Bunch of reviews. Books 39, 45 and 46.

I think I need to give up pretense and admit what I know to be true:

I'm never gonna write the reviews I've fallen behind on. Mostly because I don't feel like it. Plus, it's been a while since I've read them, and none of them made that great an impression on me. So I'm going to be writing very short blurbs until I catch up, at which point maybe I can get back to the full reviews.

So.

39. High Fidelity by Nick Hornby

Loved it. Really funny, insightful, and I just love Hornby's style. Rob, much like Bridget Jones, is sort of a guide on what Not To Do to Keep a Healthy Relationship. He's a perfectly ordinary, selfish guy still stuck in his 20s, realizing that he needs to change and grow up in order to leave the rut he's dug himself into that he pretends he likes so much. The music talk is way above my head, but that shouldn't stop you. The songs themselves don't matter as much as the idea behind them, and Hornby is great at making the connections. The supporting characters are perfect, particularly the horrible music snobs that seem eerily familiar. I loved it.

45. The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub

Hmmm. It was just OK. Had the usual King staples: the lonely but surprisingly strong young boy. Absent/evil fathers. The mentally challenged sidekick. The batshit insane minion to the batshit evil villain. The quest. The Dark Tower connections. The beautiful, useless mother. Fun plot, but nothing extraordinary. Basically, Jack goes on this quest to save his mother. He can "switch" between our world and a parallel one called the "Territories", where his mother has a "twin" who is the Queen of this kingdom. She needs to be saved or the evil Morgan will...do something bad. It's a fun book, but the writing is honestly kind of clunky and long-winded at times. It gets kind of repetitive in that Jack never gets a break and you know he'll face a new horror in ten pages, but you known he won't die. It's an OK book. Nothing that outstanding.

46. Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy
Awful, overlong, unnecessary piece of crap book. Just painfully awful. It's 1500 pages of descriptions of guns and 20-second battles as an elite group of anti-terrorist soldiers train, then are called into action, they win, they come out alive and go back to training. There's a massively stupid and overarching plot regarding a deadly virus about to be released upon the world, but you know that absolutely nothing will come out of it. I don't know who the audience for this thing might be, or why the hell it has to be so damn long. I skipped about half the pages, to be honest. I'm not at all interested in descriptions of training sequences or weapons, nor do I want to read about 15 equally boring missions that you KNOW will turn out perfectly for the good guys. You know what it is? It's like reading a 1500 page detailed walkthrough of a videogame, only you never get to play it. It's horrible, long, tedious and just stupid. The dialogue is just PAINFUL, and none of the characters are interesting. Everyone in the background is a robot spouting off really horrible lines. There's 15 subplots that no one cares about. It's just awful. Don't read it. Really makes me wonder who the hell is a fan of Tom Clancy, and who can get through his monstrosities. Did I say it was AWFUL? I need to say it again.