BOOKS THREAD

Just read The Executioner’s Song (loved) and All the Pretty Horses (also loved), so I needed an “upper.”

My wife got me How To by Randall Munroe for my birthday. I’ve laughed out loud several times while reading it. It’s a good one for the bedside stand or living room: something to pick up and enjoy for a bit, then put away and come back to it whenever. Going end-to-end like it’s “the thing I’m reading right now” just produces diminishing returns within about 50 pages.

 

I read it. Very fun. But The Stand was both way better written and even more enjoyable.

I irritate even myself for saying this but I'd try early King if you haven't already, The Dead Zone, Salem's Lot, Christine, etc. etc.

 

New Reacher book out next week. Story on Lee Child's new life in Wyoming.

Jack Reacher Is Still Restless. But His Creator Has Settled Down.

 

Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis or Straight Man by Richard Russo.

 

I enjoy thrillers so am deep into "The Witch Elm" by Tana French which was a highly decorated 2018 book. I've enjoyed her prior books and this one is probably the most complex.

 

"Salem's Lot" has a lot of hidden pleasures within the pages. I can't remember where it lives, but there's a King short story that gives the back story on Salem's Lot and how it became a repository for evil.

The collections of short stories, especially "Night Shift" and "Nightmares and Dreamscapes," are really good reading. "Four Past Midnight" is a good collection of novellas.

For me, the gold standard is "IT." The tales of each kid's encounter with Pennywise are short story vignettes that King weaves into the overall novel. The story about The Black Spot, especially, is an example of King at his best.

If you haven't read any of King's non-fiction work — I'm thinking of his story about being an assistant coach on his son's Little League team — you should. They show his skill as a reporter and writer with nary a skeletal hand wrapping around your wrist.

 

After finishing one of her series of books, my 10-year-old daughter was looking for a book to read this week. Trying to get her out of the fantasy/Greeks/Romans books she usually reads (she's read all the Harry Potter books, too), I handed her a copy of "Cannary Row." It's not Steinbeck's best, but it's close, and it's one a kid can read without being traumatized by the barbarism and beauty that's in "East of Eden" (my personal favorite).

My wife and I are both writers, but daughter 1 will be better than both of us. Shit, she's already writing stories that were better than almost everything I wrote in high school. And she's in fifth grade.

 

I have not read much of King's stiff, certainly not in the last 25 years or so but he did an article for Playboy in the early-80s on the death of AM rock radio that was terrific.

 

Elton John's new book, Me, is as much fun as you would expect. Anyone expecting an extensive look at his music will be disappointed, but like the books by Rod Stewart and Phil Collins there is no shortage of sly British humour as El recounts the highs and lows of his career on and off stage.

 

The backstory to 'Salem's Lot is Jerusalem's Lot, the first story in "Night Shift." Only a couple of clunkers among the 20 stories.

From that book alone, King's short stories Graveyard Shift, The Lawnmower Man, Trucks and Children of the Corn were made into shitty movies.

 

'The Quiet American' is the most disturbing book I have read.

 

I read the worst book ever last night. "Lady LovelyLocks and the Pixietails: Silkypup Saves the Day." My 5-year-old picked it up during the weekend, and she wanted it for her bedtime story. By the end, I wanted to do very bad things to Silkypup, Lady LovelyLocks and the whole gang of animals and people in that book.

That fucking book made her Sophia the Worst books seem like literature in comparison.