Halls of the Dark Muse

I have never considered myself a book snob, or literary elitist because I have always been able to enjoy a wide variety of books, and not everything I read has to be a classical work, or something with a bunch of acclaim, or award winning, or really high-end intellectual.

I enjoy book discussions, and books which are capable of stimulating me or touching me on many different levels and that offer some deeper meaning or purpose.

I also like to read for just pure entertainment. I enjoy the occasional YA (Young Adult) book, I love Fantasy, and I have been known to read some campy horror, especially anything (except for Paranormal Romance) with vampires in it.

But over the years, and especially since my college days I have begun to read more and more classical works or even more acclaimed contemporary works. The quality of the books I read have gradually increased more and more over time and now it seems it has made me more sensitive to bad prose work which in the past I might have overlooked or just brushed off.

I have recently began reading two different books which I have been looking forward to reading for a long time, and was excited to finally be starting, and in both cases when I was only the first chapter or two into the book the thing that struck out to me the most was the glaringly bad prose and I found it difficult to actually get into the story.

Though I am not prepared to give up upon the books, I am hoping that as I begin to get deeper into the story the plot will capture my interest more and I will be able to overlook the prose work.

I also wonder if part of the problem might also be that my expectations going into reading the books were too high because of the hype, and just because I have been looking forward to reading them for so long.

Now because I am sure you will probably be curious, and if I do not say it now, no doubt someone will eventually ask, the books in question are:

The Silence of the Lambs, which because of my fractionation with Hannibal Lecter, the serial killer you love to hate, or if you are morbid and twisted like me, just plain love. I loved the movies and have been wanting to read the books for the longest time so I finally committed myself to doing so, and though I have not advanced that far into it yet, I am beginning to think the movies really were better than the book.

In addition to the fact that I find the book to be very poorly written, and well perhaps it is in part because of this fact, I find the character of Clarice within the book to be quite off putting.

The 2nd book is The Outlander by Diana Gabaldon which when I first picked it up I was on the fence about it because I feared it would tend to be a bit too Romancy for my tastes, but as many of you may know from some of my previous postings I love Historical Fiction, and I am particularly interested in all things Celtic, Irish, Scottish and so forth.

Now since my acquiring the book I have heard countless people sing its praises and talk about how great the thought it was, including people whom I knew where HF buffs like myself and people whose opinions on HF work I would generally consider to be reliable.

But as soon as I started reading I was left disappointed in the book and not in the least bit impressed. I am hoping it will start to get more interesting now, but I have my concerns and if I really don't like it, it is going to kind of suck since I have like the first 4 or 5 books in the series.