u/luckyjim1962

Let me state a few bona fides first: I have been a very happy Michael Connelly fan for 25 years, ever since I read a glowing piece about the author, noir, and Los Angeles by Joyce Carol Oates that appeared in The New Yorker magazine on January 29, 2001. I started reading Connelly's books then, I went back in time to read the earlier books, and I've read every subsequent books in all his series. What's remarkable about Connelly's prolific output is that he has pushed the bar up over and over again. I was absolutely stunned by the 2017 release of The Late Show, for example, and while not every book is fantastic, they are of such consistent high quality that I am never disappointed.

Until now. I read Ironwood last week, and it reads like an average, run-of-the-mill TV movie-style novel. There is no real bite. There is very little in the way of real suspense, and there are at least two outstanding opportunities to make the suspense unbearably suspenseful: with the storyline about the serial killer and the denouement of the main plot line. Both are essentially resolved and dropped almost without warning and unceremoniously. (The final bit, where Stilwell stands his ground at the end of the main plot, was so abrupt I thought the book had been misprinted.)

No doubt I'll continue to read Michael Connelly until he stops writing, and I'll reread many of the Bosch books over the rest of my lifetime. He has earned my loyalty, and his place in the history of genre fiction is assured. But Ironwood is simply not a good novel. It's not even a very good reading experience, and Connelly novels are always good reading experiences.

I was at the Rio for the duration of the WSOP in 2006, and thought I'd share some pictures from the 42 days. Apologies for the fairly low quality; I think I used my Palm Treo for most of them. Poker was flying high then!

Found this gem of a quote in Gillian Beer's Penguin Classics introduction to Persuasion:

Nobody knew better [than Jane Austen] that Anne Elliot would have lived and made herself a worthy life anyhow, even if Captain Wentworth had not been faithful; but there would have been a shadow upon that life—the sky would have been overcast, a cloud would have hung between her and the sun; and as step by step we get to see that her lover is faithful, the world cheers and lighten for us, and we recognize the divinity of happiness.

Beer is quoting Margaret Oliphant; a footnote says the quote comes from her 1882 book, The Literary History of the Nineteenth Century.

Christopher Hitchens, writing in his memoir Hitch-22, relates a funny bit by Salman Rushdie (who is by all accounts a funny man):

...there came a time when someone arrived late at a dinner party, complaining of having been stuck at an airport with nothing to read but a Robert Ludlum-style novel. This didn’t seem worth pursuing until the complaint was refined somewhat: “I mean it’s not just that the prose is so bloody awful but that the titles are so sodding pretentious… The Bourne Inheritance*,* The Eiger Sanction*, all this portentous piffle.” Again, not a subject to set the table afire, until someone idly said they wondered what a Shakespeare play would be called if it were Ludlum who had the naming of it. At once Salman was engaged and began to smile. “All right, Salman: 'Hamlet' by Ludlum!” At once—and I mean with as much preparation as I have given you—The Elsinore Vacillation. Fluke? Not exactly. Challenged to do the same for 'Macbeth,' he produced The Dunsinane Reforestation with hardly a flourish and barely a beat. After this it was plain sailing through The Kerchief Implication, The Rialto Sanction, and one about Caliban and Prospero that I once knew but now can never remember.*

I particularly love The Elsinore Vacillation. That's brilliant.

Edited: Fixed (I hope) my egregious italicization and titling errors.

I wrote this in reply to an OP complaining about the rudeness of this sub, and that post was deleted, but I think this has some value as a post on its own, as an entry point for this subreddit:

Copywriting is difficult to do, and even more difficult to do well, and more difficult still to make real money from. Too many people approach the challenge by asking ignorant questions (“How do I get clients with zero experience?” “How long will it take me to make this into a viable business?”) and by not taking the time to do what anyone trying to learn something new should do (research on their own, which is trivially easy and very profitable). Their queries reek of ignorance and they, unwittingly perhaps, insult people who have devoted years to learning how to write, learning how to sell and market, learning about business strategy, etc.

Becoming a successful copywriter requires at least a few years of effort. When people ask questions like [the OP's], people doing this work automatically (and generally correctly) think the poster is not willing to make a real effort. If you’re not willing to make a real effort, you are doomed to fail. (It’s also extremely offputting when people ask questions that have been asked and answered ad nauseum.)

Think of your journey into this line of work as a two- to three-year project at a minimum. Do your own research, and when you hit a wall, ask an informed, intelligent question that shows you’re serious and you’ve done your homework. I think then you’ll get a useful response, free of venom.