"What I Did on My Vacation"

I will provide the following book reports, since that is pretty much “What I did on my Vacation”:

Guy Gavriel Kay’s “Viking” Book (so unmemorable that I can’t remember the name and I read it less than a week ago) gets only 2 out of five bookworms. I didn’t care much about his characters. I don’t think the depth of antagonism between organized religion and the faerie kingdom was developed properly. This book would get even worse scoring if I wasn’t a fan who had read the other novels. At least three whole segments only had weight and interest because they were raised in other (better) books. His writing patterns and literary techniques are becoming decidedly predictable. I wanted to like this book SO MUCH…why couldn’t I?!?!?!

Game of Thrones is also only 2 bookworms. I’m going with: A rickety rollercoaster after a gluttonous Thanksgiving gorge. The book had so many jerky ups and downs that you are likely to start wondering why you paid for the ride in the first place (Then you remember it was a $3.99 stocking stuffer at Christmas – oh yeah). 300 pages of trying desperately to figure out the first safe spot to get off without caring how the damn thing ends. Also like a roller coaster, it turns out that the book has its own centripetal forces at work, and the story flings you along according to some law of physics that cannot be gainsaid. You are on until it comes to a complete stop, and THEN - *especially* then - you’ll wonder why you paid for the ride…

Lastly, I read some ‘real’ literature: On Beauty by Zadie Smith. Beautiful language and extremely interesting content – I laughed a lot and very much appreciated the writing about African American/Academic Culture. The book’s charm was in its sheer newness – I’ve read nothing like it, ever before. I had never met these characters, and every one of them was wholly real. It was filled with lots of academic conceptual ideas too, which was of interest, but I didn’t have time to engage with all of them…definitely a candidate for a re-read in front of the computer so that googling is possible. I loved Smith’s writing style, but the fact that it was ‘real’ lit became painfully obvious when the ending was unsatisfying. I was on vacation dammit! I didn’t want to work hard enough to extrapolate my own "What if.....?"