My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.
Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain C
The Adventures of Huck Finn by Mark Twain C+
Sadly, these two books failed to live up to my recollections of them. Having read them so long ago, I only recalled a few episodes of Tom Sawyer, and even fewer of Huck Finn. Still, I expected to be swept away to life along the Mississippi in 1850's and taste an old fashioned summer. And, while both of these novels offered a picturesque impression of that place and time, they didn't quite succeed in carrying me back in time, as I expected them to.
As usual, that is on me. I haven't the patience I might once have had. But the truth is I found large sections of both of these books very tedious and ended up skim reading sections of both of them. Neither was the page turner I expected. And while Twain paints the locales, people, and time in great detail, no doubt from personal experiences, much of it very colorfully and keenly observed... I didn't find it lyrical. It often came off, as a catalog of items found in rooms, in little towns, and of the often outlandish habits of the people.
Perhaps what surprised - and bored me - the most, was the extensive passages of Tom Sawyer's make-believe story-playing, present in both books. I found it tedious, and, hard to swallow. Not just because Tom would've had to have been as well read as Twain himself to know all the people and events of history he uses in his make-believe, but because I don't see any child of his rather murky age going to the extent he goes to in his make-believe. Of course that wouldn't matter, if I found the telling of these imaginary adventures amusing. But I didn't. Not at my present age, anyway.
While Huck Finn's adventures addressed some very serious issues of that day, ones that are still relevant today, I was surprised when he resolved them with an unconvincing coincidence and Deus Ex Machina at the conclusion of Huck Finn's story. I thought it was a far too easy way out. The ending almost seemed to be a part of another book. A children's book.
All in all, disappointing.
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