7 posts tagged “stephen king”

Suggested by JM:

“Life is too short to read bad books.” I’d always heard that, but I still read books through until the end no matter how bad they were because I had this sense of obligation.  That is, until this week when I tried (really tried) to read a book that is utterly boring and unrealistic. I had to stop reading.

Do you read everything all the way through or do you feel life really is too short to read bad books?

I've almost always completed books that I've started.  Maybe because I usually read books that have been well-reviewed or maybe because I'm generally an optimist and that even after a slow start I hope that it might get better, or maybe I have a stick-to-it-iveness that says if you're going to start something you might as well finish it.

Speaking of of finishing it, that does remind me of one of the few books I didn't finish -- "IT" from Stephen King.  Clocking in at over a thousand pages and at the apex of his drug-addled, no-one-will-edit-him 80s long windedness (Steve: more isn't always better) -- I plodded along in this for about 400 pages and then said, "No mas!"

Oddly, I know several people for whom this book was one of their favorites, but I couldn't stand IT.

Well --- I’d been procrastinating on talking about one of my favorite part of my vacation Down The Shore which was getting in a lot of reading.  I’d been procrastinating because I’d hoped that Vox would have a ready fix for that book-loading breakdown that happened last month.   Anyway, before they got too stale in my head, here they are:

“Lost on Planet China” by J Maarten Troost.  It’s been no secret here that I loved his first book “The Sex Lives of Cannibals” – really one of the funniest books that I’ve read in a long time.  In his follow-up (“Getting Stoned With Savages”), Troost’s befuddlement of South Pacific culture seemed a little stale.  So, in this adventure, Troost – leaving the safe confines of suburban Sacramento (where is wife is currently employed) ventures for a months-long trip to China.  He's a savvy Western traveler encountering the daunting size, pollution, crowds and cultural collisions of this emerging 21st century nation.  For fans of “Sex Lives” Troost returns to top form – from the crowded cities, to the interior, to Tibet, Troost provides a vivid description of the highs and lows (more lows than highs to be truthful) of his travel with a wry and occasionally scathing honesty.  9 out of 10.

“The Likeness” by Tana French.  I had read French’s first novel (“In The Woods”) and enjoyed it.  The mystery was good, creepy and kept you guessing.  The characters were well-drawn and compelling, though not always likeable.  In addition, everything doesn’t tie up cleanly – a real-world touch that I appreciated.  In “The Likeness” French uses that to her advantage, picking up a few months after the aftermath of that story.  She again uses the first-person POV to drive the story, but switches main characters, moving from Det. Rob Ryan to Det. Cassie Maddox.  If anything, French has done a better job of creating a world and characters that the reader can really dive into.  The mystery – the death of a grad student with some secrets to hide – kept me guessing with a number of clues and feints.  The only quibble that I had with the story is that like in “In The Woods”, French relies on an unlikely coincidence (established early) to add dramatic tension and mystery.  In the first book, it worked very well – in this one, it required a bit more suspension of disbelief than I'd like – and that’s about the only thing that niggled at me while I read it.  8 out of 10.

“Duma Key” by Stephen King.  I mean, what’s a trip to the beach without a good pulpy horror story?  Especially one set at the beach!!  When I first picked it up, I thought – oh, regular-size King story.  Well, they must have used some thin pages, because this puppy clocked in at >900 pp.   This was King’s first creepy-things-happen-in-a-locale story that didn’t take place in Maine.  I believe it was written during his recuperation from the man-versus-vehicle accident that almost took his life several years ago.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the main character is a successful man that has life-threatening accident and is sent to Florida to recuperate, where he finds that he (and the things around him) are a little different.  When I started, I was annoyed by the standard King inclusions of People With Funny Names Who Know Too Much, and the habit of Unnecessary Capitalization and unusual vernacular to make things unique.  And then a funny thing happened, I was totally engrossed in the story and the characters.  King even produced a few scenes that got me choked up, believe it or not.  The resolution is fairly standard King-fare and I kept thinking, “How will this look in the movie?”  Still for a beach-read, it was good stuff and kept me wondering a little bit about just what WAS out there in the water…   7.5 out of 10.

“The Suspect” by LR Wright.  This small book was an Edgar Award winner back in the 80s.  I always find it funny to read stories where the protagonists don’t have computers or cell phones.  It does make for easier dramatic tension in some ways when answers aren’t always immediately at your fingertips.  This story, set in a sleepy little island on the west coast of Canada, isn’t so much a whodunit (the murder starts the book and you know exactly who kills whom and with what), but whydunit, because the violence of the act seems so counter to the persons involved.  And after the mammoth “Duma Key”, a concise (200 pp), thoughtful character study was welcome.  The weirdest thing though was that the font of the book was Tahoma (or something like it) and I found it really strange to read.  Maybe I need my serifs.  8 out of 10.

Follow-up to last week’s question:

Do you keep all your unread books together, like books in a waiting room? Or are they scattered throughout your shelves, mingling like party-goers waiting for the host to come along?

I haven't done a BTT for a while, and this seemed like a pretty good one.   To answer the question: my "to-read" books sit in a stack by my side of the bed, as does the book that I'm currently reading.

The to-be-read stack is often, but not necessarily in the order that they (I think) they'll be read.  Because you know you can't have a small book on the bottom and big books on top --- that would be so so wrong.

Anyway -- I like my stack right now.  I have a recent King book (Duma Key) that had gotten pretty good reviews.  A new book on traveling in China by J Marten Troost who wrote one of the funniest books that I've read in a long time (though his follow-up was not quite as good).  The new mystery by Tana French, which I got on the strength of her first novel that I liked very much.

Rounding out the stack is another non-fiction book (A Voyage Long and Strange) about the early colonization of North America by Europeans.  I'm also anxious to read Zafon's "Shadow of the Wind" which was recommended by several folks here on vox.

I also have a couple of other non-fiction books at the base.  A collection of 50 essays -- one written for each state by a famous native, and a account of the design and installation of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel --- we're thinking of going to Italy and Greece next year.

More than half are non-fiction.  Huh.  That surprises me.

Kelly had a good meme this weekend and I thought I'd give it a shot.

A good meme for BTT today:

So, one of the first “real” books I read as a teenager was “The Stand” by Stephen King.  The idea of a de-populated America where good and evil clashed was an amazing world that was both repulsive and alluring simultaneously.  Having grown up in the Cold War Mutually-Assured-Destruction days of the 1970s, a world where civilization didn’t make it was a distinct possibility.

And so it sort of surprised me the other day when I was putting away some books that I realized that I’ve spent an awful lot of time reading post-apocalyptic fiction recently.  I’m not sure why, but in the last six months, I’ve read:

The Road by Cormac McCarthy follows the story of a man and his son on a journey across an utterly bleak landscape in a post-apocalyptic America nearly devoid of life and all remnants of civilization.  Unlike most stories in the genre, it is very introspective and McCarthy’s sparse prose mirrors the locale.  I’m not sure I liked it per se’, but I sure do think about it a lot.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham is a story very reminiscent of HG Wells’ original War of the Worlds – following the exploits of a respectable guy (a biochemist!) in a world gone haywire.  Nearly everyone is blinded and becomes prey to legions of intelligent, ambulatory and (too bad for them) carnivorous plants.  The deadpan prose is classically British, but there’s a lot of tension behind the calm.  This is a story that really needs to be remade by a modern filmmaker.

World War Z (An Oral History of the Zombie War) by Max Brooks is both an amusing and chilling book that “looks back” on the years (in what is almost our immediate future) in which a zombie plague nearly eradicated civilization.  In retrospective accounts, the start of the plague, its spread, the collapse of order and the drastic measures taken to ensure the survival of humanity are approached from several vantage points.  The story itself is good-reading, but Brooks’ digs at human nature and society are the best parts.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse from John Joseph Adams is a collection of short stories that take the perspective of looking at life after the collapse of civilization.  This is a very good anthology and has some truly standout stories.  I have to admit that it was a little depressing to move from one post-apocalyptic world to another and so on... and that the stories here might be better read a few at a time between other things.

So, what’s it say that I’ve been gravitating towards these stories recently?  In general, I think I like the “what if” possibility of stories like this – I love to see the imagination work on such a grand scope – but that is true for many SF and fantasy works.  These stories in particular I think offer us a chance to vicariously throw away the homogenized society that we live and participate in – to get a clean slate.

But why should I be thinking of these things?  I’ve got it pretty damn good – I love and am loved, have a great family, am healthy, I have wonderful friends, the best blog-neighborhood, and a good career.  And maybe that’s the core of it – maybe I can have fun with these stories of edge-of-extinction survival, because my list of “real world” worries is so small.

Coming back on the flight from Dulles to San Diego on New Year's Day, I took out my trusty moleskine notebook and began jotting down ideas for bloggable things.  It's a long flight -- the first thing was yesterday's post about the differences in roads and driving on the East and West Coasts, which seemed to strike a nerve in a LOT of people... which is great. :)

I spent more time (in between bouts of dozing off -- it was frakking hot on that plane) reflecting on 2006 and decided to put down a few favorites in some random categories that came to me.  Note: often there might be a difference between what was favorite and what was best.  For example --

Television Show.  Veronica Mars.  I have written and commented several times in these parts that Battlestar Galactica is the best show on tv -- and honestly, I think it is.  That said, I enjoyed VM more than any show this year.  For the first thing, I discovered it early in '06, catching Season-2 on its repeat cycle and back-filling Season-1 when I could.  This is the most smartly written show on TV, mixing mystery, personal drama, humor, pop culture references as others around here will attest to.  Also, sometimes BG can be overly serious (rare smiles there, but engrossing) -- this show always kept me guessing and loving every minute of it.  After a somewhat slow start to Season-3, I think it has hit a good stride once again.

Film. Little Miss Sunshine.  This film, unlike more polished films that were Oscar contenders and winners such as Crash, Capote, Brokeback Mountain, Syriana, and The Queen (all of which I saw in 2006 and all of which I enjoyed), was an unexpected delight.  It is the simple story of a family toughing it out despite their difficulties and trying to do the right thing for their youngest daughter.  Dad is trying desperately to "make it", the wife seems to be fighting with that "is this really what I want from my life" question throughout.  The rest of the family is a mess or oblivious.  The film is smart, quirky, insightful, and funny (painfully at times).  And I'm pretty sure I can never listen to "Superfreak" in quite the same way again.

Sports Moment.  Rutgers Beats Louisville.  Thomas Jefferson once described New Jersey as "a barrel tapped at both ends".  It was true in colonial times and still is -- New Jersey relies heavily on its proximity to New York and Philadelphia for its "identity" and I think you have to be from New Jersey to really appreciate what having Rutgers be good means.  For my entire life (and for the life of my parents for that matter) the Scarlet Knights have been terrible -- the laughingstock of college football.  A free win in the Big East.  And here they were in a battle of unbeatens, downing Louisville in a great game to crack the Top 10 and take aim at the BCS.  Sadly, they stumbled down the stretch and did not make the BCS, but for one night New Jersey outshined its neighbors.  In a bit of redemption, they stomped K-State in the Texas Bowl 37-10 and their coach has not bolted for any "better" opportunities as might be expected.

Book. Wizard and Glass by Stephen King.  In a recent post, I mistakenly identified "The Sex Lives of Cannibals" by J Maarten Troost as my favorite book of last year -- then I realized I'd read it in 2005.  Don't get me wrong, its great (and hysterical) but can't count for this year.

At the beginning of the year, at the prompting of a friend, I started reading the Gunslinger Series by King.  I'd loved King's material in the 70s, hated most of his stuff from the 80s, and had a bit of a rekindling in the 90s starting with "The Green Mile".  But this serialized epic never really got my interest, but on my friend's urging, I gave it a try.  And I loved it.  And to me, "W&G" is the epitome of the series -- it still had the mythic tone that was a hallmark of the first books in the series before the setting became more "real".  The majority of this book is actually a departure from the "main" story, filling in the backstory (previously hinted at) of the protagonist, Roland.  It is full of action, intrigue, portent, love (generally not a SK strongpoint, but done well here), joy and tragedy.  I've read books this year that were a lot more serious and literary, but I enjoyed this one best of all.

Vacation Moment.  Grand Tetons Flower Field.  After a week at a family reunion in Minnesota, we took a drive across the country to see Glacier National Park in Montana, Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, and then finished off with Grand Teton National Park just south of Yellowstone.  During the stay at Grand Teton we decided to take a tram to the top of one of the mountains and hike down.  Its all downhill, so how hard can it be, right?  Well, it was 14 miles downhill and quite a full day -- we, uh, coulda used a little more water at times. But anyway, about a third of the way down, we came out of the treeline into a huge rolling meadow.  The meadow was covered (and I mean covered!) with mostly yellow flowers (and a few of other colors).  It was breathtaking.  And the amazing thing was that it went on for what had to be more than a mile.  We hiked in that meadow for at least 30 minutes without pause -- all the time surrounded by a blanket of wildflowers -- and I don't think we saw anyone else the entire time.  It was completely unexpected and unriveled in my mind.  The picture at left does it no justice.

Album. Plans by Death Cab For Cutie.  This band was another discovery for me this year, and I really got into their albums a lot mid-year.  I'm a big lyrics person and the ones here are smart and thoughtful and at times, snarky.  I love the sound -- a good blend between production and simplicity.  My favorite song has to be "Someday (You Will Be Loved)" which is marvelously cynical.  I think that the very best songs on "Transatlanticism" are better than the ones here, but overall this is the stronger CD.  I'm very curious to see what they put out next.