Read

I have just finished a book by a well known author that for me to read has been a bit of a struggle. Now normally when I read this authors work its an easy read and the book is great fun and I have a good time and it's a good story, I could also say that I felt that I had been entertained as well, which is the whole point for me of reading a book in the first place.

For some reason, with this particular book by this author that just did not happen, strange that.

The author is James Patterson, yes that bloke who seams to release a book a month or at least it feels like it, looking at the local book shop shelf.

The book that has caused all the problems for me is called You've been warned its also written by Howard Roughan now how much of the book did James write? not an easy question to answer, but I have read somewhere that James may have come up with some of the ideas and that the other guy writes it, then James edits and adds his bits to it. I don't know if that is true or not

I just did not get on with this book, I think in the end it took me more than a year to finish it, in fact I read a lot of other books instead of completing this one.

One of the problems for me, with this book is that the main character who is a young woman, I just did not like and early in the book I just wanted to shout out at her and tell her to grow up and stop acting like a (insert favorite nasty words here) I am, that's how under my skin she got to me.

So for me this book was not fun but for you out there your experience may be very different.

Perhaps what I should do is go as see if there are any reviews and see what others thought of the book, it may be that I am completely in the wrong and that its a great book it might also be that it really is not a great book, who knows?

If I do look at some reviews of this book I shall update this blog post and put some comments on what I found.

The wall in a book

One thing that I sometimes have a hard getting over is when you read so far into a book at some point it becomes for whatever reason very hard to read, its a bit like the wall that marathon runners talk about, why this should happen to readers of books or just to me I just don't know, but the fact remains that there are books out there that for one reason or another have this wall, so far very few of the books with this wall have I failed to finish.

That's not to say that there are books that I have failed to complete, there are few and far between, some of the books are by authors that have had big hits.

Reading

another book that I read and completed on the 12 August 2010 is Medusa by Clive Clussler well that's what it says on the book with the help of another author who name I am afraid to say escapes me as I write this and don't have the book near to me at this time.

I get the feeling that most if not all of the book was written by the other author and that Clive only had the job of saying yes or no to the book.

The story is good and works well, I think the bad guys are just your typical Hollywood bad guys which is a pity as much more could have been made of them, which would have make the story even better, but as it is the story works and so does the characters in it.

Was it entertaining?

Yes.

Reading

Books that I have read but did not record here in my Blog are Glasshouse by Charles Stross, this was a good read but and its only a small but I did work out very early on what was going to happen. What was great was that it did provide me with some good entertainment which is after all the main reason why I read fiction books in the first place.

I have read other peoples reviews of books and for some reason they forget that when reading fiction books you want to be taken somewhere else by the author and if he does that in such a way that structure of the book and the words he uses are simple, who cares! as long as the author gets the story in your head in stereo and full HD 3d that's all that matters as far as I am concerned.

Anyway back to Glasshouse, it has some great ideas that make for a good story that will make you think ( well it did me).

Now I did read another book but I have forgotten the name of it and who the author is, it was a fact book on the Lancaster Bomber of WW2, to make matters worse I have lent it to someone else on the understanding that he can lend it out after he has read it.

Things

Its been a while since did any posts to this blog, mainly because Idon't have anything to say.

But I think twill change soon as I have been doing some readinand its been fun.

Reading

Another book that I have read, but up until now have not written about is called "The Lost Symbol" by Dan Brown.

I have to say that for me it did not quite work and at the end of it I felt some how that I had been short changed, I don't know how to put that into words that feeling but that's what it was.


I think and this is only my opinion on this that the book needed to have been edited harder by an editor who was after a good story that would entertain and not worry about the author's feelings too much.

I was entertained in parts of the book but overall as I have said before I felt that the author has some how or other managed to short change me in giving me a full enjoyable story.

Reading

I have just completed reading "Why does e=mc2" by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw I had a bit of a problem with parts of the book, I got the feeling that the authors lost site of who they were writing the book for.

I must admit that I liked the book and it did explain some of the terms that I have heard on the TV and seen on some websites.

Reading

I have finally finished another book, for some reason this year I am not reading as many books as I do normally and also I don't seem to have as much time to read, which is strange as I don't feel any busier than this time last year, perhaps it's old age or something, who knows.

So the book is called "A little history of the world" by E.H Gombrich, all I can say is that it is great and I see why it sold 6 million copies, its easy to read and I did learn lots

Reading

I have just finished a book that I pre-ordered on Amazon, so I got it as a hardback book, which is some thing I don't normally do but for this author I thought I would take a chance.

I think that this may be one of those occasions were I may have had just a bit of a bad result.

On the book buying side I have no problems, the book was sent to me on time and I must admit that all the price promises that Amazon made where kept, in that there was a price change and I got to have the benefit of it. So thank you Amazon.

Now the book contents part.

I am not too sure on this one, even though I have had some time to think all about it, I still feel as if I have been let down in some way by the author.

The book is by Iain Banks and is call Transition, I will not try to explain the story as I think that, that is one of the problems, Iain has I think tried to do what a lot of other authors have done and that is to write a story from many view points and times.

I don't think to me that he gets it quite right, in that this poor reader was at times feeling left behind, even when I went back to reread the parts that did not make sense.

I don't know if its his use of language or prose, but sometimes it just did not work for me.

I was entertained that I am sure of, its just that I was expecting to have an easier time of getting entertained.

I shall now that I have read the book go and have a look at what others have said about this book, to see if it just me or if there is a perceived problem with it.

Reading Now 3 whatever

Just finished what I think will be the last book I shall read this year. Its call How to make a tornado and its by New Scientist.

A good read but very different in character to the previous books that they published over the last few years.

Not sure why the change in book format, there must be one but I for one don't like the change, as I like it when you got everyday people ask the kind of questions that do occur to you and you have no answer yourself to them.

Reading Now 2+1

The other book that I have just finished in the last hour or so is by Jon Ronson and its called The men who stare at goats.

I really don't know what to make of this book, one part of me thinks that its all a load of S*** and that nothing in the book is true, then the other part of me for some weird reason hope that it is true, so the book was not for me overall entertaining, as I just don't know what is true and what is made up.

The book reports to be telling you the truth about some very strange physic stuff that the Americans are supposed to be doing, but there are no references or any thing like that to provide evidence that any thing in the book is true.

There is at the time I write this a film in the cinema called the same as the book, but I think the only thing that is the same between the book and the film is the title and as far as I can make out the film is a comedy of sorts.

Reading Now 3+1+1

Just finished, well not just about 2 hours or so ago another book by Charles Stross called Scratch Monkey, which is a book that I had never heard of but I am glad that I found it and read.

As it usual with books by Charles there are lots of good ideas in this book which I must admit at times did make me stop and think.

The old question? was it entertaining, the answer is yes, but I would say that it should not be your first Stross book to read.

Dirk Maggs Book Part 18

Did I tell you that I am now into the final edit of the draft, but I have some tables that need to be redone in a better way so that they take up less space? Well, the snag I have is that its hard work and such and such and well I have stopped doing the edit, the other reason being that I have a great read on at the moment by Alastair Reynolds called The Perfect and well I want to find out whats going to happen, really its that good, I think so.