Get Over Yourself!

I like books that make you think.
Granted, I spend most of my time reading the exact opposite - courtroom dramas, cereal boxes, murder mysteries (the kind that spell everything out for you at the end so there's no reason to try to solve it yourself), trashy science fiction and/or romance. Despite my love of the books I call "brain candy", I have been known to pick up a higher class of literature from time to time. I can appreciate the poetry of good prose - the well-turned phrase, the meaningful dialogue, the lesson to be learned. It just doesn't happen very often.
Why? If I enjoy thought provoking writing, why don't I partake of it more often? Simply this - it is too hard to tell the good stuff from the bad. With brain candy, you know what you are getting from word one. It's just the opposite with the meaningful stuff. There are too many authors out there who have deep and meaningful thoughts but absolutely no talent with which to express them. And of course, these people compensate by trying to be deeper and meaningfuller...er...more meaningful. They use too many flowery phrases, spend too much time telling us what things look like, and basically just sound stuck up.
I find that these same authors have trouble expressing human interaction in a realistic way. It is as though their own awkwardness and fear around people is generalized out to everyone in the world. All conversations become stilted and everyone is full of suffering and angst. I know that everyone feels that way now and again, but do we really need 372 pages of non-stop teenaged, goth-wanna-be drama? I mean, really. I don't need to spend 3 pages reading about how the character really felt about the color of the sheets on the bed. It isn't moving the story along and, frankly, I don't care.
There are plenty of writers who can use figurative language and adjectives in ways that pull you deep into the story. There are lots of authors who can create characters that you truly care about. These people have a talent that I envy and enjoy. The trouble is that the old saying "you can't tell a book by its cover" is so very, very true. It could be extended to say "you can't tell a book by its cover, the blurb on the inside of the jacket, or what your friends told you". Many a time, I have picked up a well-reviewed, attractive book with an interesting premise only to find that it is pompous, drivel by an author who just likes to read their own writing. I'm sure your experiences are quite interesting and you have important things to say to the general public, but if you can't do it without putting me to sleep in the middle of the day or making me feel as though you are lecturing from the front of the classroom, at least have the courtesy to put a little mark on the spine...perhaps a capital T for Talentless?

My rant comes from having recently read a book called "Accidents". While it could have been a beautiful study of the interactions between children and parents at different stages in life, instead I spent the whole time wondering why all the characters weren't just drugged at put into a mental hospital. It was so obvious that each and every one of them needed therapy. It makes me worry for the mental stability of the author if the only human interactions she knows are those of anger, betrayal, frustration, disappointment, and fear. Ugh.