{"id":2675,"date":"2005-09-19T23:40:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-20T04:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=2675"},"modified":"2010-04-20T22:39:55","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T03:39:55","slug":"book-report-superstitious-by-r-l-stine-1995","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2005\/09\/19\/book-report-superstitious-by-r-l-stine-1995\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: Superstitious by R.L. Stine (1995)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trust me, I am doing you a favor:<\/p>\n<p><b>THE HUNKY IRISH PROFESSOR IS INHABITED BY THE &#8216;DEMONS OF SUPERSTITION&#8217; WHO, IF HE DOES NOT ADHERE TO ALL SUPERSTITIOUS RITUALS, BURST FORTH FROM HIM AND KILL PEOPLE GRUESOMELY.  TO FREE HIMSELF, HE MEETS, CHARMS, MARRIES, AND IMPREGNATES A GRAD STUDENT SO THEIR MALE OFFSPRING WILL INSTEAD BEAR THE BURDEN OF THE DEMON INFESTATION.  ALSO, THE &#8216;SISTER&#8217; HE LIVES WITH IS ACTUALLY HIS FIRST WIFE, SO HE&#8217;S NOT ONLY A DEMON-INFESTED USER OF INNOCENT WOMEN, HE&#8217;S ALSO A BIGAMIST.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>If you had any inclination to read the book, I hope I&#8217;ve spoiled it for you.<\/p>\n<p>I bought <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0002254425\/ref=lpr_g_1\/104-6658879-3154331?v=glance&#038;s=books&#038;n=507846\" target=\"_new\">this book<\/a> for $2.50 at the Y book fair a month or so back because I&#8217;ve read more horror in the last few years (see also my reviews of King and Koontz).  I knew R.L. Stine&#8217;s name as a young adult horror writer and thought he&#8217;d be worth a try in adult fiction.  Blech, was I wrong.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s wrong with the book?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Stupid, ill-drawn, underused characters, many of whom are included <i>for no reason<\/i>.  Why does the book spend so much time on the small town cop in over his head?  No freaking reason.\n<li>Sex scenes that are graphic, but pointless, and are also ill-drawn.  Matter of fact, Sara eats an orange, Sara has the best sex in the world with Liam.  How do you know?  The third person, limited omniscient narrator tells you so!\n<li>Sing-song narrative voice.\n<li>Pointless details.  Whole chapters that could have been and should have been cut because\n<li>Repetition.  It&#8217;s\n<ul>Chip&#8217;s hand.<br \/>\n    Chip&#8217;s hand.<br \/>\n   Chip&#8217;s hand.<\/ul>\n<p>   If you don&#8217;t get the point from this startling stylistic device at the end of the chapter in which the hand being Chip&#8217;s hand is revealed, on the first page of the next chapter, we get those same three sentences:<\/p>\n<ul>Chip&#8217;s hand.<br \/>\n    Chip&#8217;s hand.<br \/>\n   Chip&#8217;s hand.<\/ul>\n<p>   To spice it up, a couple paragraphs later, it&#8217;s<\/p>\n<ul>Chip&#8217;s hand, Chip&#8217;s hand, Chip&#8217;s hand.<\/ul>\n<p>   We get the freaking point.<\/p>\n<li>Meaningless cliffhangers that&#8211;surprise!&#8211;turn out not to be what accompanies the crashing mental chord imagined by Stine as he ended each chapter.  The man, falling from gunshot wounds?  Playing a joke.  The hot-breathed beast with red eyes that leaps out of the darkness?  A golden retriever whose owner insists he&#8217;s never done that before, nor will it again, because it only exists as the segue between one overblown, mostly meaningless chapter and the next.<\/ul>\n<p> Don&#8217;t get me wrong, I didn&#8217;t <i>hate<\/i> this book.  I merely feel contempt for it.  I read several passages to <a href=\"http:\/\/angelweave.mu.nu\" target=\"_new\">my beautiful wife<\/a> as I was reading it, and the threats she made frightened me much more than anything within this book.  As a matter of fact, the book is only tolerable because it&#8217;s so bad and because it didn&#8217;t take that long to read once I actually forced myself to sit down and read more of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trust me, I am doing you a favor: THE HUNKY IRISH PROFESSOR IS INHABITED BY THE &#8216;DEMONS OF SUPERSTITION&#8217; WHO, IF HE DOES NOT ADHERE TO ALL SUPERSTITIOUS RITUALS, BURST FORTH FROM HIM AND KILL PEOPLE GRUESOMELY. TO FREE HIMSELF, HE MEETS, CHARMS, MARRIES, AND IMPREGNATES A GRAD STUDENT SO THEIR MALE OFFSPRING WILL INSTEAD [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6196,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions\/6196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}