Get Lucky

After reading some of my Amazon reviews, a writer friend asked: What happened to the great writers? Good question. I keep thinking I'll get lucky. Living writers: who do I admire?

I do like Pat Conroy, but he's a tough read all the way around, I adore Salman Rushdie, Umberto Eco, V.S. Naipaul, Isabel Allende, Paulo Coelho, Barbara Kingsolver, Jane Smiley, John Nichols. 

 Notice that most writers on that list are not American writers. Gabriel García Márquez is dead (I'm keeping this list to living writers, so Edward Abby, Peter Matthiessen, and Bruce Chatwin are also off list). I guess I should toss in Barry Lopez too. But that moves me off fiction and into another realm...

I really don't like Dan Brown, and many other "famous" or best-selling living writers. I will read John Grisham in a pinch, but I can't say I enjoy his work. Nor Mario Vargas Llosa, or Annie Dillard. Has she done anything since Pilgrim at Tinker Creek? Or Michael Cunningham's, The Hours, what a struggle that was to read; AS Byatt, and Milan Kundera, I felt cheated by them. Paulo Coelho could easily join that cheatin' list.

What do I mean by cheatin' list? Author's use of deux ex machina to get out of a story, too much reliance on godtalk—that includes new age spirituality bytes, etc. Sometimes a book is just a chore to read, despite good craft and metaphor.

I don't seek out Stephen King (I hate horror, and most sci-fi). Ditto Ursula le Guin and Margaret Atwood. Hated Earthsea Trilogy, and Handmaiden's Tale. I read Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, enjoyed them but I would never revisit them.

Yeah, yeah, I read all of J.K. Rowling's Harry Pottery tales, and was momentarily enchanted, but this is supposed to be a list of great writers. Popular, best-selling, or top 100 living writers does not equate to great writers. I used Ranker's Best Living Writers List Criteria: writers who are still alive, in order to compile this list, and then I diverged. It got me to thinking about the process of how we construct lists. So, other types of lists evolved. 

There's the List you need to read for Grad School: Thomas Pynchon, Philip Roth, John Irving, Tom Wolfe, and the ones I'm supposed to like: Neil Gaiman, Nicholas Sparks,Toni Morrison, Alice Munro, etc. This list is thankfully short as I'm limiting it to living writers. Otherwise, there's no telling where this blog post would end.

And then there's the uncategorized list of writers who've jumped ship, the poets I've known, who later became novelists (vs. novelists who became poets:  Edna O'Brien): Margaret Atwood, Michael Chabon, Sherman Alexie, Michael Ondaatje, Colm Tobin, Dave Eggars, etc.

Thank Gawd I'm not compiling a list of 100 best poets. Would I have to limit it to poets who are famous, poets I don't know, poets I've read, poets I've read with, poets I've worked with, poets I've slept with? Now there's an incestuous list. Better to stick to dead poets for that list.

And there are the pulp fiction lists of popular writers I secretly read: James Patterson, and Dick Francis (didn't he die? I know his son's been co-writing books with him, perhaps they've a special arrangement. Adds another dimension to ghostwriting). 

Jim Patterson's a thoroughly nice guy, I like what he does with his money, and long ago, and far away, I once read with him at Book Passages, and because he was interested in young writers, I gave him a CPITS anthology of student poetry.... Not sure of his hack partnerships, they read fast and furious (three-page chapters), but I do love his Maximum Ride series.  (See, I do like some sci-fi.)

I hurt my knee a few years ago, I've had a lot of down time, laid up, don't like TV, and then I discovered free ebooks on Amazon, I devoured them, then had to get the bad taste out of my mouth and wash out my eyes, so I began to write rather warty reviews.

I've read so much utter dross, it's frightening. I'm afraid it will rub off and then I will become complacent, so I hone my skills by reviewing ebooks. As penance, perhaps. Sometimes it's purgatory. More like hell. 

But then, I'm a poet, not a novelist, what do I know? We take leaps of faith with obscure metaphor, nobody reads us, we don't even write in complete sentences...

There are only a handful of "new" Amazon writers, whose serialist work I admire, and will actively seek out: Jinx Schwartz, RP Dahlke, R.E. Donald, Chip Hughes, Mike Faricy, Brian Meeks, MZ Kelly, Steve Gannon, Jennnifer L. Jennings, Bev Pettersen, M. Ruth Myers, Abigail Keam—but her books have gotten sloppy as of late. Children's author, D. B. Patterson's adult novel, Perdido River Bastard, may be a one-hit wonder. Ditto Auburn McCanta's All the Dancing Birds. I'll keep my eye peeled for work by Florence Osmund and Ellis Shuman—they both are writers of promise.

As to how much I read, I read fast, furiously fast. Most of what I read does not require much by way of grey cells. That is not to say that I haven't read most of the classics, I've read most of those too as well. Grad school sort of ruined me for reading escape fiction, in order to escape, as it were, so the review process is my penance for reading so much poorly crafted writing. 

Every little once and a while I get lucky and am sucked in by the storyline. That's what it's all about, isn't it? 

MoHurley's Amazon Book Reviews 2015

(This piece was originally posted June 20, 2015, but seeking verisimilitude, I've moved each year's reviews to Dec. 31. It's too hard to find them buried mid-year.)

I'm an avid ebook reader and reviewer—I read mostly escape fiction, most of it not so good. Some of it deplorable. But, hey, it's free. And I'm cheap, I'll read just about anything. Especially at 4 AM, when I'm desperate to go back to sleep, and hope I'll nod off from sheer boredom. Sometimes it backfires, I find a great book. Then it's 6AM and I'm owl-eyed.

As I said, I'll read just about anything. But not without some teeth gnashing. So I review some of the ebooks upon occasion. Sometimes I get lucky and even find gems among the dross. They get full five-star rating. Check those authors out. Usually the first book's free....

I consider the review process a good honing skill: I read and mentally edit books as I go. My cousin, tired of listening to me complain about how awful some of those ebooks were, said: Why don't you review them too? (And shut up, already.) And so I did. Another tool in the craft toolkit.

What do I look for when I review a book? Strong plot, storyline, and interesting characters with depth, not flat, stereotypes. Some young writers, not clear on the concept of show, don't tell, rely upon the crutches of rampant consumerism to flesh out their story. Using designer clothing labels to define a character, or to set the scene, and the story reads like an ad. Does the description build our understanding of the character, or plot? Is it necessary to the storyline? Do I need to know the protagonist wore an Ann Klein blouse?

I look for a believable plot, good storyline, and figurative language that doesn't intrude, and subtle intellect. Novels stem from the oral tradition. Storyteller George Sanders says it best:

"...the process of crafting a good story means not condescending to your reader. It means creating sentences that clue them into something unnoticed about the character, and allowing them to figure it out. “A bad story is one where you know what the story is and you're sure of it," he says in this short film, George Saunders: On Story."

Then there's the actual structure of the story. Check out the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet: opening image (backstory), set-up (dilemma), theme/catalyst/debate, acts 1 & 2, intro of storyline B, premise, enter the bad guys, dark night of the soul, act 3 (with help from Storyline B), finale, final image/epilogue. Finis.  I love the liveliness of this layout, replete with examples. Less dry than English 1A's plot breakdown, as exposition, and denouement and everything in between, both eluded and deluded me. (Why couldn't they just say setup, conflict, and resolution? See also The Five Elements of Plot Structure.)

Then there are the typos, and poor craft. It's a bad omen when the writer has typos in the synopsis. I generally won't download a book if it does. And then there are the stories that have typos on page one. Really? If an author doesn't know the difference between it's and its, it does not bode well for the "sullied craft" of writing. Possessive apostrophes do not need to precede every single word that ends with ess. Doorknobs don't need to possess the room, unless, of course, they're possessed. But that's another kettle of fish entirely.

Please mosey on over and LIKE some of my reviews. Amazon's all about Like, just like on Facebook. Except, like, the buttons are, like, different. My older reviews are buried deep. But the most recent ones should be fairly easy to access.