Grade: D
While I am vehemently against censorship, especially in music and books, I have a few exceptions...mass market paperbacks. MMPBs should come with a disclaimer like the ones on the backs of scratch off lotto tickets. The odds of getting a good read are strongly against you. I associate MMPBs with some of my least favorite authors like Stephen King (where is that man's editor) and Danielle Steele. For the life of me I cannot remember where I first heard the term jugs for MMPBs, but it cracked me up and stuck with me. Whoever came up with the phrase 'don't judge a book by its cover' never met one of these jugs, or me. This is where the book snob in me comes out. I fully admit to judging books by their covers. If there is a picture of some busty woman embracing a Fabio looking beefcake with dreamy looks in their eyes, I gag a little and ignore the book.
The latest train wreck book is Sleep No More by Susan Crandall. Normally I would never have read this book, but I received an advanced copy and part of that was I agreed to review the book. Apparently I stumbled upon this book without looking at the cover (maybe it wasn't posted when I entered the contest) or knowing that it was a MMPB. Sleep No More was really hard to get into, probably because the writing is so trite and predictable. 50 pages in and you should be able to guess the ending. It almost seems like there is a college course offered called MMPB Writing 101, since all of these books are formulaic. The plot line is a woman has some sort of sleepwalking disorder that makes her do odd stuff like set fires and drive cars. She set her childhood home ablaze and seriously burned her sister. Now as an adult, she got in her car and drove while asleep and wound up in some boggy marsh in the South. Go figure she also meets a strapping doctor and falls in love.
If you've read this so far, you know too much about the book. Do yourself a favor and don't read it. There are so many other quality fiction titles that deserve to be read.
No comments:
Post a Comment