Up until he got all "concerned*" about his teen novels not selling well enough**, I never really paid much attention to James Patterson. He's hugely popular and writes*** something like forty-seven books a year. Whatever.
Of course, once that teen novel thing put him on my radar, now I'm a huge fan of anyone who mocks him.
So this post (and all of the posts the author links to) made me very happy.
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*Read: Bitchy.
**Not because of MONEY, of course. No, because his teen novels are going to singlehandedly Bring Reading Back.
***Well, some of them are "co-written".
I must confess, I read the first Maximum Ride book. And it wasn't so bad (quick read, lots of plot, intriguing characters). So I picked up the second book, you know, to finish up the story. I'd say "mediocre" would be a compliment, but I finished it and got a copy for the library.
Who knows what made me pick up the third book. Probably insomnia-induced insanity. Thankfully I snapped out of it pretty quickly and put the darn thing down. It was not good. At all.
The worst part of it all is that Patterson thinks he's writing good YA books, but he's not. The writing is completely patronizing and the plot is flimsy, at best. Yes, the characters are teens...but that's all the books have going for them. Thankfully teens realize that. Almost all of the readers of the series (at least at our library) are adults.
Posted by: LibraryChristi | 17 March 2008 at 04:24 PM
Same here -- we have all of them, and I think I've checked 'em out maybe twice to teens. The rest of the time, adults have taken them. (And that isn't all that often, especially compared to his other titles.)
Posted by: Leila | 17 March 2008 at 06:10 PM