Rebecca Reads » horror

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Rebecca Reid — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:07:07 +0000

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is creepy. Dorian Gray, as an innocent and attractive young man, in a fit of passion exclaimed:

How sad it is! I shall grow old, and horrible, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day of June. … If it were only the other way! If it were I who was to be always young, and the picture that was to grow old! For that – for that – I would give everything! Yes, there is nothing in the whole world I would not give! I would give my soul for that! (page 25)

And that is what happened. In the beginning, Dorian was fascinated by the painting: scowls (representative of his wickedness) immediately began etching itself on the painting, while he remained innocent and attractive looking in all respects. At times, though, the image of his soul disgusted him and he decided to abandon his life of sin, hoping his image would then right itself. But Dorian Gray found himself unable to stop embracing the life he’d created for himself, even when it disgusted him.

When I found out that Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was written in 1891, I was surprised. It seemed far more modern than that, since it deals candidly with issues of immorality. It captures issues of sin versus innocence. But such issues seemed appropriate for the late Victorian age, since it is questioning the existing morals and the social constraints of that rigid era.

“[Society] feels instinctively that manners are more important than morals, and in its opinion the highest respectability is of much less value than the possession of a good chef,” says Lord Henry Wotton at one point (page 119). Although I found Lord Henry to be a bit of a devil, his comments on society always seemed the most enlightening. I enjoyed his interesting perspective on society.

In the end, then, is Wilde’s novel a warning against debauchery (such as American audiences thought)? Or is it a catalog of Wilde’s own life (such as British audiences thought, even calling on Wilde to defend himself)? I found the discussion of original understandings of the novel to be very interesting. (See the Norton Critical Edition.)

My Favorite Part

The part I enjoyed most was Sybil Vane’s commentary on finally falling in love:

Dorian, Dorian. Before I knew you, acting was the one reality of my life. It was only in the theatre that I lived. I thought that it was all true. … I believed in everything. The common people who acted with me seemed to me to be godlike. The painted scenes were my world. I knew nothing but shadows, and I thought them real. You came – oh, my beautiful love! – and you freed my soul from prison. You taught me what reality really is. … You had brought me something higher, something of which all art is but a reflection. You had made me understand what love really is. … Suddenly it dawned on my soul what it all meant… (page 73-4)

In contrast to Dorian Gray, who only is going through an act throughout his life (the painting is the real Dorian Gray), Sybil’s relationship with another human being helped her to understand her own life. I found it tragic to see this sweet girl contrasted with Dorian Gray, and I honestly could relate to her epiphany of what love and life were.

The Graphic Novel

The graphic novel adaptation (done by I.N.J. Culbard and Ian Edginton) was, in short, horrible. It took me about 30 minutes to read this 125-page adaption and there was nothing intriguing about the story. It moved so fast that the tension and creepiness was nonexistent. I picked up the graphic novel because January’s Graphic Novel Mini-Challenge was to read an adaptation of a classic. Since Dorian Gray is about a painting, I thought it would be nice to see the painting’s changes illustrated. The picture was creepy but it changed so quickly that it didn’t have the same effect that reading a full novel about it changing had. A picture is not worth a thousand words in this version.

It horrifies me to think people will read the graphic novel and think “I’ve read that book” when they hear The Picture of Dorian Gray mentioned. I am not a fan of the concept of adapting a classic into a graphic novel to begin with, but this was even more disappointing than I anticipated.

The Bottom Line

The Picture of Dorian Gray made me uncomfortable. I don’t like creepy books, and I guess the sell-your-soul aspect was a bit out of my comfort zone.

It seems that many love Dorian Gray, though. Since I’m leading a book group about it tomorrow night, I’d love to know: What do you most enjoy most about Dorian Gray?

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Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Rebecca Reid — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:00:49 +0000

When I reviewed and analyzed Julius Caesar in depth back in June, I expected that I’d do the same with all the other Shakespeare plays I read while I have had this blog. And yet, I cannot “analyze” Macbeth. While I enjoyed reading Macbeth, it was not a “deep” reading experience for me. I’ve found I’ve been putting off writing this review because I don’t have such a deep analysis to give you. In fact, while I could reread it a few times, I’m ready to move on.

My first thought when I picked up Macbeth two weeks ago was, “Wow, this is perfect for Halloween.” Macbeth starts with thunder and lightning and three very spooky witches.

My second thought was that Macbeth was amazingly readable. I didn’t find myself stumbling over sentences (especially when I read it aloud with a bad Scottish accent, hehe), but beyond that the play itself is incredibly straight forward, more so than Julius Caesar was, which I read a few months ago. Unlike Julius Caesar, I didn’t need to read commentary to understand it or be fascinated by the setting Shakespeare created.

Macbeth is a Thane (a regional leader) in Scotland, and when he performs boldly on the battle field, King Duncan raises Macbeth’s level of power. Meanwhile, Macbeth meets three witches on the road who predict he will become king. This gives him ideas and when he mentions it to his wife, Lady Macbeth is determined to get that power. Murder, treachery, insanity, and more war subsequently follow.

To me, Macbeth was not as interesting a character as I inevitably found Brutus to be. Macbeth seemed blinded by the concepts of power, and yet he had some goodness in that he felt guilty. He hesitated, he feared, he lacked guts. Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, was truly wicked. It seemed to me that her influence was Macbeth’s undoing. While Macbeth was a pretty rotten sort, only Lady Macbeth’s wicked desires and influence convinced Macbeth to go through his ultimate acts of treachery.

I have to say Lady Macbeth’s horrid wickedness is the most interesting aspect of the play. I tremble and shudder when I read her “I want to be more wicked!” soliloquy:

“…Come, you spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top full
Of direst cruelty! … Come to my woman’s breasts
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on nature’s mischief!
(Act 1, Scene 5)

Nevertheless, Lady Macbeth is off stage for most of the play: Macbeth is center-stage. The included commentary by Harold Bloom discusses how Macbeth is every man: we, as the readers or watchers of the play relate to Macbeth’s struggle with the Jekyll and Hyde within him (page 177-8). I didn’t feel like I related to him at all. I felt he was flimsy and followed his wife blindly. It was a fascinating play but I did not like Macbeth.

Harold Bloom also has a lot to say about the sexuality of the characters and other sexual “suggestiveness,” for example, how Lady Macbeth comments on Macbeth’s impotence. It’s almost interesting enough to make me want to reread the play right now (except I won’t). When I do reread it, I think I’ll focus on the gender roles, for it is quite interesting.

Despite the fact that Lady Macbeth does fascinate me, the play is still rather disturbing to me. It is a ghost story: it is horror. I am not commonly a fan of those genres, so I should not be surprised that I wasn’t crazy about the supernatural elements. That said, I did enjoy reading it, and I stayed up late one windy fall night reading it aloud to myself with a horrible Scottish accent.

Some favorite parts: I love the scene when Macbeth is hallucinating, and I’d love to see it acted! I also loved the witches at first, but when they returned they were a bit too scary for me. (Yes, I’m a wimp.) And Lady Macbeth’s soliloquies (like the one I quoted above) were also spine chilling to me. *Shudder.* Macbeth is a play I’m going to reread someday, or that I’d love to see acted, despite the fact that (and also because) it is so chilling and fascinating.

Annotated Shakespeare

The version I read was a part of the Annotated Shakespeare series, and I have to say I intend to find my other Shakespeare plays in this same series. It was so fully annotated (by Burton Raffel) that even if I did not understand a line, the glosses on the bottom of the page would have helped me completely. It was annotated almost to a fault (it cluttered up the page with glosses I didn’t feel I needed), but I’d have to say I like it that way because I felt it was completely approachable. I’d suggest if you are intimidated by Shakespeare, you find this series: it will do you good. Each page had few lines, so while the entire play was 180 pages, I made rapid progress and therefore felt good about said progress!

The Annotated Shakespeare series also provides an essay at the end of the play, which is a chapter excerpted from Harold Bloom’s Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. Since I was intending to go pick that book up and read the chapter on this play, I was glad Burton Raffel saved me the step!

I read Macbeth for the Readers Imbibing Peril IV challenge.

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Dracula by Bram Stoker

Rebecca Reid — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:30:59 +0000

I always had a tender spot in my heart for Sesame Street’s Count von Count. He had his organ and a mysterious castle, and mysterious music. I love Toccata and Fugue to this day. (My dad can play it on the organ and it sounds so cool!). The Count was just plain cool.

Now that I’ve experienced the story of the original Count (Count Dracula), I have to wonder why Sesame Street wants to align themselves with such a morbid creature. I’d never read a vampire story before (of any kind), and I have to say, I really don’t think they are for me. There’s something about the dripping blood. While at first I was excited for an adventure story, by the end I was a bit disgusted by the bloody concepts. (I didn’t include a cover picture here because they all look disgusting.)

I was glad when Dracula by Bram Stoker had finally ended.

Part of my problem was an amateur narration via Librivox.org. It was just bad. I believe that a compelling story with well written characters and setting, or at least good writing, can stand out, even when it is narrated on audio by amateurs. In places, I felt Bram Stoker succeeded in writing with each of those. I just didn’t feel he did them all at the same time ever.

Is it unfair to judge this book by the narration? Yes. Maybe someday I’ll read the book too. But I’m observing my experience with Bram Stoker’s words as narrated by amateurs, and there was little in this experience that compelled me. I think it was more than the poor narration; I just don’t think vampire stories are for me. I found Dracula to be overly dramatic and morbid for my tastes.

I was very excited in the beginning. When Count Dracula welcomed Jonathon Harker to his home, I thought, “This is going to be good!” It remained “good” in my mind until the narration changed (until the end of chapter 5 of 27 chapters).

As was The Woman in White (which I read recently), Dracula is told in an epistolary manner. Some chapters have memorandums, some have journal entries, some have letters. But unlike Collins’ tale, Dracula’s various narrators all sounded the same. None of them had a distinct narration style (except Dr. Van Helsing, who wrote with uneven broken English), so when it switched from a woman to a man it all just sounded like Bram Stoker to me!

There were lots of comparisons in my mind to The Woman in White. In some senses, the black, bat-like Dracula himself (the image of the devil) was a foil to the white-clad innocent lady in Collins’ tale. Yet, Dracula, as a vampire tale, was so ridiculous to me that even now I struggle to put in to words the ultimate point of it. Dr. Van Helsing had a penchant for long speeches about right and wrong: I suspect I was supposed to come away from Dracula with a sense of pride in the fact that these people were able to do right.

Throughout the novel, there was a degree of confusion between what was chosen and what was forced. “The devil made me do it” often seemed a liable excuse! And yet, the ridiculous tale, the bloody “adventure” scenes, and the gothic settings made it seem overly dramatic.

It wasn’t even suspenseful to me, since I knew Dracula was a vampire. From the beginning, I knew what had to happen in the end. It felt tedious to me because it took forever to get there.

Someone is going to tell me that my poor audio narration “ruined” a wonderful book. I agree that my amateur narration made this worse: Dracula, for me, would have been better skimmed quickly. (I read the last chapter on Project Gutenberg because I was so eager to be done, and it was much less painful that way.) But I’m sure that those who love this story also like Edgar Allan Poe, horror stories in general, and dripping, bloody vampire tales. I don’t even like Halloween, so I’m sorry to say that this book probably would not have been a favorite for me, even if I skimmed it quickly.

These, however, are simply my impressions after listening to Dracula once. For a more professional assessment of why Dracula is worth reading, note Michael Dirda’s analysis in Classics for Pleasure (which I read after I wrote the majority of this post):

Dracula is … among the scariest books ever written. … The first third of the book could hardly be better in its carefully designed journey into fear, one that starts quietly and gradually ratchets up the tension. … Stoker modeled his novel after Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White, unfolding its tense narrative through letters and journals. This allows him to build suspense to a braking point, then suddenly change key, forcing the reader to squirm with apprehension. …

Today more than ever, Dracula seems a text built, if only half consciously, on sexual anxieties. …[O]ur fear of the vampire lies in his seductiveness. He threatens our values, our public socialized selves; he tempts us from the path of salvation.” (excerpts from pages 196-198, Classics for Pleasure)

So you, like Michael Dirda, may like Dracula more than I did. For me, there was nothing likeable about the devilish vampire, and the people fighting to save the world from his undead influence were flat, boring, and overly dramatic.

I suspect that I’ll stay away from vampire tales for the foreseeable future, but maybe Dracula is for you.

Now, I return to my question: why on earth does Sesame Street include a Dracula figure in their line up?!

If you are interested in reading Dracula and/or Frankenstein in October, FizzyThoughts and Age 30+ A Lifetime of Books are hosting a Dueling Monsters read-along. Go check it out!

If you have reviewed Dracula on your site, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add it here. Since I didn’t enjoy it, I’ve included as many reviews as I could find so you can find someone who did enjoy it!

Other Reviews:

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Stories by Edgar Allan Poe

Rebecca Reid — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:00:56 +0000

In my mind, Edgar Allan Poe is the most well-known Halloween-ish short story writer. To keep with the season, I reread some of Poe’s short stories. I enjoyed his stories when I was younger – I even rewrote “The Fall of the House of Usher” as a play for my high school’s Halloween “one-act plays.” But to my surprise, I didn’t love Poe’s writing or his stories’ subject matter this time around.

I’ve stopped liking Halloween and the concept of “scary stories,” but I was still disappointed by Poe. In general, I felt his stories were disturbing, not scary. While the gothic elements were certainly there, as they were with Washington Irving, I failed to like the narrators in Poe’s stories. The narrators were mentally ill. They lacked the social skills that would suggest them to me, as a reader, as people that I would like to meet. They told their stories in a matter-of-fact way that failed to resonate with me.

Besides, I felt Poe was extremely wordy and took forever to get to the actual story. I listened to most of the stories via the public domain Librivox recordings, and I was frustrated as I listened because they were so long and rather boring to me.

Nonetheless, my favorite Poe story hands down was “The Tell-Tale Heart.” This narrator was the most naturally mentally ill (the others, such as the narrator of “The Black Cat,” were just disturbed). As I listened to Poe’s stories, I started to mind his style less in general. They are disturbing, but not all that bad.

In How to Read and Why, Harold Bloom has nothing nice to say about Poe; he doesn’t say why he doesn’t like him, but he’s not complimentary in general. I don’t think that’s fair. I think Edgar Allan Poe is an acquired taste: the more I read the less he bothered me, and I think some like him and others don’t. I’m in the “not such a fan” category. But you may love his twisted little tales!

Seven-Word Reviews (with Spoilers)

The Tell-Tale Heart: Man murders Evil Eye; heart still beats.
The Pit and the Pendulum: Inquisition tortures man with pit and pendulum.
The Fall of the House of Usher: Man entombs sister alive; house falls down.
William Wilson: He killed his arch-rival: his own ghost.
The Gold-Bug: Gold-bug leads to buried treasure through skull.
Ligeia: Beautiful (dead) first wife possesses second wife.
The Masque of the Red Death: During plague, corpse crashes party; all die.
MS. Found in a Bottle: Ghostly crew sails man to world’s edge.
The Murders in the Rue Morgue: Superhuman violently murders; smart men solve it.
The Cask of Amontillado: Man bricks man in with wine cask.
The Black Cat: Attacking cat, man kills wife; cat screams.
The Purloined Letter: Genius solves mystery and finds stolen letter.

Others Similar to Poe

I kept comparing Poe’s stories to ones I’ve already read.

If you liked Poe’s stories of madmen, you may like some of Maupassant’s short stories. (For my discussion of my favorite Maupassant stories and for summaries, visit here.) Particularly, read “The Horla,” “Was it a Dream?”, and “Who Knows?”. I think they are great “crazy-man” stories. I personally think Maupassant did a better job at capturing the personality of a madman so that I had sympathy. I actually liked the narrators in Maupassant’s stories, while I can’t say the same about Poe’s.

If you like the gothic elements of “The Gold-Bug,” “Ligeia,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” or others, you may like Washington Irving‘s gothic tales.

If you enjoyed the mysteries in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter,” you may enjoy G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown mysteries.

Also, if you liked “William Wilson” you may like The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which I read in my pre-book blogging days. They have similar themes.

My Conclusions

In summary, I didn’t love reading Edgar Allan Poe, but I do think he deserves a place of respect in the short story cannon. His stories have a quality all their own.

I didn’t find Edgar Allan Poe’s stories “scary,” but rather disturbing. I’m not a huge fan, but I know many people are. I know I’m in the minority on avoiding “horror” or anything remotely scary. But I’m curious why they draw you into them.

Why do you like Poe’s stories? Are they “scary” to you? What brings you back to them time and again?

For the rest of October, I’ll donate 10 cents to World Food Programme for every (non-spam) comment I receive on any post of Rebecca Reads. See most post on Blog Action Day 2008 here. I’m also donating any proceeds (4%) from my Amazon Store.

I’m giving away books! Visit here to enter the contest.

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Spooktacular Hachette Book Giveaway (USA) and Dracula Giveaway (non-USA)

Rebecca Reid — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 13:00:03 +0000

Update: Contest closed.

I have been trying to figure out what I can do to celebrate Halloween on this blog, since I don’t often read horror novels or stories. Well, Hachette Book Group USA has solved that for me. They’ve offered me some boxes full of books for USA readers of Rebecca Reads. These are their “spookiest” books in honor of Halloween.

To add some fun for the non-USA readers, I’m also giving away one copy of Dracula by Bram Stoker to a non-USA resident.

USA Contest: Spooktacular Hachette Book Group Giveaway

Hachette’s box of books is only open to a USA address, no P.O. Boxes accepted. The winner will receive a box of all of these books:

THE HERETIC’S DAUGHTER By Kathleen Kent $24.99, 0316024481 Also available as an audiobook
ISOLATION By Travis Thrasher $13.99, 0446505544
THE 13 BEST HORROR STORIES OF ALL TIME By Leslie Pockell $21.99, 9780446679503
THE MONSTERS: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein By Dorothy Hoobler , Thomas Hoobler $14.99, 9780316066402
THE MYRTLES PLANTATION: The True Story of America’s Most Haunted House By Frances Kermeen $7.99, 9780446614153
GHOSTLY ENCOUNTERS: True Stories of America’s Haunted Inns and Hotels By Frances Kermeen $7.99, 9780446611459
THE TERROR By Dan Simmons $14.99, 9780316017459 Also available as an audiobook
DRACULA By Bram Stoker $10.99, 0316014818 Also available as an audiobook
WHEN GHOSTS SPEAK: Understanding the World of Earthbound Spirits By Mary Ann Winkowski $24.99, 9780446581189
THE HISTORIAN By Elizabeth Kostova $9.99, 9780316067942 Also available as an audiobook

I’ll select one winner for every ten entries, up to five winners.

Non-USA Contest: Dracula by Bram Stoker

Since I was recently out of the USA for more than a year, I know what it’s like to miss out on giveaways like Hachette’s! I really can’t send you all ten books out of my own pocket, but I do want to offer you something.

When I look at the list, the book I most want to read is Dracula by Bram Stoker. I’ve decided to send a lucky non-USA resident a copy of that book, from Rebecca Reads to you.

Rules

To enter, leave a comment indicating which contest you’re in (Hatchette USA or Dracula non-USA). That’s really all you need to do right now.

But you know what I really want you to do? Find another post on Rebecca Reads and leave a comment.

For the rest of October, I’ll donate 10 cents to World Food Programme for every (non-spam) comment I receive on any post of Rebecca Reads. See most post on Blog Action Day 2008 here. I’m also donating any proceeds from my Amazon Store. Spread the word: more people will visit Rebecca Reads, comment, and thereby I’ll donate more to the World Food Programme.

The deadline for this contest is Friday, October 24, 2008, 11:59 p.m. CDT. Winners will be selected via random.org and announced on Saturday, October 25, 2008 on Rebecca Reads.

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On Writing by Stephen King

Rebecca Reid — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:00:36 +0000

At age five, my mother was my scribe as I wrote my first book (“The Three Little Pigs”). Since then, I have wanted to be a writer.

I picked up Stephen King’s memoir, On Writing, because it seems to be a commonly recommended book for aspiring writers. I’ve never read any Stephen King. I am not often drawn to best-selling authors. (By best-selling author, I mean an author who writes a book every year that ends up selling millions of copies.) I’ve heard of Stephen King, of course. Unfortunately, I found little in his memoir about writing that helps me in my personal craft. I think his memoir should have been named On Writing Best-Selling Horror Novels.

There were a few gems in On Writing, most of them obvious. For example, to improve your writing, you need to make the time to write. (King suggests a goal of words, like 4,000 a day: I think “quantity” as a standard is ridiculous.) He also discusses the need to read good writing (obviously) and learn grammar so you can actually write (doubly obvious). However, for me, the most inspiring thing I learned was the realization I had every time I picked up On Writing: I don’t want to be a best-selling author.

My General Thoughts about Writing and Books

I feel that there is a big difference between writing well and writing a story. A superior novel (or short story) needs both aspects: just because an author has created a great story and written it does not mean it is good writing. Also, I feel very strongly that quality is more important than quantity. An author can write one book and be a great author; an author can write 35 novels and be mediocre (although they certainly have a great imagination and a knack for turning out books for publication). I also feel intended audience and subject matter is important to keep in mind when approaching writing.

Stories and Writing: Many best-selling books are great stories, but not great writing. For example, I think the Harry Potter series is a great story. I am in awe of J.K. Rowling for having an imagination to conjure up such a world! I have read the series and I enjoyed it. However, I do not think J.K. Rowling is a good writer. Her writing is contrived and repetitive. (I may be unpopular among die-hard fans, but I believe it is true!) I feel many of the best-sellers also lack the good story element: they neither are good stories nor contain good writing. I read them sometimes, but I read them knowing that they are not great. Sometimes I may be pleasantly surprised.

Quantity and Quality: The more novels a popular writer publishes, and the more frequently those are being published, the less likely I am to read their books. There may be some gems, and I’d love to give those highly recommended gems a try, but overall, I can’t stand the thought of writing that has been produced in such a short time: can we really call that quality? For an analogy, I think “quality” writing is like risotto: I know I can’t rush risotto. If I do, the creaminess is missing; to produce good risotto, I must stir it constantly for 30-40 minutes. To produce good writing, I think it’s necessary to polish it again and again. (King has four drafts of each novel. Yeah.)

Audience and Subject Matter: Stephen King is obviously a horror novelist. I guess he has found his calling in life, but I found even the summaries of his novels disturbing. I have no desire to think outside the box if that is the result! I would never be proud of what I’ve written, if that is what I’ve produced. Even 35 novels worth; even for millions of dollars.

For me in my writing, I’ve determined that I want to write quality letters, stories, children’s poems, and prose. I especially want to write for my family, friends, and others whom I respect. As Stephen King described his methods to arriving at his “success,” I realized I have no desire to write the next best-seller.

The Main Reason I Didn’t Like On Writing

The biggest reason I have no respect for Stephen King’s advice in On Writing is this one comment (encapsulating the above issues):

I’ve written thirty-five [novels] … On the other hand … there is Harper Lee, who wrote only one book (the brilliant To Kill a Mockingbird) … [names other authors who wrote few books] … I always wonder two things about these folks: how long did it take them to write the books they did write, and what did they do the rest of their time? . . . I’m probably being snotty here, but I am also, believe me, honestly curious. If God gives you something you can do, why in God’s name wouldn’t you do it? (page 118)

Excuse me, Mr. King? Did you just compare your horror novels to Harper Lee’s novel? How dare you?!

I guess this goes back to the fact that I’m not drawn to best-sellers. I have the stereotype in my mind that best-sellers do not contain good writing and probably lack good stories. Stephen King thinks he is being snotty, but I found it painful to read his comparison of his 35 horror novels to a masterpiece like To Kill a Mockingbird.

Obviously, some best-sellers are well-written and come to be considered “masterpieces.” I’m generalizing here. However, best-sellers, in my mind, are nothing compared to real writing. In Stephen King’s case, I’m sure he may be a creative (yet disturbed) story teller, but he is not a good writer (in my definitions). With that one paragraph, I lost the little bit of respect I still held for him. He thinks he writes like Harper Lee!

I may offend people. More likely, you will think I’m being “snotty,” just like Stephen King claims he was being “snotty” to criticize Harper Lee for writing only one book. But this is what I’ve learned from Stephen King’s On Writing: popular, best-selling authors think they are also good writers. That may be true sometimes, but generally, I don’t believe it.

What do you think? Do you expect “best-sellers,” in general, to contain “good writing”? Is an author a “good writer” if they have published dozens of novels?

By reading On Writing, I learned that if I want to write and I want ideas on how to write, I should read authors I respect. I hold no respect for Stephen King, 35 horror novels or not.

Have any good writers compiled their thoughts on writing? No, probably not. They have better things to do.

I was more inspired to write a few months ago when I read a masterpiece. I guess I’ll stick to reading masterpieces for my inspiration.

Other reviews (from those who probably liked it more than I did):

5-Squared (Amanda)

If you have reviewed On Writing, leave a link in the comments and I’ll add your link to this post.

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