January Books That Did Not 'Make the Grade'

This month I read two incredible novels, each different and inspiring in their own way. I had hoped for more to join them with receiving a review but unfortunately, the following books did not have enough to 'make the grade':

No Animals We Could Name: Short Stories by Ted Sanders- Short stories, especially collections of them, are a hit or miss with me because with the amount of space they are allotted, they have to be able to capture my attention very quickly or I will lose interest. With Sanders' collection,  it was a miss for me.  I loved his poetic writing style and I can appreciate his strange story-lines but they had to be delivered properly and he did not execute them well.  He took some risks in formatting his stories like newspaper columns and breaking up paragraphs like a poem, but after having trouble with the first story and barely getting through the second because of the lack of strong delivery and inability to keep me interested, I had to pass on this collection.

The Photo Album by K.B. Dixon- What turned me off about this book was not the concept or the way it was written but the way the 'photo album' was structured. Maybe this is just me being finicky but if you are going to write a book about imaginary photographs and give each of them descriptions, at least do it in a way that that would appeal to the reader, do not have random photos of random events; make a story! There is no plot and it was frustrating, to me at least, to have to imagine each each photo for over 100 pages, each page with a new photo to imagine.(I would not have had a problem doing this if the photos were in some kind of order, however.)  I understand the author's intent on trying to have the reader be an active participant and to use their imagination, but this was going a little too far with the lack of story-line it provided.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain- The introduction was very strong, giving interesting facts about the differences between introverts and extroverts as well as showing how they both deal with different situations.  After the introduction, however, everything went downhill.  Cain goes into the history behind how people viewed introverts and honestly, it became quite boring.  I skimmed through the rest of the book to see if there was a glimmer of hope but there was not; the entire book would have been better off as a research paper because the introduction summed everything up so well.

Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury- As it seems to be with too many books, I love the idea behind it but the execution is poor, like Dandelion Wine.  I could not get past the first chapter because of the TERRIBLE flow of story line and the way Bradbury cannot decide if he wants his main character to speak in first or third person. Some may say I did not give this book the chance it deserved but when I cannot get through a section of the book I know contains vital information because of inconsistencies in crucial detail that is the author's fault, my hopes for the rest of the book are very low and I could only assume the rest of the book would have the same problems.

I hope you guys have enjoyed my January reviews and thank you again for your support!

~Shelly-Beans