Tagged posts — 52 Novels

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Currently, I’ve got my ears and nose inside a couple of books: BOOMSDAY, by Christopher Buckley, and SLIDE, by Ken Bruen and Jason Starr.

I have to admit that I’m not sold yet on BOOMSDAY. Granted, it’s the audio version so I’m not sure whether it’s the story itself or the reader, Janeane Garofalo. She’s just okay, mostly because she doesn’t do voices and parts very well. When she reads, all the characters tend to sound exactly alike… although that’s not what she’s going for.

The story itself, that of a pissed off blogger/congressional aide who tries to take back the Social Security system (and thereby triggering a class war between baby boomers and Gen X/Y/Z-ers), is laugh-out-loud funny in points. That’s a good thing, considering Buckley’s a, you know, satirist.

But I can’t help think that, if I had the print book instead, it wouldn’t pass the 100-page test.

On the other had, SLIDE is exactly what I’d hoped it’d be. It’s an excellent follow-up to Bruen’s and Starr’s fantastic first collaboration for Hard Case Crime, called BUST. If you don’t know either Bruen or Starr’s writing, they’re both masters of thinking up the most degenerate shit to put people through and then getting it on the page.

Somehow they manage to top themselves each time, whether it’s a solo book or one of these co-written novels. These guys are among the reigning kings of the darkest of dark noir. And it’s not just because they’re so twisted… they really do tell a damn fine story.

It just happens that this one’s about a computer networks salesman (turned crack dealer) from New York, a kidnapping/serial killing sociopath from Ireland, and the kink-loving, sex addicted woman they have in common.

And in other news…

I changed the theme again. I liked the one that debuted on January 2, but it required too much tweaking and customizing to get it the way I wanted it. I just didn’t have the patience.

On the other hand, the one I’m using now—The Journalist, by Lucian Marin—puts the focus on the content (like I like) while making customizations simpler to implement. Except for, that is, a small issue on the Downloads page.

There’re still a couple things left to do, but they’re mostly minor. At any rate, like I did the last time, I’d appreciate it if you could offer some feedback.

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Blurb-a-licious That’s the question raised in the Sunday, September 16th, 2007, edition of The Denver Post, in a story called “Not all blurbs are created equal.”

This big, splashy article contends that blurbs do, in fact, matter.

Cathy Langer, lead buyer for the Tattered Cover bookstores, said that blurbs serve any number of useful purposes. As a reader, she said blurbs “really influence how I see things,” and she believes the store’s customers see things similarly.

“I have the opportunity to observe people as they are browsing, almost invariably people will read the cover, read the blurbs,” she said.

It is when she’s making buying decisions, though, that Langer finds blurbs most useful. “My actual buying is not so dependent on my reading as it might be on my blurb reading. I read a particular kind of book, but I buy every kind of book. So I look at a blurb that is from (a given) mystery writer about a new mystery writer to get a sense of who the book is really for, who the audience is. Also, I will up-buy to aggressively hand-sell a writer who has been blurbed by someone I love,” she said.

But does that actually reflect what most readers feel about the snippets of praise included the jackets and covers of the books we buy? Just because they’re read doesn’t mean they’re influencing the buying decision. Does it?

I’m not most readers so I can only speak for myself.

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