Am I getting crankier?

When something happens once you tend to think of it as an anomoly.  When it happens again, it's just a coincidence.  But when it happens for the fourth or fifth time, IN A ROW!  you tend to realize (unless you are dumb as a stump) that it might just be YOU.

Here's my predicament:

Lately, every single book I read, well, I end up hating the ending.  Hate. the. ending.  All summer long this has happened.

I think that trashy ass 50 shades book jinxed me.  And everything I have read since I just have not been happy with the endings.

I decided to read the Game of Thrones series since I have been watching the HBO series.  I love watching that and wanted to see how they align with the books.  The books are long and in parts, quite tedious.  Think Harry Potter long and James Michener tedious and you will have an idea of what I mean.  I enjoyed them.  And I was just going to read the first two because that's all the seasons they have shown on HBO and I didn't want to get ahead and then be all "yeah, yeah, I know what's coming next" when it next airs.  But I didn't do that.  I kept reading.  Let me just interject here that each of the first two books have been pretty well represented entirely in each of the first two seasons.  So I expect to see book 3 in season 3 whenever that comes around again.

Anyhoo, since I am now over 50 and my memory has gone to shit, I figured I would go ahead and read book 3 and maybe I would still be surprised by things in season 3.  But book 3 was so exciting that I went ahead and read book 4.

Now, at the end of book 4 there is a little afterward from the author talking about how he was wrapping up the series and it was just too much for one book, so look for book 5 to complete the series since he couldn't fit all these millions of characters in one book, etc, etc.

So, then I couldn't stand it and I got book 5.  Supposedly, the very end of the whole series.  And let me say here, Thank God I got these on my Kindle!  I picked them up and looked at them at B&N one day, and if you called them HUGE!  you wouldn't be wrong.  These books are each so big they could be referred to as tomes.  I could not imagine lugging these dictionary sized books around with me.

Book 5 is going to wrap up all the mysteries for me!  It will answer all my questions!  I will get to find out what happens to each and every one of the characters I have invested so much time into!  (yes, I know that ended that sentence in a preposition. Sue me.)

Didn't happen.

Nope.

Not even a little bit.

Well, except for the ones that were out right killed and then you knew you had been really screwed. That's how I feel when I am given a character that is beloved and I am all wrapped up in their story and BAM!  out of the clear blue he/she gets whacked.  Seriously?  We spent 5 giant books worth of words describing this character's feelings, how he/she grew up, matured and was looking forward to the next part of his/her life and there you are.  I never saw that one coming.  I didn't even think "well played, I was certainly surprised by that one!"  Nope.  It was more like "well, out of the top 10 characters in this series of books with casts of thousands, half of the top 10 just were discarded with no other news of their future, demise, or whatever and the other 5?  Dead?"

Not loving the wrap-up here, Mr. George R. R. Martin.

I also recently re-read The Thorn Birds for a book club.  Didn't really love the ending there, either.

Then I read The Patron Saint of Liars, which was a recent recommendation.  This was a great book right up to the ending.  Meh.  Didn't love the ending.

I just googled the book and it came up as a made-for-tv movie from 1998.  Good Lord, how old is this book?

Last night I finished a book that my daughter, the fabulous Rachel Pie, had been wanting me to read.  She kept recommending it and one day, about six months ago, we were at Half Price Books and she saw a copy and got me my very own so that I would be sure to read it.  It kept getting put to the bottom of the pile so that I could read crap like the 50 shades of craptastic crap and then be disappointed.  So I pulled it from the bottom of the pile o'books on my night stand and read it.

The Hummingbird's Daughter by Luis Urrea.  The main character is a great-aunt of the author and he spent 20 years of his life researching and writing this book.  I loved the book.  And yet, I wanted more out of the ending.  Was she happy?  Did she marry?  Did she have children?  Did her father live?  Where did she live?  What happened to all the other people in this book?  What happened to the ranch?

I don't want to think I am being unreasonable as a reader.  But why bring in all these details and then drop them?

The only book I have read in the last six months that I thought the ending was perfect was Lamb by Christopher Moore.  Fabulous book.  I picked up another of his on my last trip to Half Price Books.  I will let you know what I think of it. And whether the ending disappointed or not.