Holt comes to a halt
One of the biggest problems when you start writing yourself, at least for me, is that I can’t be as critical of other authors as I would be if I wasn’t writing :p Or maybe it’s just that I spend more time being critical because I write as well but don’t actually get anywhere 🙂 See, in the old days when I wasn’t watching what another writer wrote, I’d simply read a book, decide if I liked it or not and then move on to another book. If I liked the book I’d just read, then I’d read more by the same author, if not, then that is that. Now, there are so many shades of grey :p
I just finished Tom Holt’s "Here Comes the Sun" yesterday. I’d read his "Expecting Someone Taller" sometime before and I loved it. So, when I came across a bunch of Tom Holt’s a while back while book shopping, I had no hesitation in buying them. However, "Here Comes the Sun" kind of disappointed me. The thing is, it’s kind of difficult to put my finger upon it. Tom Holt writes well and there are many instances when I stop and say "Hey, I wish I could have come up with that" but the thing is that his way of being funny is kind of repetitive. The book is littered with funny sentences which go something along the lines of "he quivered like a bunny rabbit with a fever sitting on top of a running washing machine" (I made that up – that’s not from Holt … too lazy to get up and get the book :p). Individually, those statements are funny and I wish I could write half as well as that. But when you run into he did something like blah and she did something like blah and it was like blah over and over and over again, it becomes a bit monotonous. I still enjoy the individual sentences and the wit contained in them but overall, the book becomes a bit tedious. In fact, the book took me probably six months to finish :p
No, I’m not that slow a reader but I took a long break in between and then recently finished the last five chapters or so. IN doing so, I actually disocvered the best way to read the book – in small doses 🙂 I read a chapter each every day and finished it in five days! I will read the other Holt’s I’ve bought to see how his writing progresses since I believe "Expecting Someone Taller" was the earliest book and "Here Comes the Sun" comes next in order of publication. The other books I have from Holt are even newer. (Oh yeah, the title of the entry does not mean that my reading of Holt’s books have come to halt – just that my reading of "Here Comes the Sun" has come to a halt because I finished the book :p) But for the moment, I’m moving on to Pratchett again and am "Going Postal" :p