Books I Couldn't Finish, May 2008

Bloody Season by Loren D. Estleman (read by Norman Dietz) — This book dragged worse than any Western I've tried to plod through. The first chapter chronicled the slowest gunfight ever, with every gunshot followed from its gun to its final resting place. Chapter 2 continued this ridiculousness with several paragraphs detailing all the wounds and their effects for each person. Chapter 3 felt like reading a court transcript with very little editing. Not exactly my idea of gripping reading.

Sin Killer (first book of the four-volume Berrybender Narratives) by Larry McMurtry (read by Henry Strozier) — This attempt to make the frontier funny (sort of a "P.G. Wodehouse goes West") is admirable and very humorous in spots. But eventually, the way McMurtry tries to make every situation ridiculous (with no exceptions) just seemed a bit too silly to me.

World War Z by Max Brooks (read by the author and a full cast) — Blame this one on high expectations. I really thought this full-cast reading of Brooks's "war of the zombies" was going to be the best audiobook of the year. But even performances by Mark Hamill, Carl Reiner, Henry Rollins, and Alan Alda couldn't hide the fact that the story is essentially about as entertaining as the nightly news.