Ryan DeJonghe - The Avid Reader

Lyndon Perry is an author that seems to have some phenomenal concepts for his stories. A look at his website shows he is heavily involved in his own writing, teaching writing, and even publishing. When I heard about ONE MORE BOOK BEFORE I DIE, I thought it was the perfect story to accompany my love of THE FANTASTIC FLYING BOOKS OF MR. MORRIS LESSMORE (a children’s book that needs to be read by every book lover). For the most part, Perry delivers.

This book is really two short stories; one being the eponymous title and the other being “Or the Highway”. In the former title, the protagonist is a man living in a nursing home, surrounded by books. He buys into a theory that everyone’s life is measured by a set number of books that they read. He plans for the Bible to be his final book. In the latter title, a man is inspired to live a bit more courageously both in job and love by a Blackberry that reads his mind and responds via text.

I love the premise of both of these stories! What hinders these stories from really taking off is the lack of proper development. Perry’s characters don’t have the same nuanced traits that are expected in similar characters of his peers’ novels. Understandably, Perry is very busy with multiple projects, but this may be the contributing factor to the rushed feel of this work. The stories move along rapidly without settling down; much of the fleshy writing that could have made this book five stars is missing.

Seeing how this is a kindle book, it may be updated after today, in which I would welcome the opportunity to come back and update my review. Like I mentioned earlier, the potential behind these stories is incredible—a little more character development and story-driven narrative and they’ll be awesome.

I received a copy of this book from Mr. Perry for review. This review has expressed my honest opinion.