every author is popular. We all talk about books we love, what about those that we don't?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all books caught your
soul as much as your favorite ones do? 

Have a great Friday, and don't work too hard - LOL.