Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Again A Question of Talent or Taste?

ABC released its fall schedule this morning and one of the items caught my eye:

"Women's Murder Club," based on James Patterson novels, is a drama about four women in San Francisco — a detective, district attorney, medical examiner and reporter — who work together to solve crimes.
As I've mentioned before, I've only read one James Patterson novel in my life, Honeymoon which suckered me in with its designation as the 2005 International Thriller of the Year, whatever that means. It was, however, one of the worst written books I have ever read. Every character was plastic and unrealistic, the dialog was laugh-out-loud unintentionally funny. It was trite beyond belief and even the sex scenes were boring.

I have since asked repeatedly on-line for people who read Patterson books to tell me what they like (I want to know if the book I read was a fluke); so far, no takers. Recently we were over at a friend's house and I noticed a Patterson book on their shelves. "Was it good?" I asked. They didn't know. They couldn't for the life of them remember anything about the story, even though they did remember that they read it. This guy seems to put out a book every month and they all go on the best seller list for about a week, maybe two, and then they disappear. He must have a very loyal following of people who read his stuff, but I have never met any of them.

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