L Reads Alex Cross #14: Cross Country

Well I’ve been pretty clear about my feelings for James Patterson and his Alex Cross books, if you’ve been keeping up with this blog.  If you haven’t, the general consensus is that most of these books suck, and I only read them now, because I stupidly committed to reading the entire series, long before I realized most of them suck.  The odd exception, the true stand-out good read does come along now and again, which keeps me in hope that the series and James Patterson with redeem themselves and make my sacrifice of valuable reading time worthwhile.

 

Cross Country, the 14^th Alex Cross book, is one that alternately had me rolling my eyes and sighing in disgust, and gripping on to the book in anticipation of what came next.  It is a book that has partially redeemed the series enough to get me wanting to read the next book to see what happens to Cross next!  And yet, it has also given me enough fodder to complain about in this blog post, making it an overall decent read.

 

For once, the story focuses on a new villain, and we are not forced to go over the same ground covered in another book all over again.  Mind you, Kyle Craig is still at large, and does pop up a few times, but the focus of the book is predominately on The Tiger, a Nigerian mass murder who Alex Cross is determined to track down, even if he must travel all the way to Africa to do so.

 

And so to Africa he goes, following up a tip given to him by the CIA who are either the good guys or the bad guys, we don’t yet know.  We do know that his CIA contact in Nigeria leaves him rotting in prison for three days, getting beaten to a bloody pulp.  Yup, things do not go well for Cross in this book.  It is blatantly obvious Patterson has an agenda right from page one, and that is to highlight the corruption and atrocities going on in Africa these days as Cross travels from Nigeria to Sierra Leone, to Darfur and back again.  We see the police corruption, the dismal jails and horrendous treatment of political prisoners, and the refugee camps teeming with displaced nationals who are regularly attached, beaten, raped and mutilated.  Cross is charged with telling their stories once he returns to America.  But he doesn’t need to, for Patterson has made this novel a poorly written political statement.  It’s a book to educate the under educated on the situation in Africa, just in case they missed the news.

 

And to make perfectly sure his readers don’t miss all the important information and knowledge he’s imparting, Patterson makes overly excessive use of italics, just to drill the message home.  *eyeroll*

 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a horrible situation in Africa, one that should be brought to the world’s attention in any way possible, I just wish Patterson wasn’t so clumsily bad at it.  In the hands of a better writer and all that….

 

Anyway, back to the story, when Cross does return to America, without successfully catching his man, he arrives to find his family has been kidnapped, and thus begins the nail-biting, gripping read that redeems the book enough to make me want to read the next installment, thankfully, there are only about five more to go.

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L

A Reading Year in Review and New Year’s Reading Resolutions

Happy New Year one and all!!!

 

Looking back over the previous reading year, I’m left rather unfulfilled.  My goal this year was to read all of the books on my TBR shelf with authors’ names A through C.  This led to some rather disappointing reads.  Or maybe they were just disappointing because I was forcing myself to read them, rather than because of any genuine interest I had to read those particular books this past year.  Book club picks which took up another huge chunk of my reading time were also hit and miss, though some of my favourite books of the year came via book club choices.  These were A Thousand Splendid Sons, The Book of Negros and Rush Home Road, both I still highly recommend if you haven’t already read them.  I was also in class for both Winter and Fall semesters this year, which took away precious hours of my pleasure reading time, and somewhere in the summer months I got an uncontrollable urge to re-read some past favourites, and while that was time well spent, I didn’t get very far with my reading goal.

 

Let’s recap, shall we?  My one and only reading goal for 2012 was to read the entire TBR A - C shelf.  While I made good effort through the first half of the year and cleared off about a third of the shelf, somewhere around July my enthusiasm for this project severely waned.  Add to that new acquisitions in the A – C author category, and that shelf is as full if not more so then this time last year.  Oy!

 

So looking forward into 2013, with the hopes of reading more enjoyable books than I did last year, what will my reading resolutions be? 

 

Well first, I’d like to commit to only taking the following out of the public library:

 

a)    Book club picks

b)    James Patterson Alex Cross books (cause I’m still trying to finish the series)

c)    J.D. Robb and Elizabeth Lowell new releases (cause they’ve been my favourite authors for too long to remember, and I can’t give up an old habit yet!)

d)    Books I currently have checked out or on hold (but not on my for later shelf)

e)    And anything else that should be on this list but can’t think of right now

 

The rest of my pleasure reading will have to come from my TBR Bookcase.  Hopefully I can whittle it down somewhat this year.

 

Oh, now I was going to make 2013 the year of revisiting beloved books, but I think just re-reading, when I have all those new books still to read would be far too overly indulgent, and would leave me guilt ridden, so I will re-read as the feeling takes me, but otherwise tackle those TBRs as much as I possibly can!

 

Till next time, happy reading!

L

 

PS:  C, you can definitely stop laughing at me now!  No, seriously, stop!