I Don't Want To Learn What I'll Need To Forget

So I'm reading Shock by Robin Cook. I'm almost through with it and will likely wrap it up by Friday. But please don't buy this book. It will easily be the worst book I've ever finished. And it's not even close for second. I've read several books that were less than enjoyable, but that was mostly due to complex styles or me being uninterested in the subject. This book is the first one that I'm disliking because of such a poor job by the author.

The worst part is I find it insulting a little. You see, his biggest weakness is dialogue. He does a horrible job using conversation to move the story along. Reading it, you just don't feel any of the emotions that the characters should be, or allegedly are, experiencing. However, in a vain effort to disguise this flaw, Cook uses his expansive vocabulary.

I'm for using seldom used words. As long as they A) fit, B) serve a purpose, and C) doesn't interrupt the flow of conversation. Reading Cook, it's an endless stream of obscure words that I simply can not fathom would all occur within one conversation. They people are grad students, but I find it ridiculous to assume all their conversation would be refined and verbose. I'm pretty smart, and so are my friends. We certainly don't use solely words over eight letters.

The other thing that gets me about his writing is how poorly his plot unfolded. Forget the fact that the jumping point of the novel is that pair of women donate eggs to an infertility clinic and then when they want to learn more about what happened to eggs, they mined the obituaries for recently deceased people to steal their social security numbers in order to become employees at the clinic. (How plausible is that? How many people are willing to commit obvious felonies just to learn about a donation of which they have no interest in the end result? This was the best you had? What a waste.)

The clear focus of the story should be on what happens once they learn about the eggs. I can tell you that I'm through two thirds of the book, and they barely found out about the donation. This means that in half the time it took for us to get to the big turning point, we're going to have to wrap everything up. This is supposed to be a thriller, but instead, it's simply dull. It's not even going on the book shelf. I'm literally taking it back to the paperback store I bought it and redeeming it's trade-in value.

I didn't want to end this with a downer, and the post below this one is more entertaining, but I wanted to include this snippet.

The Cardinals great second baseman Rogers Hornsby was once asked what he did during the off season.

"I look out the window and wait for spring."

Me too. Word