; ?>/images/wfe1.jpg” /></a> So, I’m taking a small break from my current novel-in-progress. A writer needs to get out of his/her dark little hole from time to time and remember that there’s a world out there. A few hours sitting on the swing turning the pages of a good book, that’s the ticket so I head off to the library. Return an hour later with a stack of new releases. Another hour passes and I’ve tossed them all. Gently, mind you. They are library books, after all.</p>
<p>Now I’m bored, and a bit pissed. Is it me or has the quality of books today taken a precipitous downward dive? Even many of my favorite authors bore me to tears. You get a chapter or two in and start wondering if you’ve read the book already, which isn’t possible as the ink on the pages you’re reading hasn’t completely dried yet. It’s like they pulled up one of their older, better, books and did the old global find-and-replace for character names and locations. Same old same old rehashed again.</p>
<p>So I turn to the authors I’ve never read. One of them comes highly blurbed by one of my favorite authors. And the story line sounds really intriguing. This should be good. Thirty minutes later, it’s on the reject pile. What the hell was {favorite author} thinking when he blurbed this book? Momentary insanity is all I can think. The author of this collection of misplaced paragraphs, and it’s not his first, wouldn’t survive a critique from a petting zoo writers workshop. This is the kind of writing that would end up in POD-DY Mouth’s “closed and burned” pile if it were a POD book. Perhaps not as bad as those on her <a title= "Water For Elephants")
“Abbreviated read” post this morning, but damn close. And it was traditionally published!
In a state of despair, I decide to clean the hovel, something I normally do only when I’m writing. Beneath a pile of unopened mail and other assorted detritus I don’t want to know about is Sara Gruen’s Water For Elephants. I read this a month ago. Blogged about it as well. I open it up, read the first couple of paragraphs, next thing I know I’m back on the swing and the sun has traversed from one end of its journey to the other and the last, lovely paragraph is slipping by.
It’s nice to know there are still some quality books being published today.
