I didn't like the characters, didn't want to get involved in their mommy drama and just wanted them to shut up. If I was in a cafe with these women I'd move away so I wouldn't have to listen to them. Catty, selfish, backstabbing and cliquish schoolyard games, are just not my thing. SO there is is if I wouldn't want to spend time with them I don't want to invite them into my head for read-time. I am ending this with a DNF at 16%

I'm not an expert when it comes to novelizations (books based on movie scripts). In fact, I can count on one hand how many I've read: TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY, HOOK (which was written by the ever pleasant Terry Brooks), and INDEPENDENCE DAY. I will say that INDEPENDENCE DAY was fun, and gave the reader a better glimpse of Randy Quaid's eccentric character. I also remember how they changed the final battle, wherein he flies his crop duster with a bomb strapped to the underbelly into the alien ship's guts instead of the fighter jet he uses in the movie. Those are the novelizations I've enjoyed; the ones that expand upon or change details to make the literary venture a different experience. 

FLATLINERS: THE NOVEL is nothing like that. Truth be told, I liked the movie much more than this book. And I believe my enjoyment was squashed by the author the studio went with to pen the novelization. Leonore Fleischer comes from the school of old school horror, a time when adverbs ruled the day. If someone were to remove all the needless adverbs from this book, we'd lose around five thousand words. Yeah, it's that bad. 

I didn't get a good feel for the characters here, as most of the descriptions of said characters were nothing more than caricatures of the actors who played the roles in the film. I even believe the film did a better job with the back stories, which is rather odd, considering that's the whole reason you read a novelization; for the inner thoughts and unspoken pasts of the characters. This novelization is written in omniscient, which means there's godlike introspection and head-hopping, but it also means we don't get any real one-on-one time with the cast. And that's a very unfortunate thing indeed, especially in a story like this.

In summation: I never thought I'd say this but the movie is much better than the book, and I can't think of a single reason to read the novelization. FLATLINERS is a classic, and if you haven't seen it, you should remedy that foible posthaste.The film gets a solid five stars, but this book barely makes it into the realm of three stars. And it only gets that because the story is the same. 

I had to do a post on the whole coverage of News Corp buyout of Harlequin which has deep repercussions for the industry and the genre of Romance. The fact so many articles just made cheap shots instead of focusing and exploring the issues of the transaction is really telling about the attitude that so many has over Romance despite the fact this is a billion dollar industry that helps to carry other genres. 

Isaac Asimov in disguise...

I read this book for the first time a long time ago in a portuguese-brasilian edition. I've decided to re-read it again in English to see whether the original flavour was still there...

Once in a while I have to let the inner geek out, though my wife tries to make sure it doesn’t happen too often...Yes, I confess. I'm a SF/Fantasy nerd at heart.

SF was the main type of literature of my youth, filling it with time and space travel, aliens and starships. Then I read non-SF fiction for almost two decades and found a few years back that enough was enough. I returned to SF (to Fantasy no so much) and have been happy ever since. Why? It stimulates my brain, it makes me feel like a boy again – and because it says more about the present than any of the other fiction some people would like to write with a capital F. SF deals with the human condition in its own nuanced ways, which can frequently be more interesting and raise more questions for me. It's future-thinking rather than a past-reflecting thing.

This particular book is shallow. The characters are full-blown stereotypes. My brain was entirely turned off while reading it, but it still was an enjoyable book. A light-hearted adventure story good for a couple hours' relaxation and perfect for an afternoon.

Go for it if you feel up to it.