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Thursday, November 20, 2008

I've known that old joke from my cradle

How is it that some people can read a book, toss it aside and say, "Oh, I guessed who the bad guy was right away," when I can't figure it out until, like, a page before the heroine does?

Maybe they are good guessers. Or maybe they are just lying their heads off--a reviewer once said she had the mystery in MY book figured out right from the start. But my book was a romance. There wasn't a mystery there in the first place.

Anyway, I just finished Angels Fall by Nora Roberts, and enjoyed it thoroughly. I didn't know who the bad guy was until the very end, and I thought the whole story was very suspenseful and well done. Also, I liked the way the relationship between the hero and heroine developed. There weren't any Big Misunderstandings to keep them apart, just their own fears and attitudes. And the heroine was so traumatized that you could really understand why she did what she did, and why she wouldn't shrug off some of the weird stuff that was going on like a typical non-traumatized person would.

Then, as I usually do, I read a bunch of the Amazon.com reviews to see what other people thought of it. I don't know why. Maybe I want validation for my opinion. Maybe, after I read a book and like it, I am just spoiling for a fight and want to snort indignantly about these pea-brained morons whose opinions differ from mine.

All About Romance liked the book. RT liked it. A few bad spellers on Amazon.com didn't like it. Dear Author liked it, but had a problem with colloquialisms in the dialogue--to which I say, "Hey, lighten up. It's dialogue, okay, and people talk like that."

Not that you could convince some of the guys I have been working with lately. The biggest proponent of 25-cent words in that group has been over-sensitive since some parents in his community complained about a grammatical error he made in a letter to the editor of the local paper last year. But that's what you get for having a community full of college professors--relentless snarkism over grammar and other minutia.

I'm going to bed.

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