I finished two books recently:

1. Mr. Paradise by Elmore Leonard. I hated, loathed and detested every
minute of this book. I only finished it because I make a point of finishing
every book I start. Almost every character in this book uses hateful speech
and language almost all the time, in ways that are totally unnecessary and
utterly excessive. That just ruins the book for me. Perhaps such language
could be acceptable in what is otherwise a good book, but this book is
populated with shallow, one-dimensional characters trying to convince you
they're complex, and a plot that ranges from "meh" to "I cannot see how this
is either enjoyable to read or of any literary value other than the fact of
being words printed on a page." It claims to be a mystery, but you find out
"whodunnit" early in, and the rest of the book is "So what do all these
other secondary characters have to do with it?" And to top it all off the
cover art prevents reading this book in public. As a whole, the book is
trying way too hard to be all edgy and ghetto, like a late-blooming,
pre-pubescent suburban 14-year-old trying to emulate hiphop artists to
compensate for his insecurity in his manhood. Ugh.

2. That Old Ace in the Hole by Annie Proulx. This is not about plot, it's
about characters. The main character is taken firmly out of his element and
placed in the Texas Panhandle as a conceit to describe the life and times of
a town full of colourful characters, past and present. As such, the plot
sort of meanders, but by tacit agreement the plot is only there because a
novel needs a plot. It's all about the characters. I found the characters
rather unappealing so I did not enjoy the book that much, but I can fully
appreciate that Proulx accomplished what she set out to do, and did it very
well. Worth reading if you think you'd enjoy reading about colourful Texas
Panhandle characters. Contains brief, gratuitous, mildly disturbing,
slightly-but-not-too graphic spider scenes that induced cringing and loss of
appetite (they don't have anything to do with food, loss of appetite is just
one of my pre-panic symptoms), but did not cause panic.