Recently Read: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Why? Bite: This is an interesting and humorous look at the evolution of punctuation, its proper application, and its possible future from a British perspective.

This book is highly enjoyable for anyone who is easily irritated by today’s lack of writing savvy, be it in print or on the internet. Originally written for the British market, and thus primarily dealing with British usage, this best-selling book was very popular with American readers as well. This publication offers an introduction that addresses the most noticeable differences between American and British styles. As an American, I appreciate that Truss does not lay blame for the degeneration of proper punctuation solely on our shoulders. Sometimes she playfully belittles American style, such as our practice of putting ending punctuation inside quotation marks rather than outside, and sometimes she give us kudos for doing something right, such as our continuing to use formal punctuation in the way we structure addresses. Ultimately, there is enough blame to go around, be it the casualization of communication or the advancing technology.

The best part of Truss’ approach is the ultimate conclusion that while a few, very few, rules are hard-fast and required for comprehension and clarity, the majority of rules that either people scrabble over, such as the cantankerous Oxford comma, or have fallen to the wayside altogether, such has hyphenating words, seem mostly a matter of individual style and taste. The writer is left to determine which punctuation is best suited, both for clarity and comprehension and for aesthetic value.

This book is especially informative in regards to the development and evolution of punctuation usage. Most of us use such devices every day, taking them for granted, and never giving them a second thought as to who first came up with writing a squiggly line over a dot to end a question. I would also wager that most Americans, even those who actually know the style rules we are supposed to adhere to, are unfamiliar with how our style varies from the British. I never realized the small yet significant differences, even though I studied English Literature extensively in college.

Here’s my two cents’ worth on the fate of punctuation. Necessity being the mother of invention, punctuation developed out of the need for clarity in printed text. Certain rules came to be out of demands and limitations of the technology at the time. But as technology advanced - from printing press – to typewriters – to word processors – etc. – so the outmoded rules slowly evolved to adapt. Now we find ourselves in the heart of another revolution of communication. Just as the printing press changed how information was conveyed, the internet is doing the same. No longer at the hands of the elite, educated scholars, the written word is now produced by anyone with internet access and the time to waste writing entries for Wikipedia. Punctuation is in the process of evolving to match these changes. There may be 17 uses for the comma, but many may be deemed unnecessary in today’s medium. Just as has occurred since the invention of the first punctuation marks, some uses will cease, while others will arise. At some point, someone decided italics were necessary to denote emphasis. When italics weren’t available on early computer programs and current social media, asterisks picked up the slack. When the problem of conveying tone and/or emotion arose, emoticons were invented to solve the problem. Unlike Truss, I do not feel that emoticons are “a paltry substitute for expressing oneself properly.” They serve a real purpose, to clarify the intention of a sentence, even a grammatically correct and expressive one. They are also fun to use and cute as the dickens.

So, I take comfort in knowing that, barring typos and mistakes, that I am not wrong when I make artistic choices in my writing. As long as I am following the most basic rules that are necessary, I am right regardless of whether or not I put a comma before the “and” in a list. I need to make sure the sentence conveys the message I intended, and that apostrophes, quotation marks, colons, semi-colons, and ending punctuation are properly placed and used correctly. If I choose to use ellipsis to ease into a pregnant pause, or a dash to abruptly interrupt a sentence with a separate thought, or if I eliminate an extraneous comma to clarify my intended meaning, it is of no concern of fellow grammar nazis. The goal of every “stickler” should be to encourage everyone to express themselves, not to appoint ourselves as holier-than-thou grammar police.


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Recently Read: The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde

The Big Over Easy by Jasper Fforde
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SRP (Summer Reading Program) Why Bite: The premise is clever and funny and the story is entertaining even if parts were somewhat predictable.

This author was recommended to me, and even though I wanted to read his “Thursday Next” series as a way of introduction, I came across this novel at the library instead. Our town’s little library has spent quite some time and resources in developing a large collection of mystery novels, and the only library sponsored book club for adults focuses on that specific genre.

The novel started out slowly, introducing the characters and environment. That’s to be expected, I suppose. It soon picked up after the discovery of Humpty Dumpty’s murdered body. If it weren’t for the nursery rhyme motif, this would be a typical detective novel, with stereotypical characters, false leads, obstacles, clues that make little sense at the time, and an assortment of plot twists (some predictable, some unexpected) that lead to a outlandish conclusion after a climatic confrontation between the protagonist and antagonist. It was refreshing that it didn’t end quite the way I expected it to, though many parts along the way felt painfully predictable to me. The novel is also written with tongue-in-cheek humor that often leaves the reader in stitches.

By the way, it’s hard to write a review of a mystery novel without giving too much away. Sorry if I fail.

Fforde deftly navigates through nursery rhyme, folktale and mythological lore to weave a story that leads you down familiar paths before veering askew. For example, we expect Jack to take an axe to the beanstalk, but instead he grabs a chainsaw. Eventually the reader learns to expect the unexpected in this regard. Unfortunately it doesn’t carry over into the character development or standard elements of the basic detective story, which appears to be formulaic. There is the main protagonist, the unlikely hero with a bad track record and unassuming demeanor. There’s his partner/sidekick, a woman who would rather not be there and doesn’t like him at first. She almost betrays him, but predictably has a change of heart once she gets to know him. There’s the typically astute forensics experts who are sage when it comes to life in general, and a crew of officers/subordinates with absurd quirks but otherwise rather efficient at their work. Of course there is the self-absorbed competitive coworker who sabotages the protagonist’s case in an effort to increase his own prestige, and turns out to be the biggest coward of all despite a reputation to the contrary. Then there is the antagonistic boss who starts out against the protagonist but eventually comes around. The villains aren’t any less two dimensional and predictable. The unlikely subject turns out to be even more sinister than the more likely choice.

What kept this novel from being a run of the mill, mundane detective story was not just the nursery rhyme motif. Certainly, though, it helped. This would have just been a mediocre story with a gimmick if Fforde didn’t lead the reader through a deceptively complex plot in which multiple motives, twists and turns are discovered. Spratt doesn’t just solve one murder, but uncovers a series of underhanded activity that baffles the reader as much as it does the characters. Some of the plot twists were predictable, such as Mary’s change of heart. But the twists and turns in the investigation were often not at all predictable. Other than the reader knowing full well in the beginning that Humpty Dumpty didn’t commit suicide and that the first trail will no doubt end cold, many of the twists weren’t nearly as predictable. I knew they would eventually come across a goose, but I didn’t expect where. And I certainly would never have guessed Spongg’s master plan. So, the plot kept me on my toes, so to speak. The way Fforde starts each chapter with excerpts from fictitious publications, often poking fun at nursery rhymes, mythology, folk tales and detective stories, also greatly added to the experience. These were particularly clever and often quite funny.

I’m just going to have to put a spoiler alert on this review, aren’t I?

While I would have loved to see more debt to the main characters, this novel was a fun ride. I hope to read more Fforde, but perhaps I will take a break from “Nursery Crime” (I understand there is more to the series) and try the first novel in the “Thursday Next” at some point.


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Recently Read: The Android's Dream by John Scalzi

The Android's Dream by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SRP (Summer Reading Program) Why Bite: This novel turned out to be an exciting, funny, and occasionally gross adventure that is as believable as it is unlikely.

I was looking for a different title by this author, but this one caught my eye. The Android’s Dream takes its name from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick. Scalzi references this inspiration on his Acknowledgements page. Aside from the fact that a genetically modified breed of sheep with electric blue wool is named after the book, there are no further similarities between Scalzi’s novel and Dick’s. There are no actual androids in the story. That’s okay though, as there are plenty of other interesting elements to make up for that.

Scalzi seems to borrow from a number of different stories in the science fiction genre, both on film and in print. The at times sophomoric humor and unlikely predicaments the characters find themselves in are reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ and Phillip K. Dick novels. Indeed, Harry Creek could give Rick Deckard a run for his money. Intertwining the horrors of war could be a nod to Vonnegut. The “Common Confederation,” or CC, is clearly modeled after the “United Federation of Planets” in the Star Trek universe. Genetically modifying and cross breeding humans and animals is a plot element straight out of The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells. The various appearances of various species co-existing on and off world are nothing new to anyone who has seen “Star Wars” and/or “Men in Black.”

Highly improbably occurrences lead to fantastic circumstances that are outrageous yet somehow believable. The entire fight scene at the Arlington mall, particular the use of the special shoes, is a brilliant example of how easily Scalzi gets the reader to suspend disbelief. Interestingly, it seems the plot is driven on by fate. Seemingly random coincidences, not all of which are planned, seem to happen in just the right way to align everything and everyone to an inevitable outcome. The reader is left wondering how coincidental these coincidences truly are; however, as it is mentioned more than once that the Church of the Evolved Lamb had been actively working to make their prophecies come true for quite some time. Is purposefully self-fulfilled prophecy really fate? This church dynamic is certainly an interesting commentary on religion and religious quests. Scalzi also throws in a number of commentaries via illustration of his portrayal of government officials as well as various parts of society. For example, Robin Baker’s birth and adoption story is a frank appraisal of fundamentalist Christians and their “pro-life” position. “Half sheep or not, life began at conception and aborting the near-term fetus was wrong. The county, which wanted the whole thing to go away, took the in-laws up on their offer to pay for the medical needs of the pregnant sheep woman until she gave birth. … They declared her human and offered her to Porter’s in-laws and widow. They refused her, saying she was no kin of theirs. Their interest in her did not extend past the fact, and the moment, of her birth.” Much like the Christian Right and their anti-abortion position, they do not care about the child once she is born and oppose all legislative efforts to provide for such children after they are born.

I found the opening line off-putting. “Dirk Moeller didn’t know if he could fart his way into a major diplomatic incident. But he was ready to find out.” My immediate thought was of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. This could have been a contender. I kept reading hoping this wasn’t a sign. I’m glad I did.

The story turned out to be engrossing and captivating. It was fast paced with clever plot twists, including sabotage, betrayal, double agents and spies, friends becoming enemies and enemies becoming allies, the declaration of a new sentient species, and not one but two sentient AI interfaces, one with the personality of a horny, old woman and the other of an eighteen year old hot head genius. Definitely worth the read.


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Recently Read:The Honk and Holler Opening Soon by Billie Letts

The Honk and Holler Opening Soon by Billie Letts
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

SRP (Summer Reading Program) Why Bite: This is a well told story of an untraditional family of broken individuals that help each other heal.

I enjoyed Where the Heart Is so much that when I came across Letts’ second novel at the library, I immediately checked it out. The Honk and Holler Opening Soon has a lot of the qualities I enjoyed in her first novel. The characters are as unique and colorful as their names. Letts gives even minor characters depth and interest, and the major characters are so well developed that the reader develops a relationship with them. The story seamlessly flows from humor to tragedy, and all the emotions in between. Although Where the Heart Is had its harsh moments as it focused on Novalee’s story, Honk and Holler is far grittier as it follows the course of four main characters. The language and subject matter seems harsher, possibly due to one of the main characters and several of the minor characters are war vets. It’s primarily a love story between Caney and Vena, but also tells of Bui finding a home and Molly O finding solace.

Reading the acknowledgements, I learned that Letts did quite a bit of research to write this novel. She took great pangs to bring realistic detail to Caney being a wheelchair bound Vietnam vet, the passages in Vietnamese as well as the lengths some must go through to immigrate to this country, and the wounds inflicted on a dog, a horse and several humans. She also stays true to the time period, as the story takes place in the mid 80s, when prejudices, particularly against the Vietnamese, were still rather predominant. I must admit to wincing when I read the word “gook.” Her hard work paid off, as the realistic details really brings the reader into the story.

The story takes place in a diner that is really home to most of the characters, not just those who work there. Vena and Bui, much like Novalee, are transients who find that they too are at home at the Honk and Holler. They find a place to belong and a family to be a part of. All the characters are flawed, broken. Through the course of the novel, they help each other mend. Vena helps Caney live more fully and let go of the past. Caney helps Vena let people get close enough to care for her, and Life, a regular customer enamored with her, helps Molly O come to grips with her wanderlust daughter. By the end of the novel, nearly every strand of the story is concluded save for one. The reader is never told what becomes of Molly O’s daughter Brenda. It is hinted at that she may be pursuing her music aspirations, but Molly O doesn’t hear from her directly. Normally an unresolved subplot would bother me, but in this case it seemed appropriate given what Life had said to Molly O. It takes time, but eventually Brenda will get her act together. Letts shows Molly O able to get on with her life despite her wayward daughter’s absence. At the end of the novel, everyone is still broken, but they are all in a better place thanks to each other. Everyone is a work in progress.

While not as much of a feel good read as Letts’ first novel, her second delves deeper into human frailty. It’s a portrait of an untraditional family that finds each other and gives each other the help, love and understanding they need to heal and move on from the past. Each of the main characters finds a way to keep going, and is able to start anew. The end of the novel is really a new beginning for each of them, even the three legged dog. It will make you laugh and it will make you cry, but it will also make you consider the human condition and how fragile and uncertain we really are.


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Recently Read: Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category by Dave Eggers

Created in Darkness by Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's Humor Category by Dave Eggers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

SRP (Summer Reading Program) Why Bite: A compilation of humor pieces from McSweeney’s, some are funny, some aren’t, and some are hilarious.

My favorite alternate title for this book: Humor Is Timeless: 1998-2003.

I am not, nor will probably ever be, a dedicated reader of McSweeney’s. I do, however, have a soft spot in my heart for nearly all things San Francisco, and also happen to enjoy Dave Eggers’ writing. Being that McSweeney’s has a certain reputation and specific fan base, I was surprised to find that my local library, in a small, rural desert community that tends to be predominantly blue collar conservative, owned a copy of this book. So of course, it felt like fate and I had to check it out.

While I’m not an avid reader of even the magazine’s website, I have read pieces linked to occasionally by college friends on Facebook. I always found these bits funny, clever, witty and intelligent. While these adjectives could certainly be used to describe several pieces in this collection, unfortunately they do not describe all of them. While the humor seems to be hit or miss, even among the trademark lists found throughout the book and also in a dedicated section at the end, I feel the writers’ aim was true more often than it was way off. Many pieces were moderately funny in a silly fashion, akin to humor found in shows like “Saturday Night Live” (when they have good writing) and the late night shows that include comedy bits and skits. The lists were often as funny as Letterman’s “Top Ten,” a comedy bit which sometimes suffered from the rigid format. The lists have no such restrictions and so vary greatly in length and level of humor. Some pieces were also reminiscent of shows such as “Robot Chicken” and “Family Guy,” witty parodies invoking both academic and pop culture references. These were possibly my favorites. A few pieces were only funny if one possessed the academic knowledge necessary to understand the premise for the joke. One of these made me laugh hysterically, “Unused Audio Commentary by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer 2002, for The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring DVD (Platinum Series Extended Edition), Part One” by Jeff Alexander and Tom Bissell. Another one, “Upcoming Titles from Gavin Menzies, Author of 1421: The Year the Chinese Discovered America” by Paul Tullis, prompted me to google Menzies. I’d never heard of him. Once I knew who the heck the guy was, though, the piece was incredibly funny.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. Compilations are great books to take with you when you are running around town, as you read most of the pieces completely in a manner of minutes, though a few in this particular volume were rather long. So I read this book in short bursts waiting for my son at soccer camp, sitting pool side during his swimming lessons, in line at the post office (Or rather I would have if I had needed to go to the post office.), at the library while my son browsed the children’s section, waiting for the pot to boil while making dinner, etc. I didn’t laugh out loud as much as I wanted, so this book wasn’t perfect. But it was pretty dang close.

Some of my more favorite pieces in addition to the aforementioned and nearly two-thirds of the lists:
“On the Implausibility of the Death Star’s Trash Compactor” by J. M. Tyree (I have some counter points regarding the parasitic worm-creature.)
“I Know What You Did Two Moons Ago (The Revenge)” by Brian Kennedy
“Candle Party” by Alysia Gray Painter (I can totally see this as an SNL skit with Vanessa Bayer playing the part of the host.)
“Journal of a New COBRA Recruit” by Keith Pille (I couldn’t stop laughing at this one, but it might be a generational thing.)
“Pirate Riddles for Sophisticates” by Kevin Shay
“Goofus, Gallant, Rashomon” by Jim Stallard (Please, Seth Green, please do a “Robot Chicken based on this piece!)


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Recently Read: From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury

From the Dust Returned by Ray Bradbury
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

SRP (Summer Reading Program) Why Bite: This highly imaginative novel is a lyrical portrait of an intriguing family with a rather simplistic plot.

Written over his lifetime in bits and pieces, Ray Bradbury wanted From the Dust Returned to be the Halloween equivalent to A Christmas Carol, a holiday tradition reread every year. While this was never achieved, the story is intriguing and clearly a labor of love. I just wish it was a little less laborious to read. The writing here is deeply philosophical in nature, almost lyrical, but overly flowery and poetic. Honestly, it tries a little too hard to be profound. Occasionally a passage would be so thick I’d have to reread it more carefully to try to comprehend whatever Bradbury was trying to convey to the reader. Still, the concept, characters and story lines are creative and interesting, reminding me of the work of Tim Burton. The fact that the cover art was created by Charles Addams, with whom Bradbury had an arrangement to illustrate the novel when finished, just adds to the overall feel of the novel. Sadly, Addams, creator of the iconic “Addams Family,” passed away before this agreement could be realized.

I found the plot concept for this novel fascinating. The never dying, supernatural creatures can only live as long as people believe in the unseen. Their very existence is threatened by atheism. Bradbury, as usual, excels in character development, providing a detailed portrait of each member of the family. Passages are strangely incredibly descriptive yet vague. I found myself rereading passages (again) to try to get a better mental picture. Bradbury waxes poetic quite often throughout the novel, which makes for some rather beautiful passages that ultimately say very little. The overall plot itself is weak, as the novel is really a series of vignettes about the various characters. However, the smaller storylines within the vignettes are complete and engrossing. This is because the novel was pieced together from short stories about the Elliott family, whose family name is never once mentioned in the novel itself, written over the span of many years. Yet the novel flows naturally as Bradbury masterfully weaves continuity throughout and the reader is left with no loose ends. The story doesn’t end in the traditional way, but it hardly matters as Bradbury wraps up the immediate storylines nicely. The story is as immortal as the Family and continues into infinity, as long as people continue to believe in the unbelievable. The stories of the House and the Homecoming end as Timothy’s role as historian and caretaker begins.

Bradbury included an Afterward that details the process of the creation of this novel. It is worth the read and gives insight into the inspiration for the stories.

I really wanted to give this novel four stars, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Bradbury’s imagination is really amazing. Many of the ideas in the book are concepts I have never thought of, and are unique in the world of the genre. The vagueness plays into this a little. The reader no doubt assumes that Mother and Father are vampires, but Bradbury never comes out and says it. Perhaps they are, or perhaps they are something else entirely. This allows for interaction with the reader’s imagination, a sign of excellent story telling. In Bradbury’s supernatural world, everything is possible and nothing is as it seems. As much as I wanted to love it, I felt disappointed that there wasn’t more action. Most of the vignettes are little more than “a day in the life,” with the exception of the portions that further the main simplistic plot. I felt like an opportunity was missed for the captivating concept of the fragility of immortality to be further developed. Bradbury creates a world, a landscape, and a cast of characters, but ultimately does very little with it.


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Summer Reading Program

The kids get wild when they watch the show,

High energy

Mass participation

Whether it be music, juggling, balloon sculpting or exotic animals.

They laugh, shriek in mock terror, snicker, and dance.

Then after the show they spill out into the small town library,

Checking in their reading logs at the SRP table,

Vying for time on the computers, or roaming the beige metal shelves grabbing books.

The colors that usually dance solitarily on the covers now join the flash mob of the bright colored children’s clothes.

Excited chatter fills the small room and echoes up to the fluorescent lights high above

As they bump into each other, showing their finds and seeking parental approval of each found treasure.

Slowly at first, a few trickle out through the security scanners to the parking lot,

Anxious to leave the chaos and noise to a quiet house.

But within a few minutes – maybe 10 –

The torrential flood subsides as the families go about the rest of their day,

And the library reverts back to its previous quiet.

Recently Read:The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers

The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember by Fred Rogers
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

SRP Why Bite: Insightful.

There is not much to say about this short, little book. Fred Rogers was a smart, insightful man who said a number of wise, smart, and insightful things. I’m surprised the book isn’t longer. I enjoyed learning a little bit more about Mister Fred McFeely Rogers from the Foreward written by his wife and the short biography at the end of the book. Did you know Mr. McFeely, the postman was named after his grandfather? I didn’t. My only other comment is that I’ve never read a book of quotes before that included the person quoting other people. I found this a little odd, but since I liked the quotes (and the individuals Mister Rogers quoted) it didn’t affect my enjoyment one iota.

Quotes I liked:

“The values we care about the deepest, and the movements within society that support those values, command our love. When those things that we care about so deeply become endangered, we become enraged. And what a healthy thing that is! Without it, we would never stand up and speak out for what we believe.”

“I believe it’s a fact of life that what we have is less important than what we make out of what we have. The same holds true for families. It’s not how many people there are in a family that counts, but rather the feelings among the people who are there.”

“Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we aren’t perfect.”

“Love isn’t a state of perfect caring. It is an active noun like struggle. To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.”

“Listening is where love begins: listening to ourselves and then to our neighbors.”

“When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong along with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.”

“The great poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: ‘Be patient towards all that is unsolved in your heart, and learn to love the questions themselves.’ ”

“When I was very young, most of my childhood heroes wore capes, flew through the air, or picked up buildings with one arm. They were spectacular and got a lot of attention. But as I grew, my heroes changed, so that now I can honestly say that anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me.”

“[W]e don’t have to understand all of someone else’s creative efforts. What’s important is that we communicate our respect for their attempts to express what’s inside themselves.”


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Recently Read: The Cat Who Had 14 Tales (Cat Who...) by Lilian Jackson Braun

The Cat Who Had 14 Tales (Cat Who...) by Lilian Jackson Braun
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

SRP Why Bite: This is a lighthearted collection of whimsical stories about cats, and two or three darker ones.

This was not what I expected after having read The Cat Who Could Read Backwards. I thought this collection of short stories would be in the same vein as the series of mystery novels. Not so. Instead of tales of suspense and mystery, these were mostly whimsical tales about various cats, not unlike Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. A few stories included in this collection, such as “The Dark One,” “SuSu and the 8:30 Ghost,” and “East Side Story,” “The Sin of Madame Phloi” were darker, more sinister in tone. In fact, I would say they were downright macabre. Only a couple stories, in fact the first and last stories bookending this collection, were actual mysteries. A few stories touched on supernatural themes, such as witches and ghosts, but I was most surprised to discover one science fiction story. “The Cat Too Small for His Whiskers” was inventive and comical. I enjoyed that one particularly well.

Actually, I enjoyed most of the stories, but not all. The two that were actually mysteries reminded me much of the qualities that I liked in the first of The Cat Who … series. The last story, “Tragedy on New Year’s Eve,” was particularly interesting. It was written in the form of a series of letters from a mother to her son, in which she describes how she solved the mystery of a tragic car accident. The cat actually plays a minor role in the story and is not developed as much as a character as the cats in the other stories, but the principle human character is well developed and the plot itself shows Braun’s strength in developing a good mystery.

Like any collection of short stories, some are better than others. Overall, this is a good read if you like stories about cats, but maybe not so much if you don’t.


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Recently Read: Paperback Writer by Stephen Bly

Paperback Writer by Stephen Bly
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

SRP (Summer Reading Program) Why Bite: What could have been an interesting plot is muddled by a confusing gimmick, repetitiveness, and low reading level.

I haven’t read any Christian fiction since junior high, but I thought I’d give it a shot. Bly is well known in the genre, so when I came across this book in the library, I decided to pick it up. Indeed, Bly is evidently enough of a literary success that he felt justified in the cheesy move of having the main character refer to him as a successful author, tooting his own horn. One of my gripes about current mainstream fiction is that books often contain numerous sexually explicit scenes. I figured Christian fiction would be void of that particular scene, but, if this book is any indication, it also tends to be plentiful of opportunities to preach the faith and talk someone on the fence into full conversion mode. I wouldn’t mind this so much, if it is written realistically. However, I find in what little Christian literature I’ve read, including a series of YA novels of drug addicted street children finding salvation and a book of short stories published by MOPS, that characters paraphrase the Bible often in normal, every day conversations. I’m around Christians all the time. We don’t spend every conversation witnessing to each other, and do not consider every event or complication in life God’s teaching moment, but evidently characters in Christian fiction do. But I digress.

This book has its moments of grandiose preaching, but not as much as I expected. Although, at one point the main character does succeed in converting his fictional creation to Christianity. But even these brief moments would be tolerable if the story was somewhat entertaining. Unfortunately, this book fell well short of that mark. The narrator tells the story of a moderately successful “paperback writer” on his way home from a motel after finishing novel number 55 in a detective series. He has quite the adventurous day, but turns out it’s all make believe. Throughout the novel, the reader is led to believe that some scenes are real and some are not, but the main character, Watson, can’t tell the difference and just keeps going back and forth between the two. Problem is the reader can’t tell the difference either. I’m sure to Bly this seemed like an interesting gimmick to capture the interest of the reader, but all he accomplished was a confusing plot that was extremely difficult to follow. Even at the end of the book, the reader is left wondering what, if any, scenes actually happened, or if it all occurred only in his mind on the drive home. The book seems to be an attempt at illustrating the process of how a writer comes up with ideas and develops a story, and that this particular writer does so as an ordained service to humanity. But really, it would have been far more interesting as a straight adventure story without being enveloped in a convoluted gimmick, even though the action sequences were predictable and cliché, including a couple completely random departures from the plot in which Watson solves the personal problems of friends and deals with his adult daughter’s new boyfriend over the phone. The action seems to have been appropriated from every television action adventure show from the 1980s, including “Magnum, P.I.” which is mentioned multiple times and clearly the inspiration for Watson’s Toby Mackenna. In addition, the passages and dialogue were incredibly repetitive. The main plot points and objectives, as well as Watson’s personal issues, are repeated so often that I started rolling my eyes a third of the way through the book. The average reader is capable of remembering key details without them being retold every few pages.

As it stood, I would have given this book two stars, but I knocked it down to one based on the quality of writing alone. There are blatant typos throughout this specific publication, and in one particular passage the narrator refers to the main character by a different name, Weston, chapters before an imagined FBI Agent Smith mistakenly calls him “Weston” repeatedly. There is no connection between the separate passages and this was clearly a glaring error that couldn’t be overlooked, and one that is perhaps not limited to the publication I happened to read. These easily avoidable errors aside, what truly bothered me was the reading level in which this book was written. It was clearly below what I was used to reading, even though this novel is supposedly classified as adult fiction. I tested a passage from the first chapter, and it scored 3.8 on the Flesch-Kincaid scale. As reference, I tested a passage from a Magic Tree House book, which scored a 3.0, a passage from a Vonnegut novel, which scored a 7.3, and a passage from a Harry Potter book, which scored an 8.5. I found this so interesting that I have decided to research the reading levels of adult fiction further with passages from various novels. But I digress. (In the interest of fairness, this review scored an 12.0). While Flesch-Kincaid is not particularly accurate or scientific in its assessment, it does give a ballpark idea of the reading level of a work. This book’s ballpark appears to be the third grade.

All in all, I was rather disappointed in this book. I feel like I could have gotten more entertainment from a rerun of “Knight Rider.” This novel was dull, uninventive, and flat. Bly tried to write something unique, but failed to write a compelling piece of fiction.


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