Not as Good as I Hoped

Caroline DePhillips

More stories from Caroline DePhillips

My Time at J-M
May 26, 2017

Not all books are very interesting to everybody. Sometimes there are book that do not really have that “wow factor” as other books. It could be because of the author themselves, the genre, the way the author wrote the book, etc. There are books that are hard to put down and readers want to them over and over again, and there are also books where readers can hardly make it through the first chapter. The book drags on and on, but doesn’t ever seem to get better. There are a few books I started to read that are like that. The Gunslinger, Diary of an Oxygen Thief, and Indigo, do not have that special wow factor some books have in my opinion. To me, these books drag on and on and I never want to even finish the first chapter no matter how hard I try.

The Gunslinger is the first book in The Dark Tower series by Stephen King. The series consists of eight books. I was very excited to read The Gunslinger. Stephen King is one of my favorite authors. I love everything from Misery to The Shining to the Bill Hodges trilogy. When I bought the first book of The Dark Towers series I was very excited to read it. I love most of Stephen King’s novels and short stories, so I thought this series would be great like all his other works of literature. For me, The Gunslinger’s first chapter was very hard to get through. It dragged on and on with no catch. Nothing caught my eye in the first chapter. The first ten pages were hard for me to get through. There was nothing about the book that made me want to turn the next page and continue reading.

Diary of an Oxygen Thief is a book that was written anonymously. No one knows who the author is. When I looked at this book online at places like Thrift Books, Amazon, Books-A-Million, and Barnes & Noble the blurb and the first page of the book is what caught my eye. I like to think that the blurb is the best part of the entire book. Even though is has a short blurb on the back of the book, it is very intriguing, alluring, and unique. Other than the blurb, the very first page of the book is another thing that really draws readers in. There is a lot of emotion in the first page. The main character describes his affinity for hurting women mentally and emotionally. One thing I do not like about Diary of an Oxygen Thief is that there are no breaks in the chapters. The book consists of three chapters and none of them break anywhere. The chapters are all continuous. I do not like that about books. I prefer books that have a break somewhere within the chapters as to books that never break in chapters. It is nice to have a little breather between chapters. The topics in the book bounced from one to the next with no flow between them. It was very confusing to read because of that. I was very excited to read Diary of an Oxygen Thief, but was quickly disappointed when I started to read it.

Indigo is a Graham Joyce’s first suspense novel. Whilst looking through the book section at Goodwill, I came across this book. The cover is what stuck out to me first. I thought it was a very nice looking cover with it’s blue and purple tints. Any books in the genres thriller, horror, suspense, or mystery strike an interest to me. Indigo is about how no human can really see the color indigo. The color coordinates with the power of invisibility. Jack’s father wrote a book on how to become invisible. One of the very steps to becoming invisible is to sit inside a closet with the doors closed for a few hours. I thought I was going to really like the book, but I felt like it dragged on too. Whilst reading it I found myself falling asleep or not even paying attention to the words on the pages.

I hope to give these three books a second chance in the near future. Maybe then I can understand them, get passed the first chapter, and get to enjoy them.