Unread Books

I'm taking my own, and Nick Hornby's, advice and I'm not reading several books.

The first two I'm not reading are George Pelecanos' Hard Revolution and Drama City. Yeah, I know I said I'd give him another chance but Hard Revolution was turning into a book Pelecanos had already written - a portrait of Washington DC in the 60s, an incident that haunts the main characters in their adult life, and some kind of resolution to that incident. Didn't care any more. And if I wasn't going to read Hard Revolution, why read Drama City? Makes sense.

Another book I'm not reading is Robert Parker's Stranger in Paradise. Things started off well enough in the typical clipped Parker manner but then he got lazy and trotted in some old tropes that told me he was just coasting along. Did you know rich folks are intolerant of those they think are beneath them? Yep, it's true. Robert Parker says so. And that it's quite all right for the main character of your novel to be quite smug and superior to those intolerant rich folks? True again.

I think the fact that I only paid a couple of buck for each of these books has a lot to do with my low threshold of tolerance for nonsense. I don't have a lot invested in these to begin with so I'm not obligated to invest much more. It's the books that fail, not me.

Moving on. More to report once I get something read. Or unread.