Books I Couldn't Finish, April 2009 Edition

Bloodlist by P.N. Elrod (unabridged audio book read by Barret Whitener) — This first book in author Elrod's Vampire Files series begins well. Jim Fleming wakes up after his murder to find himself a vampire; he then sets off to find his killer. It's a classic plot (think D.O.A.) with a twist, and Elrod sets up the time (the 1930s — Dracula has just been released) and place (Chicago, the Al Capone era) with the proper amount of detail.

Fleming is a traditional vampire in some ways but not others, and the mix is interesting. Unfortunately, he has a tendency to talk more than do, and his nonaction eventually gets wearying. About a quarter of the way in, I shut off the audio (read by Barrett Whitener) of Bloodlist and never felt the need to start it again. Those more interested in vampires as characters may stick it out, but I was looking for more of the noir revenge tale.

The CEO of the Sofa by P.J. O'Rourke (unabridged audio book read by Dick Hill) — Humorist P.J. O'Rourke wrote perhaps the funniest piece I've ever read ("So Drunk" in Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut), and I was reading Give War a Chance when I met my wife, so I tend to give him more of an opportunity to make me laugh than I would give others of his ilk. But The CEO of the Sofa (at least the parts I got through) was pure disappointment.

This may be in part because of the date of publication: 2001. Timely humor can be terrific when experienced in a timely manner, but anyone who has watched reruns of Saturday Night Live knows that political humor especially grows quickly stale. The pieces in The CEO of the Sofa — including Bill Clinton jokes, a rundown of the presidential candidates of the 2000 election, and a rant on cell phones(?!) — are hardly interesting as anything more than history.

Code of the Mountain Man by William W. Johnstone

Walk into any place that sells books and, even if they don't carry many Westerns, you're likely to always encounter two names: Louis L'Amour and William W. Johnstone. I've tried L'Amour, like most people, but burned out on his dry, heavily descriptive style — and there was never anything about the Johnstone books that appealed to me.

But I saw Johnstone's name so often (he's still putting out new books, even though he died in 2004), I started to wonder if I was missing out on something. (This despite the fact that I usually try to avoid the immensely popular.) So, I got a copy of Code of the Mountain Man — the 8th in the long-running "Last Mountain Man" series — from the library just to try it out.

It's been at least a year since I put a book down before finishing the first chapter, but Code of the Mountain Man was so riddled with cliches by that time that I just couldn't stomach any more. Johnstone starts in the correct way, right in the middle of the action. A band of outlaws ride into Big Rock, Colorado, for no apparent reason and shoot up several citizens. One of the victims is the wife of Smoke Jensen, the last mountain man.

From the start, Jensen is painted as such a lone, invincible, penny dreadful–type character that it's hard to believe he could be married. But maybe he just has to be in order for there to be a reason for his revenge. He instantly begins preparations to go after the outlaws, and Johnstone goes right along with him in the kind of ridiculous language usually reserved for genre spoofs: "Nobody shot his wife. Ever."

And if that's not laughable enough, soon after comes a scene where Jensen convinces the sheriff that he'd be safer at home with his family, letting Jensen take the law into his own hands. And the sheriff agrees: "Come to think of it, my wife just baked a fresh apple pie. It'd still be warm." I was so disgusted, I threw the book on the floor — another thing that hasn't happened in a long time. In any case, I've learned an important lesson: I've tried Code of the Mountain Man and Johnstone now and don't have to worry I'm missing out on some great writing.

Cemetery Caterer Quote of the Day (from A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle)

"Ravens bring things to people. We're like that; it's our nature. We don't like it; we'd much rather be eagles, or swans, or even one of those moronic robins, but we're ravens and there you are. Ravens don't feel right without somebody to bring things to.... We're closer to people than any other bird, and we're bound to them all our lives, but we don't have to like them. You think we brought Elijah food because we liked him? He was an old man with a dirty beard."

— from A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle

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.

Die a Little by Megan Abbott (audiobook read by Ellen Archer)

I got halfway through Die a Little (disc 3 of the unabridged audiobook read by Ellen Archer) before I gave up on it. Megan Abbott can definitely write, so I'll probably try another of her books (specifically the one I've heard the most about, Queenpin), but I'm marking this one up under the lost-time column.

When Lora King's brother Bill marries the mysterious Alice Steele after a quickie courtship, Lora begins to notice that her new sister-in-law doesn't seem to have any history. Currently working in wardrobe in Hollywood, Alice has a friend named Lois that seems to tell Lora a lot about their past together (as does a certain photo on a certain playing card), and Lora takes it upon herself to find out just who this woman is that her brother has married.

Abbott has set Die a Little in the 1950s, and for good reason. A lot of the goings-on are not quite so shocking to modern readers, and enveloping them in a less permissive time makes them a little easier to take as such. (I mean, who in Hollywood these days doesn't have some naked photos just waiting for the right offer to surface?)

My main problem with Die a Little is, unfortunately, with Lora herself. I simply didn't find her worthy of being a protagonist. I suppose the fault could lie with Archer's reading, but I don't think that's so in this case. The events and supporting characters around Miss King are, for the most part, intriguing — especially given the time period — but they do nothing to make her more interesting. And if falling into bed with a man she's just met doesn't make her interesting, nothing will.

When One Man Dies by Dave White

I got an unexpected ARC in the mail in September: Dave White's When One Man Dies. Intrigued by the quotes on the back, I started it right away. Unfortunately, I couldn't get past page 10. This is a good example of how a distracting "surface" (an author's style) can get in the way of the appreciation of deeper matters like character and story.

I have a few pet peeves in fiction, and one of them is long-windedness. Stating the same thing, reworded, in two (or three) consecutive sentences. Or letting characters spend five paragraphs talking about what's on the jukebox if they do nothing but agree with each other — that doesn't tell me anything more about them than I already knew.

Another thing that has unfortunately become very popular is an author's thinking that real-world dialogue is the same as realistic fiction dialogue. People in real life mutter and "um" and take forever to get to the point, but this is grating in a novel. If your characters state everything I need to know in two sentences of a conversation, the rest can safely be cut. I like a little color in my characters as much as anybody, but it needs to be carefully folded into an already tight text.

Style and voice are subjective things that we react to individually. Obviously, based on the blurbs, other people really enjoyed When One Man Dies, so your experience may be different from mine. But I won't be going any further with it. And this is unfortunate, because the relationship between the young P.I. and the older gent intrigued me.

Update: Though I only got to page 10, I am reassured that page 69 is no improvement.