Hit and miss-readings

Having rediscovered my inner bookworm, I am reading at a mile a minute. Strangely enough, even though my bookshelves (heh, I typoed "bookelves" first) are overflowing, I'm hitting the library a lot right now, arms filled with fiction of all kinds. And I found some gems, which will appear in the regular "book months" posts. But I have also found some dirt among the pearls, which I won't name and shame, but those books have something in common, even though they have different settings - middle ages, today, the future. None of them I have read beyond the first few chapters, although the premises are interesting and could have made for fascinating reading.
Still, they don't hold my interest. The characters don't seem real, more like cardboard cut-outs. There are things happening, but there is no narrative. The stories feel like a thin veneer, barely disguising the non-fiction content, or the point the author is trying to get across. One of those novels is trying hard to be post-modern, combining the story with science, poetry, and a play. Not that that is a bad thing per se, in fact I can imagine a book like that very well. But that one is, sadly, not very well written, appalling editing aside.
I have recently read a book (science fiction this time) that was very predictable, and even the ending was signposted in large, flashing letters from page one onwards. But I finished that one, because it was well written (even though I shouted at the author a lot). With the three mentioned above, I'm sorry but I think I could do better than what I've seen published there. ("Is that so?", I hear you say, "Then why don't you?" Good question.)

If you want to write a book that combines good characters, a narrative, scientific information, and ponderings on the nature of the universe, look at Carl Sagan's "Contact". Or the complete works of Douglas Adams. It is not surprising that these are well-known, while the ones I did not finish are not.


On the plus side of the adventures in library land, I have (re-)discovered the poetry of T. S. Eliot. I love "Burnt Norton". Talk about the beauty of language.