THE SHINING (Stephen King) - October 31/13

The Shining is, I think, the first grown-up book I read as a kid and so I remembered enjoying it very much. I would often cite it as my favorite book ever, too. But rereading it the past couple of weeks, I can't say I was as impressed as I thought I would be. There are still a lot of very memorable sequences and the characters are extremely vivid, but the book is just overwritten to an extreme degree. Like certain other King novels, the book is longer than it has any right to be and I have to admit there were some stretches here where my eyes were kind of glazing over. It's good, definitely, but I prefer Under the Dome and 11/22/63, both of which are longer, ironically enough, for example. *** out of ****

NINE INCHES (Tom Perrotta) - October 18/13

Another superb effort from Perrotta, though the book does suffer from an unevenness that's part and parcel with the short-story format. Having said that, there's not a single dud here. My favorite's probably "Grade My Teacher" but really they're all good, although Perrotta's fixation on crumbling or dissolved marriages ensures that there is just a little repetition here. It never quite reaches the heights of his full-length work, but it's still awfully good. ***1/2 out of ****

ENDER'S GAME (Orson Scott Card) - October 15/13

Goddamn, what an ordeal. I can't believe this trainwreck of a book is acclaimed at all. It starts out with some promise, but the entire middle is completely and absurdly boring, with the ongoing emphasis on Ender's various battle simulations nothing short of interminable. It feels like at least 75% of this stupid book should've transpired in a five page montage-type stretch. And Card's inability to write convincing children grows more and more laughable as the book progresses, as the author transforms SMALL CHILDREN into grizzled, world-weary war veterans and, far more ridiculously, speechifying political pundits. Arrrrrrgh, it's just so damn dull. I skimmed most of the last 50 pages and I really think the only reason this is well-known is because of the admittedly nifty twist that some of Ender's final simulations weren't simulations at all but actual battles in which he was sending soldiers to their deaths. Other than that, though, Ender's Game is a complete waste of time. * out of ****

THE LIGHT IN THE RUINS (Chris Bohjalian) - October 4/13

Sigh. Bohjalian lets me down again. The first hundred pages or so of this almost disastrously overlong book are so uninvolving and dull I was seriously contemplating abandoning my rule and just not finishing it. Things do improve close to the halfway mark, as the investigation into the brutal murders grows kind of interesting and, in the past, the relationship between Cristina and the German becomes fairly decent. But Bohjalian is simply unable to develop the myriad of other characters to a similarly involving extent; it's so bad, in fact, that when the identity of the murderer is revealed, I was scratching my head wondering who this guy was. Bohjalian needs to stop trying so hard to write poetic, ultra descriptive passages and start focusing on fully-realized characters and an interesting, propulsive story. ** out of ****