My older brother is pushing that and It on me next.
It's pretty good, but not exactly vintage King. It's not how bloated it is (which is par for the course) I just found it paced pretty poorly, which when you compare to how tight the Stand is, is pretty sad. I love the Stand, one of my favourite books. I can get through it in about a week, or two if I really savour it.
For a long time I thought Stephen King had done very little that was great since about 1985, but then I read Insomnia. Which really slashed through me with how good it was.
I've heard a lot of good things about Matheson, I'll have to check him out when the chance comes.
a lifetime serving one machine
Is ten times worse than prison
Silent Majority wrote:It's pretty good, but not exactly vintage King. It's not how bloated it is (which is par for the course) I just found it paced pretty poorly, which when you compare to how tight the Stand is, is pretty sad. I love the Stand, one of my favourite books. I can get through it in about a week, or two if I really savour it.
For a long time I thought Stephen King had done very little that was great since about 1985, but then I read Insomnia. Which really slashed through me with how good it was.
I've heard a lot of good things about Matheson, I'll have to check him out when the chance comes.
I tried reading the Stand before I had read anything by King. I was biting off a bit too much (it was also the expanded version). I gave up about 300 pages in and the week before last I started again. I'm more of a short story guy, so i had to read Night Shift before and get a feel for him. (even though I read Cycle of the Werewolf and The Running Man years and years ago.)
I haven't read a novel by Matheson, just read the Nightmare at 20,00 Ft. short story collection. When he streches out in a novel, he may be completely different, and King's novels certainly have a different feel than his short stories. But the two have very similar short story styles. A couple you could slap Stephen King's name on them and I couldn't tell the difference.
I'm so punk, I don't even take my leather jacket off when it catches fire. Which it does frequently, because of how fucking punk I am.
Updating and a small rant …
Read:
Lawrence Block's Killing Castro. Block is a modern master of the hardboiled genre but this was written in less than a week. Thin in story, thin in size. It's main interesting feature is that it came out post-Bay of Pigs but pre-Missile Crisis. Five guys are hired to go to kill Castro. Gradually develop reasons to abandon the mission. Castro does die at the end, tho.
Jason Starr's The Follower. I love Starr's earlier books. He does the "decent person makes a series of bad choices" genre proud. However, his more recent stuff has moved away from that. This book is about a stalker. It's not bad by any means, but it doesn't really stand out. Not the book that would likely hook you on his work.
Jason Starr's Hard Feelings. An earlier novel about a chance encounter with an old neighbourhood friend triggers a repressed memory that sends a guy's life out of control. Good stuff. Starr writes simply but, fuck, he knows characterization. His early books are littered with totally three-dimensional and believable characters.
Bernard Crick's Orwell: A Life. Gave it a hundred pages then set it aside. A painfully academic style, whereby a snippet of a letter is quoted, then followed by some variation of "What are we to make of this?" It may be insightful, but boring as fuck.
Joe Queenan's America (published under a different title in the US). I say this with all seriousness: this is one of the worst books I've ever read. Five or ten worst, definitely. The premise is that Queenan decides to immerse himself into mass culture for a year. It's supposedly humourous, but it comes off as a humourless rant, relying on the word "sucks" far too much. Worst of all, I agree with most of his targets—I hate Adam Sandler, Billy Joel, New Age music, Red Lobster, and self-help books, too. But he's such a dick about it that he loses my sympathy. Example: On this Billy Joel album, these songs are perfect examples of why he sucks. When you want suck, you go to Billy Joel because he's a master of suck. And what is his point when he declares that a movie must suck because it stars John Candy and Rick Moranis? He doesn't explain why these things are garbage, just that they obviously are. I also have little knowledge of what he regards as quality other than The Atlantic Monthly. Even tho he's an American, I couldn't help but hear his voice as some fossilize aristocratic prig, bemoaning how he has to exist in the same world as, ugh, Stephen King. Horrendous in that it fails in pretty much every regard.
Listened to:
Ron McLarty's Art in America. Meh. McLarty's easily my favourite audio book narrator, but he's a so-so novelist. This is a book about an overly ambitious, under-talented playwright who goes to Colorado to write a play about the history of a town. The town is presently divided by a number of issues that require more characters than I could keep track of. Nothing memorable about it.
Reading:
Mo Hayder's Birdman. Just started last night. I've read her Pig Island and listened to The Devil of Nanking. A pretty good gory crime writer.
Listening to:
Christopher Buckley's Boomsday. Good premise—a generational revolt against retiring Boomers over Social Security leads to a proposal to encourage voluntary suicide—but I just don't find Buckley all that funny. A bit too insiderish and reliant on wacky caricatures. I don't dislike the book, but I doubt it'll stay in my memory long.
Last edited by Dr. Medulla on 31 Dec 2008, 2:56pm, edited 1 time in total.
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft
Heston wrote:Watch out, eumaas may construe this as a list thread, no one will be safe.
No, that would be the "What earplugs are you using while reading?" thread. :D
"I never doubted myself for a minute for I knew that my monkey-strong bowels were girded with strength, like the loins of a dragon ribboned with fat and the opulence of buffalo dung." - Richard Nixon, Checkers Speech, abandoned early draft