kate rothwell

Harlen Coben should have gone through this book and dealt with the crapola cluttering the pages before selling it to us. He's a fine writer and must see how WTF it is. Cliches mixed with purple telling-not-showing, bizarro POV shifts, yada yada yada. Is he really that blind to his own prose? I hope I'm not that out of it when it come to my own books--I suspect I am but wowwee. We're not talking about me. We're talking about a guy who makes a gazillion bucks on some well-written prose. This does not fit that bill. Who convinced him this was a good idea? A money-hungry agent? The over-the-top plot is kind of a hoot. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Motivation of the main character? Dumb. The constant mentions of (big bosomed) beauty o' the ladies annoyed the hell of me. But mostly what got to me was the language. Ugh. Dude. If I'd gotten this as a self-published freebie I would be indignant. On the other hand, it's fun to see how far Coben has come. I bet the now-com...

It's done. The school is over. Now the oldest just needs to find a job or a life or something. He'd be happy to spend the summer playing WOW on his new computer but I don't suppose we should let him. Speaking of not having a life, I'm reading more than I'm writing. It's mostly non-fiction at the moment so I can pretend it's research. I read Bloody Business , a history of Scotland Yard. (never mind that I don't have any Scotland Yard in any of my books**) It consists mostly of descriptions of a lot of episodes of murder. Makes sense. Although some of the segues are bizarre and bits of history are skimmed over, it's an okay read. Nothing very dense or requiring Deep Concentration which is fine with me. Not scholarly. I want to read an autobiography of Walter Dew, an inspector who's mentioned a lot on Bloody Business .. The autbiography's called I Captured Crippen and I found a few copies online ........ starting at about $600. Okay, right. I o...

I just listened to the Alchemist's Daughter and it's grown on me. Too bad I'm in a whiney mood so I'll probably end up going on and on about what I didn't like. Yeah, well. It's in first person, and as Linda I always says that can be like being stuck in a car with someone talking on and on about herself. This was definitely a clueless narrator. Emily was supposed to be naive, though, and that helps the integrity of the book. We get other, more balanced people talking at her, like her nurse, so, duh, it's not like we're supposed to believe our unreliable narrator. But because Emily sees people through a lens that's sort of flat, the people end up being ....not very complicated. Yo, stick-ish figures are okay if there's an emotional pull, but I didn't get it. Oh, except for her dad. I grew very fond of him and felt that emotional awwwww that romance is supposed to give the reader. Her charming, horrible husband just turns horrible (at least he...