Customer Reviews

Ghost Ship of Diamond Shoals: The Mystery of the Carroll A. Deering

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I was really looking forward to reading this book over the Christmas holidays. I enjoy reading true, unsolved mysteries but after reading and rereading several pages I gave up.

Reading should be a pleasure and the reader should not have to keep rereading words and sentences to try and decipher what the author is trying to convey.

In reading this book it was like every sentence was overly long with each phrase seperated by commas when it seemed for clarity the sentences should have ended and a new sentence begun.

Also,have you every read a book when you get the impression the author is just trying to show you how intelligent he is by constantly using new uncommon words just to show you, the reader, how vast his vocabulary is? Also I noticed every noun in almost every sentence had to be preceded by about 3 descriptive words when one would have been fine most of the time.

Paragraph after paragraph has sentences like this:

"The gusting January wind blew spray and sand at them, and the damp sand gathered and caked upon the three foot, wooden spoked wheels, and the sea oats and grasses around them bent seaward, as the men and their boat slowly dragged through the dunes and over the open seabeach, the half-dozen men and the one beast drawing forward as if they next intended, like poseidon of old, to plough the very sea itself."

ALSO

"In the wet sand below the tideline the men halted and unhitched the front set of wheels from the boat carriage and led the mare forward into the shallow surf that was sheeting rapidly beneath tem, till the wheels were clear and the front fell into the water and made a skid down which the boat would go, and one of them walked the mare around and away, pulling now just the wheels, till she too was clear and unburduned and, standing alone and apart from the surfmen, looked away from them and their incompcomprehensible task".

Page after page of reading this type of writing becomes so tedious and frustrating you just give up and go on another book.

Just to be fair I want to let the readers of this review know I also ordered from Amazon two 900 page books, Shattered Swords(about the Battle of Midway) and Ultimate Sacrifice(about the Kennedy Assination)and I would wake up in the middle of the night and go back to reading both of these books because they were so well written.

I started this book on a Saturday at 1:00 pm, and put it down, finished, eight hours later (and jumped right into "...Nell Cropsey" by author same. This is simply a must-read for any lover of shipwreck stories, mysteries, or American history...and particularly for anyone (like myself) who's fallen in love with coastal North Carolina. Thanks Bland!

I bought and read this book for a book club selection. Overall, it was "not my cup of tea." I think the author did pretty well, but it becomes apparent early on what the outcome is going to be and there is not much incentive to keep reading. Having been to both Hatteras and Portland, Maine, I did enjoy descriptions of those places in the early 1900s. Think you would have to really be a shipwreck buff to like this one.

This book was recommended, but I couldn't get past the first page of the excerpt. Simpson must think he's Faulkner, with sentences as long as they are; the problem is that Faulkner could pull it off, while Simpson can't. Glad I read the sample before buying this disappointment.