Zorro by Isable Allende

When I was a child, I was in love with Zorro. He was so mysterious, so dashing, so very sexy. The kind of hero that could ride in sweep you off your feet and whisk you off to a better life.

When I was a teenager, I read a book by Isabel Allende called The House of the Spirits, and I remember liking the book quite a bit. I don’t remember the details, only that it captivated me, moved me, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the novel.

So keeping those two things in mind, I was really looking forward to reading Zorro. I thought it would be a fun read. Something adventurous and exciting. A perfect summer read. Or so I thought…

During the summer I generally read at least two books a week. Usually it’s one on Saturday, and another during the week.

Two weeks after starting Zorro, I wasn’t a third of the way through the book. I just didn’t care about the characters. Something about the writing made it feel so disconnected. Like someone was telling me a story, but they focused too much on unimportant details and used too many names and kept repeating themselves. It felt a bit like reading a history book, a very badly written history book. I was just dragging myself through it. I started skimming through sections, hoping to get to a more interesting part and it never happened.

As three weeks approached, and I started to feel sick thinking of all the other books I could have been reading during that time, I made one last attempt to get something out of this book and decided to just read the final section. After two days of that, and not reading more than ten or so pages, I gave up. I set the book aside and moved on to something else. I hate quitting on books, especially ones that I’ve spend this much time on, but it was a case of cutting my losses.

This was a big disappointment. I found it to be very, very boring, and it just didn’t read well at all. Snoozer, stay away from it. You want some Zorro, rent a movie. You want Allende, read House of the Spirits. But stay away from this.

Gave up – Aug. 17, 2005