The Grouchy Editor

by Urban Waite 

Dear Stephen King: 

You suck.  And I hate myself, too, because twice this summer I’ve suckered in to your brain-dead book recommendations.  This is what you wrote about The Terror of Living:  “This is one of those books you start at one in the afternoon and put down, winded, after midnight.”  Uhh … no.  This was one of those books I put down after 124 pages, exasperated, wondering if perhaps there might not be some merit in book burnings, after all.  “A hell of a good novel, relentlessly paced and beautifully narrated,” you gushed.  Were you referring to the gripping scene in which first-time novelist Waite describes a bad guy as “the man with the funny smile” – eight times in two pages?  Were you referring to the so-bad-it’s-funny dialogue, which reminded me of the so-bad-it’s-good movie, The Room?  Or perhaps you enjoyed Waite’s labored, pretentious attempts to establish a macho “style,” in which no sentence fragment goes unloved.

This is a dreadful book, amateurish and dull beyond belief.  The title alone should have scared me away.  And Mr. King, do they pay you to write these glowing blurbs for young authors?  If so, maybe next time you could actually read the damn book.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Jason Zinoman

If you are a horror-movie fan, and I am certainly one of them, Zinoman’s biography of the men behind Hollywood’s second “golden age” of horror, the 1970s, is an essential read.  Shock Value is a nice blend of explaining what makes guys like Wes Craven and George Romero tick – and how those ticks show up in their movies.  But I’m sure every fright-flick aficionado will have nitpicks with Zinoman’s critique, and so here are two of mine:  Zinoman points out that most of these directors flamed out after initial success, but he doesn’t offer much of an explanation for why that happened.  William Friedkin (The Exorcist), Tobe Hooper (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), Romero (Night of the Living Dead) … what the hell happened to these guys?

My other complaint is more subjective.  I happen to believe that Bob Clark’s Black Christmas was the most terrifying movie of the decade, and that John Carpenter (who, incidentally, comes off as a Grade-A jerk in this book) shamelessly stole concepts and techniques from that movie to use in his blockbuster Halloween.  Zinoman touches on this directorial “borrowing,” but inexcusably devotes little text to Clark’s woefully underappreciated, eerie masterpiece.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

  by Janet Evanovich

More of the same from the Evanovich moneymaking machine that is the Stephanie Plum series.  There are some very funny bits involving the goofball “Mooner,” but otherwise this entry is interchangeable with the 15th book, or the 14th, or the 13th ….

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Spencer Quinn

Some people never seem to learn – especially me.  I’ve been burned before by Stephen King book recommendations, but I didn’t let that stop me from suckering in after reading this King description of Dog on It:  “Yeah, it’s cute, but not too.  There’s a real mystery here, and great suspense as well.” 

This detective story narrated by a dog is cute alright – way cute, and I say that even though I like dogs.  As for the alleged “mystery” and “great suspense,” well, I suppose so, if you are still into the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew.  Dog on It is the first book in a series about the crime-fighting duo of Chet (the dog) and Bernie (the human), and it’s fitfully amusing, but that’s all.

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    by Shirley MacLaine

It’s tough to critique a book like this because, as a reviewer, you can’t really be “objective.”  You must commit yourself:  Do you buy into the author’s theories of astral planes, UFOs, and reincarnation?  Or do you think it’s a bunch of superstitious nonsense?  If you pooh-pooh the material, you can be accused of being closed-minded.  If you agree with the author’s claims, then you might be as loopy as she is. I happen to think there is something to this “higher power” business.

Out on a Limb is structured in two parts:  Part of the book details movie star MacLaine’s love affair with a married politician; the second and larger portion of the memoir depicts her journeys around the world, meeting with like-minded people in search of deeper meanings to life.  The love affair grows tiresome to follow, but MacLaine’s discoveries about past lives, karma, and yes, UFOs, are sometimes fascinating, sometimes annoying.

Did she convert me to her beliefs?  Not entirely.  But I won’t dismiss her concepts as groundless, either.  As a friend of MacLaine’s says of her spiritual quest, “It can drive a guy nuts, but it made me look deeper, too.”

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

   by Victor Hugo

As a rule, I avoid abridged versions of the classics.  If Tolstoy or Melville wanted me to read a 900-page novel, why on earth should I trust some modern-day editor who’s pared the thing down to 550 pages?  However … after slogging through 1,200 pages of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, I’m changing my mind – a bit.  That’s because Hugo pauses – often – in his engrossing tale of the cursed ex-convict Jean Valjean for interminable digressions about 1) the history of the Paris sewer system; 2) the origins of French slang; 3) convents; 4) the battle of Waterloo.  At times, I wondered if Hugo concocted the story of Jean Valjean and company merely as a pretext to interject his own musings on politics, religion, and philosophy.

But there’s a reason we call certain books “classics,” and Les Miserables certainly has memorable characters and a powerful story.  Hugo does resort to narrative cheats – unlikely coincidences, characters who suffer convenient memory lapses – but his writing is so sincere and heartfelt that when I got to the final pages I experienced something rare for me:  goose bumps.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

     by Timothy Schaffert    

Ordinarily, if you tell me that a book is “charming,” “lyrical,” and set in small-town Nebraska, I’ll ask you to hand me the TV remote on your way out the door, but Coffins is an exception.  Schaffert’s plot is slight and a bit far-fetched:  A cornfield community gains notoriety when the national media descends to cover an alleged child abduction, while a publishing house chooses the same burg to surreptitiously print a Harry Potter-like book.

It’s the characters who matter in this novel, in particular three generations (grandmother, grandson, and his teen niece) of one family.  They reassure us that in 2011 Mayberry might be battered, bruised, and a bit less innocent, but its wholesome values survive – at least in one Midwestern town. 

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

by Samuel Beckett

This was named the “most significant English language play of the 20th century” in a poll of 800 British playwrights, actors, directors and journalists.  Do I agree with that?  Probably not.  I think that Godot’s exalted “significance” stems from the fact that Beckett’s play is open to so many interpretations.  Does the never-seen title character represent God?  Of the four main characters, does one pair represent capitalism and the other socialism?  Is the entire thing an allegory for the Cold War?  Who knows?  Apparently, Beckett didn’t confirm or deny any of those theories.

But that’s part of the charm of this two-act gem – you can read practically anything into it, and probably will.  The story itself struck me as an absurdist Of Mice and Men:  Two vagabonds spend consecutive days waiting on a country road for the mysterious Godot, diverting themselves (and us) with a mixture of fatalistic philosophy, slapstick comedy, and Alice in Wonderland wordplay.

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

  by Camilla Lackberg

Story:  A writer returns to her hometown on the Swedish coast and stumbles into murder and romance.

Good Stuff

• Lackberg writes sharp characters, most of whom seem real, flawed, and quirky.
• The little burg of Fjallbacka, which bustles with busybodies and buried secrets, is a fun setting for a mystery.
• The identity of the killer surprised me.
• Princess has a believable plot and denouement – not bad for a first-time novelist.

Bad Stuff

• • Yet another crime novel in which a key plot point is childhood sex abuse.  Whatever happened to the good old days, when routine peccadilloes like blackmail and ruined reputations were essential ingredients?  I guess they were usurped by the serial-killer novel, which has now given way to omnipresent child molesters.
  • There is an abundance of continuity slips and groan-inducing clichés.  From page 90: “It was so quiet in the room that you could have heard a pin drop.”  Did Lackberg actually write that, or was it the English translator’s contribution?
  • Stupid Cop Syndrome, in which the amateur heroine makes crucial discoveries that the cops, inexplicably, overlook.  Sure, it’s possible, but no, it’s not plausible.

Report Card:  B

© 2010-2025 grouchyeditor.com (text only)

 by Aleister Crowley

Crowley, denounced as “the wickedest man in the world” by some contemporaries, was an early 20th-century occultist, philosopher, and writer who apparently got off on ruffling societal feathers.  Diary, Crowley’s first novel, chronicles a year in the life of young Peter Pendragon, heir to a fortune who discovers two things in life that seem worthy of his love:  heroin and a girl named Lou.  In a wild journey that might make Hunter S. Thompson envious, Peter and Lou cross Europe in a heroin- and cocaine-fueled daze, crash back to earth, and are rescued by the charismatic “King Lamus,” the proponent of a religion called Thelema.

Diary is dated, bogged down by purple prose and – for anyone who’s read Bret Easton Ellis – not particularly shocking.  And yet, despite Crowley’s florid writing and the mothball-like feel of events, the novel does raise provocative questions.  Per this “wicked” author, life is full of paradoxes, happiness is something you must work at, and you should always be true to yourself.  

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