My sister lent me a few books at Thanksgiving that she'd gotten at a library sale. Books one and two -- award-winning classic YA from many years ago. Fantastic writing, well-drawn characters. And seventy pages of nothing interesting. Seriously, I read to page seventy waiting for something, anything to happen before I gave up. For the record, I don't actually consider these the bad books mentioned in the title.
That's an honor I'm reserving for the book of a well known NYT bestseller she also lent me.
It should be noted that I'm not one of those bitter writers who believes all NYT books are crap, that all popular work is horrid. I read and enjoy a lot of fluff writing, and I like fast reads. I mean, hell, I actually enjoyed
The Da Vinci Code.But this -- god, this book was hideous. The author (and no, I won't say who it is) is one of those big names everyone knows. Short and choppy sentences; unnatural dialog and overtelling narrative; and nonstop passive sentence construction.
Everything "was," and I had to actually hunt for an active verb.
For the first time in memory, I uttered these words about a bestselling writer: "I write better than that."