Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Waller book gets dropped off at the Hotel reading room

I wrote about buying a "bag of books for $1.00" in Sunday's Women's Club Book Sale. Only one was fiction, James Waller's Slow excrutiating waltz somewhere in Iowa. PW gushed: "Only little old ladies with blue permed hair need be wary of Waller's second foray into fiction: this time around, his saccharine tale of middle-aged lovers gets to sex scenes right away. When Michael Tillman, an Iowa economics professor with a rebel streak, first lays eyes on his colleague's wife, Jellie Branden, he immediately wonders ``how it would feel to grab a big handful of her hair and bend her over the dean's kitchen table.'' A few pages later--still in the first chapter--he is fantasizing about stripping Jellie naked and flying to the Seychelles."

As a male romance writer, Waller just doesn't cut it. After an excrutiatingly boring page or two (autobiographical apparently) about his basketball career in college, I decided even for $.20 this book had no merit. Save your time to cut your toe nails or clean up dog poop from the yard.

So in search of a stronger internet connection today, I left it off in the reading room of the Hotel Lakeside. It's in excellent condition. I don't think any of the previous owners got past his huge ego and male parts.

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