Book Challenges-Week 24

This was an unusually slow week in the reading department for me. I had a few things going on, one of which was doing another edit and polish on my manuscript, Not Dead Enough. I’m heading to the Writer’s League of Texas conference this coming weekend, and since I was a finalist in their manuscript contest, am hoping to generate some interest in my book.

Popsugar Challenge

(19/50) No progress this week

While I Was Reading Challenge

(4/12)- No progress this week

The Unread Shelf

Running Total: 17

Whiskey Beach, by Nora Roberts (romance): I’m a big fan of Nora Roberts. I think she’s amazing. She’s prolific, her characters are always flawed but likable, and she knows how to tell a story. Of course, I like some of her books more than others.

This one is a mystery. Eli Landon was accused of killing his soon-to-be ex-wife. He wasn’t charged, but was convicted in the court of public opinion. He’s come to Whiskey Beach to recharge, and in the process, starts to uncover who may have done it, and why.

I won’t say it’s the best book she’s ever written, but it’s solid and entertaining.

5 Classic Books

(1/5) Finally!

Miscellaneous Reading

None this week

Abandoned

None this week.

2018 Running Total: 71

Have you made any progress on your TBR or book challenges?

What Makes a Memorable Book?

I read a lot of books every year.  Some are new, and some are re-reads.  I don’t re-read them because I’ve forgotten them.  I re-read because it’s like visiting an old friend.  If I’m re-reading a book, it’s most often because I remember it, and remembered how much I loved it.

So, what exactly makes for a memorable book?

It has something different.  I went through a time when I read a ton of romance novels, and many of them were the same.  Romance novels, in general, have a pretty predictable structure.  Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, or just have sparks, insurmountable obstacle happens, obstacle is surmounted against all odds, happily ever after.  A romance novel doesn’t have to deviate from that recipe in order to be good.  But it does have to bring a more interesting conflict than the normal one.  Sign of Seven trilogy, by Nora Roberts comes to mind.  It’s romance mixed with paranormal happenings.  If you haven’t read it, but you like romance and big evil bad guys, check it out.

Characters have unique traits.  I love characters with unique traits.  In The Language of Flowers, by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, the main character is antisocial and communicates through flowers.  In Where the Heart Is, by Billie Letts, Novalee is superstitious about 7s.  The thing about unique traits, though, is that they can’t be for no reason and have no impact on the story.  Character traits have to mean something, or else they fade into nothingness in my memory.  Not to mention, meaningless quirks can irritate me into abandoning the book.

The characters make me care about them.  Not all characters have to be likable, and not everyone has to be a hero, but I have to be drawn into the story and care what happens, otherwise I’m indifferent.  When I’m indifferent to a character and story, I end up putting the book back down.  Holden Caulfield from the Catcher in the Rye is an example, as are Amy and Nick Dunne from Gone Girl.  Sure, they start off as likable, but I quickly came to hate them both.  It didn’t stop me from reading.  I wanted to know what happened!

It gets an emotional reaction.  This one is related to the last one, but if a book makes me laugh or cry, I’ll remember it.  I cry every single time I read Where the Red Fern Grows, by Wilson Rawls.  I’ve reread that book so many times over the last 20 (or so) years, but it gets me every time, just like it did the first time.  At least I know to have tissues.

But my emotions aren’t manipulated, and they don’t come cheap.  If I’m going to invest in a character, I want the sense that the author is invested in the character too.  If bad things are going to happen to a character, I want to know who the character is, if you expect me to care.  In The Martian, by Andy Weir, I was really rooting for Mark Watney to get off Mars.  My heart raced every time something bad happened to him, and I was genuinely excited when he was finally rescued.  I wouldn’t have been so invested if Mark had just rolled over and died, or passively waited to be rescued.  He worked for the victory, so I happily cheered him on.

The title makes sense.  This one isn’t a deal breaker, but I remember a book so much better if the title actually relates to the book in a meaningful/ memorable way.  The Night Circus is clearly and unambiguously related to the plot.  Bonus points because it’s title that would make me want to read the book.

What makes a book memorable to you?  Do you re-read?

 

I is for In Death

JD Robb has written 53 books in the In Death series in the past 21 years.  That’s a huge number of books.  (Some of these are novellas that appear in anthologies, but it’s still impressive.)

The books center around Eve Dallas, a police lieutenant in the New York Police Department, and her husband Roarke, multi-billionare businessman and former criminal. There are also multiple supporting characters that make regular appearances.

Each book centers around one or more murder that Dallas must solve.  As the series has continued, Roarke assists her more and more often.

I love reading these books, but I’ve also started studying them from a writer’s perspective.  If you’d ask me, I would have told you I didn’t think that a character arc could span over 53+ books, but I would have been wrong.

Dallas and Roarke have continued to develop, as a couple and as individuals.  Though the focus tends to be on them and their relationship, the other characters in the universe are interesting and often experience character growth of their own.  I love the fact that a married couple can continue to be the subject of a series; too often the curtain drops just after the wedding, but that’s not real life.  They argue, they compromise, they have past lovers, and yet they navigate it together.

Each story shares characteristics, but they’re not formulaic.   There are multiple series subplots, like Dallas’s past, and information about these is doled out over time.  It’s masterful the way Robb keeps my interest in these subplots.  She drags them out for just the right amount of time so that they never get stale, but also never turn into an info dump.

The books are thrillers with elements of romance and science fiction, and while the science fiction might not please hard-core sci-fi fans, they’re always a good story.

More than anything, I want the stories I tell to be compelling and interesting.  I think that’s the best rule for any author: tell a good story.

“Life is never as long as we want it to be, and wasted time can never be recovered.”
― J.D. Robb

Calculated in Death- A Review

Calculated in Death (2013) is #45 in JD Robb’s In Death series, featuring my hero, Eve Dallas.

Dallas is everything a heroine should be: sharp, acerbic, vulnerable, interesting, fierce, and loyal.  I could go on with the adjectives, but you get the picture.

Yes, the books are predictable.  Dallas is a homicide lieutenant for New York Police Department in the year 2059.  She gets the toughest cases, and she’s always going to catch the killer… it goes without saying.  However, as I’m fond of saying… “It’s not the destination, it’s the journey,” and these books always have a great journey.

There’s romance, there’s action, there’s friendship.  The books have good, strong characters.  Dallas isn’t afraid to bed the rules sometimes, but she struggles every time she does, which is one of the things I like about her character.

If you’ve never read any of the books, I’d highly advise starting at the beginning, though you can really start with this one and catch on pretty fast.

An accountant is killed in what appears to be a botched mugging, but Dallas isn’t fooled, and suspects there’s a reason she was killed.  When she starts digging into the accountant’s work, she starts to put together a picture of fraud and money laundering.

It’s a super fast read, and lots of fun.  Happy reading!

Weekly Writing Challenge: Stylish Imitation

I don’t remember ever thinking that I wanted to be a writer, when I was growing up.  I just wrote stories and poetry.  A lot of them.  I showed them to friends and family, but no one seemed all that interested.  It didn’t matter if they were or not.  I wasn’t writing for others, just like I didn’t read for others.  I just wrote because I had to.  I wrote because I had words and voices in my head, and if I didn’t put them on paper… well, I don’t know what would have happened.  Luckily, I never had to find out.

As a little girl, I remember my parents read stories to me, over and over and over, probably until their eyes bled.  I could never get enough stories.  My grandmother told me fairy tales, but not the ones that most people know.  She told me about Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, but also about Snow White and Rose Red.  I remember my grandmother wanting me to tell her stories back, and even then, I was no verbal storyteller.  Even now, I can’t talk about my day without boring others inside of 30 seconds.  Write about it?  Sure, of course.  Tell about it?  Um, well, uh, sure.  I mean, I guess I can tell you about it.  Let’s see, uh… I got up this morning and had coffee.  No, I didn’t have coffee this morning, just orange juice.  Or was it this morning?…  You get the picture.

The first author I ever fell in love with was Dean Koontz.  At the library or at the bookstore, I could browse shelves for hours, reading back of books and finding interesting titles.  All that changed after I read Watchers when I was 12.  Suddenly, I had a favorite author, and a focus for my obsession.  I’ve never lost that first love, though there have been others since then.  There’s been Stephen King, John Saul, Nora Roberts, Phyllis A. Whitney, Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwall, Kay Hooper, and Louisa May Alcott.

I would never attempt to imitate anyone’s style.  Not that I think there’s anything wrong with it, but my voice is influenced by all these writers and many more.  I’ve taken mental notes of the best (and the worst), and try to incorporate it into my writing.

It’s fortuitous that this week’s writing challenge is about this, and that there was an interesting interview with Dean Koontz published on Beliefnet.  Koontz gives good advice, but what I think it boils down to is: Assimilate everything, but be yourself.  Check it out.

 

The Witness- Book Review

The Witness is the newest standalone novel by Nora Roberts, released in April this year.  It’s got all the typical Nora Roberts’ good stuff: strong characters, romance, and an interesting plot.  This one is going on my favorites shelf.  I really loved the main character, Elizabeth Finch.  She’s rich, brilliant, and was raised in an emotionally impoverished environment.  When she’s 16, she goes through a brief rebellion that sets off a chain of events ending in a friend’s death and puts her on the run.

If you’ve read any romance novel in the past, what I’m about to say is not a spoiler… Years later, she meets a man.  She’s shy and socially awkward, and the story is as much about the chain of events and their relationship as it is about her self-awakening.

If you’re a Nora Roberts fan, or even if you just like a little action mixed in your romance, I highly recommend this one.  Two thumbs way up!

Celebrity In Death- Book Review

Nora Roberts, aka JD Robb has done it for the 34th book in the In Death series.  Celebrity in Death follow Eve Dallas, Roarke, Peabody, and the rest of the cast as they investigate the death of an actress playing Peabody in a movie about the Icove case (from Origin in Death).

Roberts’s, aka Robb’s, characters are consistently interesting, likable, funny, and flawed.  They argue, they bicker, they support one another, just like real friends and family do.  Reading an In Death is like visiting old friends, except with murder.

If you’re a fan of the series, I recommend this book, two thumbs up.  If you’ve never read any of these books, you could start with this one, but I’d recommend starting from the beginning.  Around book 30 or so, I went back to the beginning and read them all straight through.  While it was interesting to see the growth of all the characters straight through, I was ready to put the books down toward the end.  It’s pretty much the same as having house guests; though I might love them, it’s time for them to go home after awhile.