Last night I was contemplating about what I should review this week. I have already reviewed and given two Unicorn Awards this month and I thought I ought to post something that didn't rate high on my scale (just to balance things out). The only thing I could think of that warranted a poor review was a book I read last year called, Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen.
I read this for my book club. I must say that the book started out wonderfully. I thought I was going to be reading a beautiful literary work about life in the circus during the early part of the twentieth century. It was engaging and entertaining from the get-go.
But then, Ms. Gruen had to throw in some graphic pornographic material which suddenly turned the book into a smutty hide-it-under-the-mattress type of book. It left such a bad feeling within, that I could barely continue reading it.
But I did, and I finished it and I was so bothered by it that I had every intention of writing the author and telling her she ruined a perfectly good book by inserting those useless non-contributing graphic sex scenes. She could have conveyed the same thing in a more tactful way and gotten the meaning across without the gross, sex scenes.
I never did write her, but nonetheless, I was ashamed to keep this book in my library. It's sitting the very top of my book shelf waiting for me to decide what to do with it. I don't want it anywhere my kids can have access to it. I did consider removing the pages of the graphic scenes as they have absolutely nothing to with the main story. The story is just wonderful without it. It's almost like the book editor said, "lets add some really graphic sex stuff and we'll make a few million more on this."
And I just found out they are making a movie based on this book. All and great, I say, as long as they leave the garbage out of it.
Therefore, Water for Elephants gets only the Fairy Award. Barely.
Note to Rating Scale:
Unicorn = Excellent
Fairy Godmother = Good
Fairy = Fair
Goblin = AWFUL!
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