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Original poster

Anita Shreve - I know she's a bestseller 'n' all but I just don't get it.

33 replies

nkf · 16/08/2008 15:07

Just raed a couple - ran out of books on holiday and had to borrow. And what's the point of them? The research sticks out a mile and the storylines just seemed to peter out.

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LongLiveCuckoo · 19/08/2008 18:52

Totally agree, all that writing in the present tense made me so annoyed. You couldn't get in to the story, because you were just super aware of the writer's style the whole time.

I have only read one though tbh. THat was enough. It was about an 18 yr old who had a baby with a man of about 36 and she was made give the baby away. It was tortuous

BeckyBendyLegs · 18/08/2008 20:52

I loved the time traveller's wife! I read it just after I had my DS2 and it was just the thing I needed: pure escapism.

Romy7 · 18/08/2008 20:44

BBL - i'm with you on the Labyrinth. although it was lying around here after i'd given up on it and my mum picked it up and took it home. she claimed she'd enjoyed it
bet you've all read 'the time traveller's wife'
i liked that though

Original poster
nkf · 18/08/2008 19:28

Another good Angela Carter is Nights at the Circus.

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BeckyBendyLegs · 18/08/2008 19:10

I'll have to look out for that one. I'd never read anything by her before and picked up Magic Toybox by chance in Waterstones and thought 'hmmm, give it a go'. There are soooo many books out there I want to read. DH thinks I have too many books already.

Original poster
nkf · 18/08/2008 18:42

Angela Carter rarely disappoints. My current reccomendation for a mammoth summer read is I am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe.

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Badgermoose · 18/08/2008 18:27

BBL - Wise children by Angela Carter as also fab, v different to the magic toyshop but just fabulous, one of my favourite books

BeckyBendyLegs · 18/08/2008 16:42

How about Labyrinth by Kate Mosse for another really mediocre book that everyone seems to have read? My mum recommended it to me. I took it on a 700-mile round trip and felt like I was wading through treacle. But then struggling with these top selling rubbish books is always made up for finding a gem of a book by chance such as Angela Carter the Magic Toyshop which I've just read. Wow!!!!

Ceolas · 18/08/2008 13:47

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get into any of her books. Tried a few then figured life's too short...

GorgonsGin · 18/08/2008 13:45

I detest Anita Shrieve's books and couldn't understand her appeal. Pilot's Wife does seem like she writes by numbers. The London bits were set where I live and I thought "You've just researched this on the web and by following the A-Z. You have never been here!". Clunky and formulaic and utterly predictable.

There are so many (american, women IMHO) writers that seem to have gone to the same creative writing class and have been taught to write according to a check list so they wound the same - i.e insert twist here, use metaphor here. Anita Shrieve, Jodi Picault and whoever wrote the Memory Keeper's Daughter, which was better in plot, but the same old style.

Badgermoose · 18/08/2008 11:20

Couldn't agree more about Anita Shreve. Dull, dull, dull, badly written, unengaging, dull, dull, boring and dull. To be fair I didn't manage to finish either of the two I started so maybe there was an amazing twist at the end which will be forever lost to me that would have roused me from the stupor I fell into whilst reading them.
I did at least finish the da Vinci code, really really rubish but at least had a plot of sorts and such bad writing it made me laugh whereas AS just irritatingly dull

Califrau · 17/08/2008 22:09

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Message withdrawn at poster's request.

Original poster
nkf · 17/08/2008 22:03

Glad others feel the same. And I couldn't read the Da Vinci code either. Thought I was alone on that one too.

OP posts:
BeckyBendyLegs · 17/08/2008 17:29

And there's the beginning of a great plot for the next bestseller...

ScottishMummy · 17/08/2008 17:24

falling sausage, broken metatarsal, pulp trashy book.couldn't make it up

BeckyBendyLegs · 17/08/2008 17:23

It's all personal taste. A friend of mine who is English Language education coordinator for somewhere large raved about the Da Vinci Code and that was why I read it in the first place thinking 'well if she likes it it must be good'. She'd also recommended Birdsong and another book I totally hated called the glass book of the dreameaters or the dream book of the glasseaters or something like that.

I laughed at the frozen sausages meets feet!

BreeVanderCampLGJ · 17/08/2008 17:18

I only broke the one toe.

BreeVanderCampLGJ · 17/08/2008 17:17

SM

I felt like that about Happy Feet, two hours of my life, I will never get back.

The bitter irony is........I came home, opened the freezer and 2lb of frozen sauasage meat launched itself out of the freezer and broke my toe. Happy Feet my arse.

BreeVanderCampLGJ · 17/08/2008 17:17

SM

I felt like that about Happy Feet, two hours of my life, I will never get back.

The bitter irony is........I came home, opened the freezer and 2lb of frozen sauasage meat launched itself out of the freezer and broke my toe. Happy Feet my arse.

ScottishMummy · 17/08/2008 17:08

hated JPicoult her rambling gloopy narratives and moralising tone.will never get that time back

chapstickchick · 17/08/2008 17:04

i still love jp books

BreeVanderCampLGJ · 17/08/2008 16:59

I read JP once, it left me feeling soiled.

I read the Pilots Wife, it had potential, but she threw it away with a very lazy ending.

So if I was really stuck, it would be AS but only after I had read the Sun, Mirror, and the Daily Wail.

MaloryDontDiveItsShallow · 17/08/2008 16:49

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BeckyBendyLegs · 17/08/2008 16:46

I never got Anita Shreve or Jodi P. either but then I get shot down for saying that I thought Sebastian Falks Birdsong was rubbish and I really, really hated the da vinci code with a passion.

chapstickchick · 17/08/2008 16:41

i love jodi piccoult!!!

i read anita shreves the pilots wife and that was edgy

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