Over the past few weeks, I've had quite a few books turn out disappointing. I worked at finishing them, but I didn't get very far before putting all three of them aside.
Boneshaker by Cherie Priest just never went anywhere. I tried, but I could not remain interested enough in it to want to find out about the secrets the characters kept referring to.
Then I tried two books that were recommended by io9.
First I made an attempt at Charles Yu's short story collection Third Class Superhero. the first story, which was the title story, was all right, but none of the other stories captured my attention. I've reserved a full length book of his called How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. I'm hoping it is better.
And finally today, I gave up on Ian McEwan's Solar. I wanted to like this one. It's gotten a lot of hype on io9, but it was so boring. I understand it needed to set up to protagonist (a +50 year old womanizing physicist on his fifth marriage, because those are so common), but get me to the science fiction. Get me to the action. Get me to the conflict other than his being secretly jealous of the up-and-coming doctoral student. And please get me beyond him dealing with the man his latest wife is sleeping around on him with (or may not be). I don't care.
These two books were ones I requested at the library. I've already devoured all of Charles Stross' sci-fi work. I need more to read.
So now I'm moving on to the other great resource for finding new authors: short story anthologies. The first is edited by Martin H. Greenberg, and so far he has always had good authors in his collections.
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