Prelude to Hell: Nicholas Sparks

Hey folks,
Confession time: I have never read a Nicholas Sparks book. I try my best not to be a snob, but I've felt that his writing is just something that I don't have time for. Romance is not my favorite genre to begin with, and the fact that he's unmitigantly sappy, well I have decided to pass. Now just to be clear I do not have a heart of stone. But I'd rather have my love stories be realistic and witty. I have to believe in the characters in order to become invested in their emotional plight. Otherwise I just roll my eyes and move on.

However last month Sparks gave a wonderfully horrible interview in USA Today with teen darling Miley Cyrus. In this interview Sparks proceeded to do the following:
-Compare himself to Ernest Hemingway, Jane Austen, and Shakespeare.
-State: "Nobody writes stories like mine."
-Also states: "I don't write romance novels." His preferred terminology: "Love stories — it's a very different genre."
-Also: "A Farewell to Arms, by Hemingway. Good stuff. That's what I write," he says.
-Cite his own book A Walk to Remember as a seminal coming of age story. Then state that "well everyone has to say To Kill A Mockingbird" as if it were an afterthought.
-Trashes Cormac McCarthy, specifically Blood Meridian.
Well to read more, just click here.

After reading the interview I was a bit stunned. I had no idea that Nick Sparks was that big an ass. In one interview he managed to anger a major part of his audience: female authors and their readers. Seriously, why would you do that? If he doesn't want to be equated with the romance genre, then why use tragic love stories as the center to all your plots. And what's wrong with the romance genre? It's only been a major literary industry since the dawn of time. Romance readers are relentlessly loyal and will follow their writers to other genres. This phenomenon spawned the female literary movement which became known as "chick-lit." Sparks is noticeably distancing himself from a major genre that feeds into his readership. In my opinion this is a disasterous mistake.

Again I don't like making judgments based on something or someone whose work I haven't read myself. Hence, consider this a introduction to a three-part series over the next few weeks where I subject myself to the works of the son of Hemingway, Nicholas Sparks.
Enjoy! Book Slave.