One hour and fifteen minutes–that’s how long it took to find one novel worthy of a The Deepening World of Fiction feature. Why is that, you might wonder? Well, because of all the “new releases” I looked at, most were absolute culls. Starting from the top of the list, I went through each one’s excerpts and their reviews, “reading between the lines” of those reviews. (Thank the book gods for one and two star reviews by readers unafraid of voicing their honest opinions.)

But it shouldn’t take that long to find ONE GOOD BOOK, should it? At least not when those books are released from Major Publishers or by legitimate small presses! And that’s the problem these days with books. They just aren’t up-to-par in my opinion when it comes to quality reading, and I won’t waste my money and ESPECIALLY won’t waste my time reading a book that’s sub-par. In fact, I don’t even waste my time reading “par” level books. Give me excellent, or don’t bother.

Of course, if I was very energetic and had all sorts of time, I’d list the rejects, and there were a LOT of them, most by “known best selling” authors, published by major houses. The book I chose? It came from a small press, not a major. Very, very sad state of affairs in novel publishing, in my opinion. And the same goes for non-fiction. I’ve looked at a few of those today, too, and nothing so far stands out as “worthy.”