From: emzx@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books
Subject: Quicky Reviews of Quicky Books
Date: 11 Jan 93 10:03:26 EST
Distribution: rec
Organization: Cornell University

Recently, I had the opportunity to catch up on some reading...so here are some
brief reviews/comments:

_Fool on the Hill_, by Matt Ruff

	This fantasy novel takes place at Cornell University.  Written during
his undergrad days, Ruff does a decent job with this book.  Sometimes it's
painfully amateurish - the way he fills the pages with new characters, killing
off old ones.  He has an abundance of characters, so many that he doesn't
really have problems writing 400 or so pages.  I wouldn't say it's a great book
by any means, but for a first book, and written when he was as old as I am, I
must say that I am impressed.  If you attended Cornell and have not read this,
it's a must.  He uses the campus and the surrounding areas for the setting, so
it's almost unsettling to read the fantastic accounts that happen in the novel.
 In brief, the book is a modern-day fairy tale, but I stress that Cornellians
read this because much of the book's actions take place with Cornell's
traditions, such as Dragon Day.  One comment: I think Ruff owes much to Stephen
King.  I'm not sure if he read him or if he was a big fan, but when I read
certain passages, especially the ones of violence, their styles were almost
identical.
	So - read this book if you went to Cornell or know of the Cornell
community.  For others, read it if you have some time to kill.

_Sliver,_ by Ira Levin

	Written by the man who brought us _Rosemary's Baby_, _Sliver_ is a very
efficient book.  It's under 200 pages, but Levin's style is deceptively dense. 
You get the feeling that the book is going quickly, but he writes quite a bit
in very little space - instant characterizations, instant action.  This is a
very good book, and I recommend it highly.  It's fast, it's exciting, and it's
definitely worth your time.  The book is much about voyeurism - a woman moves
into a "Sliver" Manhattan building that is being watched by the owner in
secret.  There are cameras in every room of every apartment - and this man
watches it, watches her when she moves in.  The ending may be a bit
disappointing(I thought it was), but it's still worth it.

_Thinner_, by Richard Bachman(Stephen King)

	When I had finished reading _Thinner_, I realized just why Stephen King
used the pen name for his five books(_Rage_, _The Long Walk_, _Roadwork_, and
_The Running Man_).  It allowed him to write novels where EVERYONE, including
the main character that we may or may not love, get screwed at the end.  In all
these books, the protagonist either dies or gets screwed over.  Whether this is
satisfying or not is questionable - it certainly isn't cathartic, and I tend to
think King's writing tries to be almost all the time.  The story of _Thinner_
is a simple one - Halleck, a lawyer in a small-town(are there big towns ever in
King's stories?) community, runs over a gypsy but gets nothing but a tickle on
the wrist.  King Gypsy, the one with special powers, curses Halleck and the
rest of the gang to get hedious diseases, uncurable via modern medicine. 
Halleck's curse is that fact that he's losing poundage each day - that in a
matter of weeks, he's down from 250 to 118.
	The best character in this book is probably Ginelli, who is very
realistic to me.  He's the guy that I liked, much more than Halleck.  But
remember, EVERYONE gets screwed at the end in the Bachman books.  So no one is
safe.
	Worth reading?  Yeah.

_Harmful Intent_, by Robin Cook

	This is the first RC book I read.  The man is not a good writer by any
means of the word.  He has no mastery whatsoever over what John Gardner called
"psychic distance," the ability for writers to zone in on the level of
involvement between book and reader.  Everything is terribly 3rd person extreme
in Cook's book - he doesn't zoom that conscious camera in or out of the
characters' souls.
	What he creates is a very stylistically boring book, but he makes up
plenty for that with his medical knowledge, with his impeccable plotting, and
his extreme imaginative reality.  This book was perhaps the most realistic book
I've ever read, so much so that I didn't like the main character.  He was
bumbling, and silly at times, and nervous, all the characteristics that
superhuman characters(the likes of Dirk Pitt, Jack Ryan, to name a few) do not
have.  It made the book annoying at times because I just want to scream "Hey,
why don't you be a little bit better than that?"  But like I said, it was all
for the sake of realism, so I forgive Cook.
	The basic storyline of this book was a simple one - someone has been
tampering with the Marcaine(an anesthetic), putting in nasty little things into
it.  Consequently, the patients who are injected with the stuff go out in a
hell of a way.  The main character, the Doctor(his name escapes me), gets sued
for malpractice.  Then a series of interesting things happen, more blockades,
more things to make the action go faster and with more intensity.  The
character of Devlin O'Shea is a good one in this book.
	Worth it?  Definitely.  Don't think twice about reading this book -
although the ending may not be completely cathartic, just remember: it's all
done for the sake of reality.  And real it is.

_Bolt_, by Dick Francis

	What a read!  I love Dick Francis, even if he writes the same book over
and over again.  Mystery writer he is, horseracing writer he is, good author he
is.  Kit Fielding, the hero of _Break In_, stars in this one again.  This one
involved princes and princesses, a nasty guy named Henri Nanterre(talk about a
nasty name for a nasty villain), and plenty of action.  Fluff reading,
guaranteed satisfaction, nobody delivers it like Dick Francis.  God, I should
be his friggin promoter.

-- 
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"Start strong, end strong, and look for opportunities in the middle."
                              -S. O'Nan

Sung J. Woo, Secretary of The International Gridlocker Society

emzx@CORNELLA.cit.cornell.edu
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Newsgroups: rec.arts.books