Read possibly the best book I've read in years the other day. It was filled with descriptions like this one describing the birth of a mob:
"These were no longer people. A new expression buckled the crowd's features until their faces looked like fists."
And this one, describing the eruption of a volcano:
"There was a hushed half second like a gasp, a sense of some tiny but momentous change, of something cracking silently like a heart. The next instant, through that hidden crack beneath the surface, an oozing, millennia-old fire met dark, lucid water. And in that meeting, water and fire loved each other to destruction."
It was published under two different names: The Lost Conspiracy, and Gullstruck Island, by Francis Hardinge.
When I read things like this, I wonder how some of these other books got published… Because obviously somebody still knows how to write.
Mental Maytag 
February 16th, 2010 at 7:44 pm
I take the opposite view; with the plethora of crap writing that gets published, I wonder how the good stuff ever makes it.
February 16th, 2010 at 7:51 pm
Amen. Depressing, isn't it? I stumbled across this book, having never heard of it, and yet there is a lot of crap getting a lot of hype–how's a person supposed to ever find the good stuff. It makes me sad that there are probably a lot of really great books out there that I will never, ever hear about or get to read…
February 16th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Depressing, absolutely; it's sure taken the wind outta my sails in my own efforts to write a book (or anything else). Just yesterday I read that Kendra (the former Playmate now married to Indy Colts player Hank Baskett), who is about as dumb as a doornail, is gonna write a book. And she'll earn gadzillions more and receive a lot more interest and readers than anything that I'll produce (and no matter how well written). What the hell is the point of doing anything when mediocrity and crapola reign?