Monday, March 12, 2007

A Walk to Remember

I was very happy with my psycho-thrillers as I decided earlier. I vowed not to touch James Redfield and other brain stimulating writings. These psycho-thrillers were fitting the bill perfectly. Stories of badly mutilated bodies in car trunks suit me fine!! As long as I don’t get into analyzing the dark side of human minds that would do such stuff.

And then, I screwed it up. Picked up Nicholas Sparks’ “A walk to remember”. He along with Erich Segal, Robert James Waller owns the patent for lachrymal glands of all the English reading human beings in the world. They normally pick 10000 words, take a tank full of tears, dip each word into that tank and then print them.

My wife can actually cry at the excitement of Beauty Contest winners. And with these books around at home, I sleep in a swimming pool everyday.

The story by itself is fine, in fact I would say too good even. Almost like ‘Bridges of Madison County’. Written so very well that, you will get out of home and fall in love with the first monkey you meet in the street. Love is so glorified. Am not against love stories as such, I like them and two of the authors mentioned are my favorites too.

But these stories appeal to you, as per your state of mind while reading. If you are really cheerful and happy and in love, such stories stoke your imagination so highly and you start falling in love all over again. But, if you are in a depressive mood, you really start getting irritated about such glorifications.

Anyway, the worst is that, the book turned kinda preachy. God, Bible, Letters to Ephesians, Book of Job and stuff like that. And that was precisely I was running away from. But, on the whole, Nicholas Sparks has a wonderful style of narration; he almost speaks with you and makes you a feel a part of what’s going on. In a right frame of mind, he would appeal to the deepest of your senses.

Finished the book cover to cover in a Chennai – Mumbai flight and now happily back to Jonathan Kellerman’s book called ‘Monster’. It’s about a prophetic loony house murderous inmate. And all his colleagues are big time killers. Now that’s my kind of story!!

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