Abracadabra!!

I have just spent the last two weeks trying to read a book. It isn’t that my eyes are failing or that I am having trouble with some of the larger words, it is just that it is so…so…I guess the word I am looking for is boring. It is the sequel to “A Canticle For Leiboitz” which I have loved from the first time that I read it. Over the years I have read it more than a few times and I always wished that Walter Miller Jr. had written a sequel. I just can’t describe my joy when I saw the sequel “Saint Leibowitz and The Wild Horse Woman” on my son’s bookshelf. He loaned it to me with two other books that he thought that I might enjoy and I began to read the Leibowitz book as soon as I got it home.

What a piece of shit! If the name on the dust jacket weren’t the same on both, you would never know that the same author wrote both books. How could you write a book that is loved by millions and then follow it up with this thing that lets you down on so many levels? I tried to read it, oh God how I tried! I managed to wade about half way through, hoping that it would get somewhat interesting, but it was like watching painted grass grow. I could understand it if good old Walter let the fame go to his head and he began experimenting with mind altering drugs, and had his mind altered to that of a moron. I was the one on drugs when I read the first book, and that was in Mr. Stapleys high school English class. Perhaps if I were on drugs now the Wild Horse Woman would have made sense, or even been a little entertaining.

Well, I gave up trying to read this thing. If it were my book I would burn it so that no one else would waste even a minute of their precious life. I don’t have as much time left on this planet as I would like to have, but I know that I just pissed away some of it. Oh well, lesson learned and I guess it just goes to show you that you can’t go home again. More to the point, you can’t revisit a post apocalyptic world after the second nuclear holocaust.

The other two books are books one and two of a series, “The Magicians” and “The Magician King” by Lev Grossman. I am about five pages into the first book and it has already given me far more joy than Walter did in half of his book. I will admit that isn’t really saying very much, but I am going to recommend this book to anyone who has a bad taste left in their mouths by a horrible book or even a really bad blog. Not mine of course.

Well, considering the fact that this blog was supposed to be about magic, I think it turned out not too bad.

Abracadabra!!