NOTE: I know you all must be confused as to why I am posting old posts now? Well, these are posts from my erstwhile blog (sounds so royal) and I have had people read them last year. But to my new readers, these are fresh posts and I don’t want them to miss out on any book related posts 🙂 So I will be re-posting random blogs, which some of you might have already read.
Dear Writers Of Books I Wanted To Read But Couldn’t,
I am a reader. I want to be an voracious reader once more and I do have the potential in my bones you know. But I can’t. I can’t just go beyond page #1 even though I try hard to !!!! I will not blame you because I do understand. This is why, it is I who is on the wrong side of things. The reasons are nonsensical.
The names seem fake: Some authors (I won’t reveal) love naming their characters as if they are going to name their future brood of kids. Exotic names. Really really exotic names. Now it can be understood that some names do suit the character and the setting. But puhleeeseee….sometimes they just stick out like a purple tongue. Okay, if the name is short and fairly simple, I can still proceed a bit. But lengthy names with cropped idiotic shortened nicknames…I am sorry. I can’t relate to your story at all.
Beating round the bush: Of late, I tend to close a book the moment I find that the author is doing nothing but beating round the bush. Unnecessarily. I read this book in train while going to Chennai and because I had no other backup option to entertain me, I had to struggle through it. The author was just going on and on about things that kicked me into a different universe every now and then. Bumpy ride. Ouch!! Brain-hurt alert!!
Bad endings: I am kind by nature. I happen to finish some books if I really go beyond page 1 through 30. Only to find that the author has stabbed me at the back with his/her pen ruthlessly. How? By penning a bad ending. Not cliffhanger kind of endings you see. But confusing, meaningless endings. Sometimes the endings seem to be torn out of a totally different book! What hurts more is that I lose hope of reading another book of the same type in the future.
Desperate Indian writers: Taking a cue from one of the so called bestselling authors, some Indian writers have totally gone berserk in churning out “Bestsellers” or you can say, cheap novels that cost about a hundred INR or so. I occasionally pick one or two up out of curiosity and to check how similar they are in terms of plot line and language. They never disappoint me. These are the books, I gladly give away to Fans of such Literature. Here is an article that will speak more than I can in ten such write-ups.
Not doing justice to the genre: A crime novella that looks more like an Indian daily soap’s sob story. A horror story that tickles the funny bone on a dark and stormy night. A story about bromance without any signs of the same. A supernatural creature novel that gives you goosebumps and cold sweats by thinking how could this trash get published. Brr….
Parting note – I have taught school kids of grade 3 and 4. They are better writers.
Scribbling Owlet 