Wednesday Reading Meme

[severina2001]

What I Just Finished Reading: Three books this week: Stinger by Robert McCammon, Annie Bot by Sierra Greer, and Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell. Reviews below.

I also DNF'ed Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff. Let me tell you why. First, the book is a tell (he's literally telling his story to a scribe) so there is absolutely NO

Comments

[asphaltcowgrrl]

I'm sorry that Empire of the Vampire was so bad but your write up about WHY it was so bad is hilarious. So, there's that.

Dungeon Crawler Carl is really popular in the audiobook subs I follow on Reddit. I don't know if audio makes it better or not, but it's always rec'd whenever someone is new to audiobooks.

[haldoor]

It amused me too, because I enjoyed E of the V myself, but TBH, I realised I am a lover of Anne Rice's vampires and she often writes in the 'tell' style (Interview with the Vampire anyone?) AND is full of 'purple prose', so clearly that's my style exactly! LOL. Oh, and I've never seen Red Dawn, so wouldn't have had a clue the author used the idea from it! Since the wording is different, though, I can't imagine it's a plagiarism issue, or else all those ripped off stories from Shakespeare would be in serious trouble! 😜

[severina2001]

Hopefully the writer didn't deliberately use the line from Red Dawn. I mean, one time I was plotting the first few chapters of a zombie story and I was going to have my character trapped in a bookstore and throwing books at the zombie, and going, like, "Stephen King? No, can't throw that. Clive Barker, no. Dean Koontz, yeah that one's fine." And then I realized that I was basically just copying the scene from Shaun of the Dead, but with books instead of albums. So it happens... but I'd hope *someone* would catch it.

As for the writing... I too read and enjoyed many of Anne Rice's vampire stories, which, yes, are also very overwritten, but I think the difference is that her vampires are SO compelling... and also, when you get to Lestat's POV, he's so over the top that all the purple prose is kind of fitting. (My fave Rice vampire is Armand.)

[haldoor]

You probably wouldn't be the only Red Dawn fan to notice, so hopefully not! But it is easy to be influenced subconsciously or whatever, so who knows?

I think that's definitely true about Anne Rice's vampires being compelling, and lol yes to Lestat being OTT! The prose somehow works in her novels!

I'm also a big Armand fan, despite how completely horrible he can be! He also has a very compelling nature, and there's just something about him!

[gilda_elise]

Wow, Empire of the Vampire sounds truly awful. The "telling" of a story doesn't usually bother me, as long as it's don't well. That certainly doesn't seem to be the case here.

I loved Stinger. I think it was my introduction to McCammon's writing.

[severina2001]

I thought so, but it seems to be hugely popular so I'm in the minority. It didn't help that I read about 80 pages and actively hated the protagonist.