Sunday, January 20, 2008
Today I turned into an Ice cube
Went to lovely Ripon CA today for my son's soccer tournament. Let's not speak of the result, though the boys played hard. We arrived about 10:30 to blue skies and a slight wind. It was actually kind of nice. A good day for sitting on the chair at the sidelines we parents thought. Then the wind picked up and half an hour before game time everyone had gone back to their cars for coats. By game time everyone who had a blanket had pulled out those too. It was windy, freezing cold and oh my gosh, we were nothing but ice cubes on the sidelines. It's hours later now and I'm STILL cold.
I car pooled with the coach which meant a stress free drive for me since in fact, I did no driving at all, except to the coach's house and back. Yippers! I'm reading this non-romance vampire book and by now I'm more than half way through because I'm skimming and/or skipping sections. The man did his research into the history of New York City and, alas, has so far missed no opportunity to insert the results in his narrative AND his dialogue. Oh my gosh, it's painful. The history comes at the expense of character development because his characters are all too busy telling the other characters supposedly obscure historical facts. Not to mention a pet peeve of mine, which I know some people don't mind, which is historical characters -- real ones -- who are characters in the book. Boss Tweed (can you say High School U.S. History?) Jay Gould, Diamond Jim... Oh, it's just so not for me. I am very sorry, but no matter how fascinating U.S. History is, and I totally agree that it is, it doesn't belong as a character in your novel, because what happens is readers skip the history lecture Like this:
"Why, yes, and did you know that in 1862 blah blah blah.... " page turning until something actually happens.
Off to watch Buffy and then go to bed.
Labels: avoidance behavior, reading
