Comments on: Rice’s ‘Mystic Rider,’ a non-review

By: heather

heather — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:27:59 +0000

BillB: I’ve heard first 5 pages in some cases (even reviewed Noah Lukeman’s book by that name), but I think your 50 is a lot closer to my personal experiences. Rice definitely has talent—there were some interesting ideas in the book having to do with music, and her descriptions were quite good. But I just couldn’t get past the parts I mentioned.

By: BillB

BillB — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:17:41 +0000

My guideline (as was Teds advice to Bobby in Hearts In Atlantis-Stephen King) is the first 50 pages. After that your In or Out. the writers creative prose and characterization will get me or not (usually) by that time. From the passage above she seems like gifted writer…but fell flat with her character study.

By: heather

heather — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:44:10 +0000

Hi Cian! I hope the moving in is going well. For some reason I’m just completely compulsive about figuring out why I enjoy or don’t enjoy a book. It’s like… solving a puzzle or a mystery, a fun exercise that I can still enjoy even when I don’t enjoy the book itself. But in cases like this when it’s obvious from the start that the author and I have totally different ideas of, say, what makes a character interesting, three-dimensional, and sexy, then there really isn’t anything to look forward to in the book.

By: Cian

Cian — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:31:51 +0000

I sympathize with you about the general compulsion to finish a book. More than once I have found myself reading all the way through a drudge just to get to the other side. For me it is more about wanting to know what the author thinks happened rather than analyzing the characteristics of the book. I have gotten better lately just because I am so pressed for time devoted to pleasure reading.

By: Errant Thoughts » Blog Archive » The Furniture, Revisited

Errant Thoughts » Blog Archive » The Furniture, Revisited — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:57:40 +0000

[...] in non-furniture news, I have a non-review of Patricia Rice’s Mystic Rider. I almost never do this, but I just couldn’t get myself to read the whole thing. While that [...]