Beware the Bargain Bin

I've been prone to paying full price for novels in airports lately. In an effort to be more frugal, I stopped at a Borders on the way to my most recent flight and picked up several books from the bargain section. I will never, ever do this again ...


Mad House

Author: Clea Simon

I picked up this one because I have a weird love of first- or second-person accounts of schizophrenia. Coherent ones are a bit hard to come by, so I was excited to see this book purportedly about growing up with schizophrenic siblings. It was disappointing to find out that it was mostly about the author's own psychological issues instead.

I didn't rate it, though, because I imagine it could be quite useful to its intended audience, i.e., someone in a similar situation.



The Memory of Water

Author: Karen White

This book is about two sisters who fall out after the somewhat mysterious death of their mother. It's not really that mysterious. You'll figure it out, just as you will all the other supposed plot twists. What's a little harder to keep straight is who's currently narrating. Both sisters, the main love interest, and the cute kid all have very similar narration voices.

The author is also convinced similes are a marker of good writing, so expect lots of them. White is markedly less concerned with consistency, however. She brings up several times that the main character lost interest in sailing after her mother died at age 12. At other points in the book, she is mentioned as having sailed in high school. There are a few other, less significant, inconsistencies, but that was the most irritating.


MVP

Author: James Boice

A book about a sports star with a terrible personality, who does terrible things, and the terrible family that is implied to have driven him to it. I only got about a hundred pages in. It's utterly unrewarding.