It seems nowadays that for every 2 books I pick up and read, I always toss one and sometimes both aside. These are very daunting odds.
The first toss-aside was Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell. I wanted to read on but I felt very grind-y with the point of the book. Good God, I'm no Mrs. Gaskell (she wrote…books for young ladies. they had very pronounced and beat you over the head moral messages) but I do want literature to do something for me. So Jonathan Strange and Dr. Norrell got tossed aside.
I kept tossing more and more aside (finding them boring, too poorly written or just…lacking in humanity in general) and now I come to the Dante Club. I started reading in it a fever. It has literary standards that come to life! well, they did initially.
Now they're just…angelic or asthmatic or dull. Longfellow is clearly an angel reicarnated (boring), wendell holmes is wheezy and a two-dimensional busy body and Lowell…well…Lowell is drama.
The characters started out with promise but now they wither and fade. They might get better but why? why bother reading through horrible character development while other characters still get lopped down in graphic Dantean ways? I mean…isn't it better to develop your characters than go overboard in the description of what charred feet look like or what maggots feel when they eat the brain?
Given the qualifications of the writer (summa cum laude, Harvard with a degree in American Lit and a degree in Law), I should trust him and continue on blindly, knowing that all will be better but come on. He's using Dante to make cheap money. and not only is he using Dante, he's using Longfellow, Holmes, Lowell and quite a few other famous people. His book shows no redeemable Anything. For one being so bright and so shining in accomplishment, I'm amazed he even allowed himself to write this book. I have no respect for him. Even Wilkie Collins' who-dun-it's are better than this trash.
Well. I have to go to work but I mean to say a bit more. about everything.