JUST COULDN'T READ THEM

This list is mostly a matter of taste,  but the books all either met with much acclaim and/or were from authors I've enjoyed and admired, and were certainly a let-down.   I think disappointed would mostly be more apt than dissatisfied.

Koontz, always a favorite, must oddly enough claim one of the threeWORST of all time ---Winter Moon.   Dull and contrived, Gross and YUKKY.   Tossed it and pushed the coffee grounds right down on top. 

Joseph Heller’s Something Happened---nothing did.   Blah-Blah-Blah, in every sense.   Tossed

The Lovely Bones   Alice Sebold       After months of hoopla and hurrah, I gave in and tried this one.    I simply could not get more than thirty pages into it, not all of which had to do with subject matter.   I skipped along a bit, encountered one of those “I know he killed someone; he might hear me, he might GET me, but I’m sneaking into his house alone, anyway,with nobody knowing where I AM” mentalities which have been done to down-the-dark-stairs-with-a-candle death.    I gave up and returned it to the libary as soon as possible.     Just couldn’t do it.   (Nor the movie).   

Mailer’s Ancient Evenings        Yawn, and EEEEW.   Almost tossed, but it was a huge hardback, so I gave it to the library.  Just not my taste. 

Any book by Ayn Rand---I can forgive and stick with Ponderous, but Pompous makes even ME throw books.   

Gone with the Wind falls on neither list.   It has scope and breadth, but surely Mrs. Mitchell didn’t mean to write such a sweeping, touching, grand novel about so many ninnies.   I cannot think why she’d portray chivalrous, valiant men and brave women as such simpering fools.    How did she expect them to find their shoes, let alone fight a WAR, with such expectations and mannerisms?   And on the MEN---those silly simperings and  rich folks' awww shucks, ma'am groveling-for-attention-from-Scarlett should have sent her scurrying her hoopskirts up the nearest tree.

Rhett, Melanie, Mammy, Belle Watling and Ellen O'Hara seemed to be the only sensible ones in the lot, most of the time, and the latter two rated so little page-time as to be mere glimpses.

If she patterned any of the characters on real people, I can only hope that it was but the upper-class, plantation-owning social set which could succumb to such affectations---No WAY did any of my Southern-for-two-and-a-half-centuries, callus-handed, hard-working, humble forebears ever simper, lady OR gentleman.    I promise.