A Fictional Book

Oops, I got stumped on the blog challenge with the "photo of me taken over 10 years ago" assignment, and now I'm a few days behind! I'll try to catch up tonight.

For now I will tell you about a fictional book. Wait, hold up a sec - is this supposed to be like, my favorite fictional book? Because I already did that one. The guidelines for this game just say "a fictional book," they don't specify whether said book should be one I loved, or hated, or learned something important from, or wanted to burn, or... whatever.

So I'll tell you about the book I'm reading right now. It's called Girls' Poker Night by Jill A. Davis, and according to the cover it's a National Bestseller. You might notice I didn't add periods to thwart search engines from finding this title or author on my blog. That's because I have such a strong opinion of this book that I want people to benefit from the wisdom of my experience.

Mind you, I'm not even halfway through the book right now, but I highly doubt my opinion will change by the time I finish.

In a word, Girls' Poker Night SUCKS. I guess the author is/was a blogger (yes, I tried to find her blog but what I found hadn't been updated since 2007), and apparently that's the only writing style she knows. Which is fine and dandy if all you write are blogs. Or maybe essays. Or articles. Or short stories. But definitely not novels! Novels need to be organized, they need to flow, they need a freakin' storyine most of all, and this book has none of that. The plot is more like an afterthought in a collection of page-long tangents that might ellicit a giggle once in a while, but are so distracting that by the time Davis makes her way back to the story, you've completely forgotten where she left off.

But if that was the worst thing about this book, I still wouldn't be as annoyed as I am to read it. The worst part is the gratuitous use of the phrase "I mean." (E.g.: "I mean, who writes like that?") And I'm not talking about dialogue here. There are sections of this book where Davis uses "I mean" in every single paragraph at least once. She repeats a couple other phrases to irritating effect as well, but that one is by far the worst. Seriously? Get a new catch phrase, preferably one that doesn't make you sound like a gum-smacking Valley girl tween. And, oh yeah, try to only use it a few times throughout the book, please.

You might wonder why I continue to read Girls' Poker Night given how much I clearly dislike it. And I guess the answer to that is it's like a train wreck where I can't make myself look away. I hope it gets better, but for now at least it makes for decent blog fodder!

(When I go back to catch up on the blog challenge days I've missed, I'm going to give the posts the correct dates, so if you care to look at them just go back in my blog history.)