Vegetarianism

I talked about "thin books" a little while ago, books that I find easy to read, filled usually with snappy dialogue, and contain interesting characters. But they fail to involve, to really absorb, to make me really want to know what comes next yet be afraid to turn the page because there will only be that much less story to discover.

So many of these books are produced by the same writers over and over that I've come to think of it as an actual style. They're like Dippin' Dots, the freeze dried ice cream we used to get at the mall when we lived in the South. The little pellets melt away in your mouth almost before you can get your teeth on them, leaving but a wisp of tantalizing flavor. Ah, the ice cream that could have been.

This isn't to say that they're bad books, just brain popcorn, some with a bit more butter or salt than the others. Elmore Leonard's books fit this category for me, as do Robert B. Parker's. Leonard's oft-quoted Ten Rules for Writers make a good deal of sense but like any rule, especially one regarding the arts, they're usually about as substantive as a small tub of Dippin' Dots.

For instance, the Leonard Rule of leaving out all the parts "that readers tend to skip." These are the "thick paragraphs of prose" that are the writer waxing "hooptedoodle." To me, a better rule is just, "Don't be boring." Or, as I once heard author James W. Hall say at a conference, "But I like reading those parts." If the text is well written, if it moves the story along or develops the characters, mostly if it advances the story, then I'm all for it. I read a book to read the book, not cherry pick shorter paragraphs or passages of dialogue.

Leonard is so well regarded that once upon a time I read a number of his books even when I became convinced that, for me, the work didn't live up to the hype. Enjoyable for what they were, but they left me longing for something more like a good, meaty James Clavell. Or at least a John Sandford, who is every bit as 'easy to read' but can sweep me away in a milieu that keeps me up at night turning pages.

Parker works much the same way for me. Judging from seeing him at conferences, he's a tremendously charismatic and intelligent guy. But his Spenser books, again, just roll off the mind like a bead of water down wax paper. The first time I stopped reading him was after the plot of the book was very clearly borrowed from Chandler's "The Big Sleep." A few years later, I went back to the beginning of the series and read the first two. These were better, but not all that different.

I started again, kind of, with his Jesse Stone series. I caught part of one a few months ago and the earth tone color palette, the performance of Tom Selleck as Stone, and the moody atmosphere had me mesmerized. I went to the town bookstore to find the first book: they didn't have it. I went across the street to the library: they didn't have it. I looked online for an e-book version: nobody had it. So back at the bookstore, I bought the fourth one in the series. (They had others but they were in that &%#@ inch-taller mass market format that I WILL NOT touch. So far.)

Again, thin as usual, but with a strange twist. The atmosphere of the TV movies and the characterization and portrayal by Tom Selleck of the lead character played in my head as I read the book. A few weeks later, I found the third book at a discount (remainder) store. Same experience.

My wife and I began watching the movies in their entirety. She's enjoying them a bit more than me, I'm afraid, because, well, the plots of the movies are a lot like the plots in the books. Um, they're a bit thin.

This is tough to do without spoilers, but I'll try: a character already knows something about another character; the state police captain tells Stone other things about other characters; Stone instinctively and correctly knows things about his cases (sure, I'll buy that he's that good). The end result, though, is that while there's an element of mystery there's not enough mystery solving to make the experience more satisfactory, more filling, more, I suppose, thick.

The movies will make me read the books, and vice versa. Almost always it's the other way around. At least I already know I won't be skipping any parts.