BOOK REVIEW: "The Thin Place"

The Thin Place

By Kathryn Davis

Little, Brown & Company Publishing

Copyright 2006

Adult Fiction

Zero Bookmarks

Do not....let me repeat, DO NOT read this book. Well, attempt to read may be more accurate. What a huge letdown this book was! I read the synopsis: a story about a place where the world of the living blends with the world of the dead--sounded kind of cool! I like ghosts. I liked the movie "Ghost". I liked "The Sixth Sense". Heck, I even liked "Ghostbusters". So I got the book and started reading.

The story starts out with three friends taking a trip to the beach. They see a guy laying on the sand and make the realization that he's not breathing. So two of the friends leave to go get help. The third girl stays. Turns out he doesn't end up dead after all, although there's no explanation about what happened.

Then after just a few pages more, I was mightily confused. Several more characters had been introduced into the story, but not much description. Who are all these people? After 20 pages, I couldn't keep one character straight from another. And new characters were being introduced left and right, with no description of who they were and why I was reading about them. Several characters were introduced in such a horrid manner, that I wasn't even sure which gender they were. And many of the characters had odd and ambiguous names "Mees, Piet, Sonny, Billie", which didn't help (turns out Billie is female.....I think).

The story jumps from a pack of dogs roaming around town killing chickens, to a person (female, I think) who has an embarrassingly quiet crush on a man, then to an unhappily joined couple with a husband who lives in a tent, then to a single lady with a cat who has a "friend with benefits", then to a group of folks who are trapping a bunch of beavers, then to someone's daily horoscope, then to a police blotter, then to a group of girls being followed by a creepy guy in a Dart, then to a crazy lady at church and the group of self-righteous churchgoers that are trying to keep the crazy lady out of the church, then to a woman who was in the hospital after a car accident that we never read about..... Then finally, somewhere around page 170, you find out that Mees (the girl who stayed with the dead guy on the beach) has some kind of gift. Of course, the author doesn't tell you what kind of gift. No no! Lucky you, you are expected to infer that her gift is something to do with raising the dead.

So here I am, 170 pages into this book. And here is the first hint of something (anything) that has to do with the synopsis on the pretty little dust jacket. Frankly, I was a bit miffed. I read a few more pages, but the story (if you want to call it that) kept jumping from one of these strange little scenarios to another, laced with these characters that you can't connect to at all because they haven't been described at all. Is that a female? Is she tall? Is she a brunette? Is she young? Is she old? You can't picture anybody so there's no way to connect to any of them at all and there's no way to connect them to the completely unapparent story that is supposedly going on around them.

I mean, isn't the whole point of a person writing a book to tell a story?

I read a few more pages after that then decided to stop wasting my time. If anyone knows me at all, they know it is a rare, rare book that I don't finish. But this one was just such an utter waste and there was not one redeeming factor about it, so I can't even give it half a bookmark.

Oh, and I did have a little chuckle when I sat down to write this review as I checked out the "reviews" on the back of the dust jacket. You know, the comments that the author gets another author to write for them? My favorite was "What an odd and entrancing novel The Thin Place is? (by Andrea Barrett). Another was "The Thin Place combines elements that ought to be unmixable..." (by Mary Gordon) And lastly, "Davis's approach to novel writing is so original and the results so magical that trying to review her fiction in a thousand words on a tight deadline feels as doomed as trying to review one of Blake's prophetic books." (by A.O. Scott of Newsday)

It was hilarious! The reviews on the back of the dust jacket were insults hidden in praise-ish words! It was awesome.

So needless to say, I am not recommending anyone read this book. Really. Don't beat your head against a wall like I have for the past four days.

BOOK REVIEW: "The Tipping Point"

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

By Malcolm Gladwell

Copyright 2000

Little, Brown & Company Publishing

Non-Fiction

3.5 Bookmarks

As recommended by my fellow blogger and friend, Brian, I took a few days recently to read The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. I don't usually read very many non-fiction books, but this was a good use of my time.

The Tipping Point is a commentary on why people do many of the things they do. As in, why do certain social activities (or clothing styles or crimes) become trends. He calls them social epidemics.

Gladwell asserts that the way trends get started is a lot like a medical epidemic. Gladwell uses case after case of ideas that passed from one small group into a larger portion of the population. He argues that just a few people in society are the ones who get the most done. He calls these people Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen. Basically, the Connectors are those who know everybody. The Mavens are those who seem to know everything that is cool and new. And the Salesmen are the persuaders; those who are so charming and likeable that whatever they say, other people believe. These three groups of people are why social epidemics occur, according to Gladwell.

Gladwell has several different ideas about how these three groups of people work and also discusses other factors that affect the production of social epidemics.

This no-nonsense take on how big social changes happen was well-written and a quick read. I was able to take some of Gladwells ideas and see how applying them to my own career as a Realtor would be useful. For anyone interested in theorizing on why things happen, such as why criminals commit crimes, why a certain sneaker becomes THE thing for teens to wear, why pre-schoolers LOVE Blue's Clues, etc., this is a great book to help you in your search.

Although I'm pretty sure there is still no logic anywhere that can explain the whole "pants on the ground" epidemic that's still going on around us.