Most disappointing book read so far this year...

would be The Golden Compass, which I was basically talked into reading (I do not enjoy that whole "Fantasy" genre of literature) after having suffered through the movie late last year.

Oh, you HAVE TO read the book, it's SOOOOO much better than the movie.

Ha! I think not. First of all, let's talk about the writing, shall we? Philip Pullman is not what I consider to be a a very talented writer, and that's putting it mildly. In fact, I found the entire story incredibly boring and the language dreary and uninspired, so much so that I kept falling asleep while reading it. There's nothing subtle about his absolute hatred toward organized religion either. I'm not a religious person, but I would have liked some shades of gray and certainly a better understanding of Lord Asriel since he commits a heinous act at the end of the novel. Otherwise, it just turns into pedantry and no one really enjoys that, do they?

Lyra

Next, WTF is Dust? Really, I mean really. I am not 12 and I have a degree in English Literature and I still don't have a freaking clue. And don't tell me that I need to "read the other two books" to find out, don't make me cut you. All that slogging through snow and fights with armored polar bears and kids being sliced apart from their "daemons" and I still don't have the slightest clue of what this is supposed to be. The closest explanation I found comes at the end of the book, which is that it is "original sin." To which I say, "Huh?" So I am supposed to trade in one abstract concept for another and just accept that and move on, right? Wrong.

You know, I feel a little bit the way I did when the second Matrix movie came out. The one we were all so excited to see because it was all going to make sense now. Instead, I wish I had just left it at the first one and not mucked it up further in my head (just give me the freaking blue pill and let me go back to what I think I know). I think they did the best job they could do with The Golden Compass movie given the source material, but since it hasn't even made back its production costs (reportedly $180 Million) at this point I am fairly certain that this is one movie franchise we are not going to have to suffer through. It makes Peter Jackson's accomplishments with the Lord of the Rings series all that more impressive too, but then they were adapting Tolkein and not some second-rate schlock writer with a very dim view of humanity.

I think I am going back to my favorite genre next, historical biography. Antonia Fraser wrote a book that's been on my reading list for some time, Love and Louis XIV, The Women in the Life of the Sun King. There's nothing quite like being transported to Versailles when it's cold and rainy and miserable outside...