William's Book Blog
Mostly book reviews. Very rarely I'll allow William Campbell Powell (author) to write a blog entry on publishing activity, but he's under orders to keep that stuff over on his Facebook page and on http://williamcampbellpowell.com
Currently reading
Two DNFs to report
Having re-listened to Neil Gaiman's Stardust on audiobook, and the author's postscript, in which he extolled the pleasure of listening to Huckleberry Finn on audiobook, I took a punt on that as my next audiobook.
It's supposed to be a classic, but it didn't work for me. Huck Finn is a child of his time, complete with prejudices. So a first person narrative puts you right inside his head. For me, that was at best uninteresting, occasionally veering into repellent.
For books in that vein, Richmal Crompton's 'William' books work far better - the third person narrative voice shows both the good and the bad of each character less filtered. But nothing has yet displaced Ray Bradbury's 'Dandelion Wine' from the top of that somewhat ill-defined pile.
So it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that immediately following that, I also abandoned Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory. A first person narrative of a repellent individual. I didn't want to spend my morning commute in that head either, so it, too, has been returned to Audible for a refund. The same fate, and for exactly the same reasons, as Nathan Filer's The Shock of the Fall, a year or so back.
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