Biblio 411: Welcome to Night Vale

Authors: Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Released: October 20th, 2015
Read: DNF – started November 21, 2015
The Hook: “Welcome to Night Vale” seemed like a pretty cool title.

I really, really wanted to like this book. For the most part, I do. I just couldn’t finish it. Yet.

I previewed this book in November >> here << and made it to about chapter three before I lost interest. I did say that SciFi isn’t normally my thing, but I think it had to do with me just not processing the story line quick enough to keep my interest. And that’s not to say that I got bored of the story. That’s just to say that I couldn’t grasp the story quick enough for me to continue reading it.

What’s there to process?

Well, before I get into that, let me tell you what I love about what little I read.

I love the writing. It’s written differently from any book I’ve ever picked up and I really appreciate that uniqueness. Writing like this:

I mean, that paragraph. I love it!

I also love the setting. The details about Night Vale are vague, but interesting. I don’t have an example of description, because I had to return the book, but it was enough detail to get a sense of the town but not enough to complete the picture. I appreciated that.

I love the characters. Jackie Fierro, the pawn shop owner, intrigued me. Living her life stuck on age nineteen, I wanted to know more about her. And her shop. Her shop. So cool. I mean, a pawn shop is a great backdrop for a story like this. I don’t know how I felt about Diana and her son, Josh, though.

I love idea of the plot. As a pawn shop owner, Jackie received a unique item and while this item seems innocent enough, it upsets Jackie. She’s uncomfortable and this begins an interesting journey I never got to finish.

So why didn’t you finish it?

While all these concepts were awesome, they were awesome separately. Does that make sense? I couldn’t quite register them together. It just didn’t flow well for me.

Which makes me sad because it sounds like such a good read.

In an effort to try and make sense of this story, I decided to clue in to the podcast this book is an extension of. I did find the podcast clever and I did enjoy it, but it still left too many unanswered questions that didn’t help me figure out the story.

And so it’s added to my Did Not Finish pile.

I hope to come back to it one day. Maybe when I can devote my focus to it instead of juggling school, work, and extra curricular activities. Maybe I’ll force myself to read to at least chapter five. Sometimes it’s just a slow beginning.