the 2009 Reading List

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel...fine? That's sort of the premise of Alas, Babylon. The main protagonist, Randy Bragg is a failed politician and the family lay about/good time charlie. That is, until a telegram from his career air force older brother arrives with the cryptic words "Alas, Babylon". As Randy frantically runs around gathering up supplies, we find out that Alas, Babylon is code between the brothers about an impending nuclear war. They've agreed that if one should be on the horizon, the older brother would send his wife and children to Randy for safe keeping until it blew over. Well the bombs drop, and Randy finds himself not only taking care of his brother's family, but soon his entire street, and then town. Randy encounters numerous problems like food, water, and salt shortages, neighbors becoming suspicious of one another, and murderous highway men, as the aftermath of the nuclear war extends into a full year.
I was astounded at the exhaustive amount of detail Frank was able to pack into a 300 page story about nuclear holocaust. After reading his short biography in the back of the book, I understood how. The man was an expert in the then burgeoning Hydrogen age of warfare. If the bombs has actually been dropped, chances are the people living on Pat Franks block would survive it relatively well. What was also surprising is how hopeful a story it is. Most books and films of this nature are usually downers (see Cormac McCarthy's The Road), Frank seems to think that given the right environment, the best will come out of certain people during the worst hour of their lives. It's a different take on the post apocalyptic genre, and a refreshing one. That probably is due to it being one of the firsts, it being written in 1964. While that makes some of the technology and information in the book dated, i.e. telegrams, and the CONELRAD system, it doesn't ever detract from the drama in the story. I'd bet that Stephen King's The Stand was at least partially inspired by this book. I'm surprised its not read more often, even if the cold war is over. At the very least, it'd make an interesting time capsule story for students to discuss in their english and/or history classes.

This is a collected edition that contains all three of McCarthy's border trilogy books, All The Pretty Horse, The Crossing, and Cities Of The Plain. I'm excited to read this. I've read No Country For Old Men and The Road, and this is considered by a lot of McCarthy fans to be his best work, so it should be interesting. See you back here at Year's end.

Just in time for Halloween is a collection of horror stories! One of my favorite authors is H.P. Lovecraft, and Chambers' King In Yellow is suppose to be a huge influence of Lovecraft, especially his Cthulhu mythos. Sadly, I think I might've been too spoiled by Lovecraft's superior work to truly appreciate this collection of short stories on its own merit. All week, I've been trying to develop some sort of thesis about whether or not one should really seek out the influences of the artists they love, because they may not be able to truly enjoy those influences the same way they enjoy things from their favorite artist. They might be able to appreciate how they influenced a piece of art they favor, but it still might not click in the same way, and thus, maybe its better left alone.
Reading this, you can definitely see its influences on Lovecraft. the titular king in yellow is actually a play in the universe Chambers creates that has become quite popular due to its unnerving effect on its readers, no doubt lending to the creation of Lovecraft's necronomicon. This edition, originally put together in the late 1960s, also includes other Chambers short stories, oddly involved in and around the Bronx zoo. These stories usually involve one or more zoo officials on quests to obtain rare, and obscure zoological specimens that are presumed extinct. I found the inclusion of these stories to be jarring, considering that the majority of the original book was intended to be a horror collection of sorts, and the last three stories of this edition shift their tone from serious, and scary, to comical fantasy adventures. What's worse is that none of them have anything to do with the king in yellow play, so their inclusion is puzzling.
The best story of the bunch, albeit another add-on by a later editor, is The Messenger. In it, an American living with his french wife in a small french village in 1895 discovers that his wife's family is cursed for the capturing and killing of a catholic priest who betrayed the french to the british during one of the many french-english wars. He discovers this after accidentally disturbing the remains of said priest, who then returns as a spectre to torment him and his wife.
Another interesting, if somewhat deranged story is The Repairer Of Reputations. Taking place in a future (the future in this case being the 1920s) New York City, where we follow a young man, whose mind has been driven to violent insanity by reading the king in yellow play repeatedly, and who now believes that he must dress up in a yellow king costume as described in the play, and murder his cousin. What makes the story interesting is that its almost entirely told from inside the rambling, dellusional, murder happy mind of the main character.

Don't let that cover fool you, this book is about nuclear Apocalypse! This appears to be a lesser known sibling to books like A Boy And His Dog, On The Beach, and The Road. In it, a man scrambles to save his sister-in-law and niece when his career military brother calls him and utters the words "Alas, Babylon", meaning that the nukes are en route. Sounds like another feel good book! See you next month!

This one was a quickie. This is a collection of short stories and essays from a well known writer of his self described "speculative fiction". This was my first foray into Ellison's stuff. I had been aware of the man for some time, and had seen various appearances on TV and on the internet, usually involving him railing against someone or something, but had never made an attempt to read any of his writings. Reading Stalking has made me want to dig up more of his work.
As stated above, its a collection of shorts, some of which aren't longer than about five pages. Some of them are quite humorous, like The Outpost Undiscovered By Tourists, in which the three wise men journey through a never ending limbo in a cadillac while arguing about things like Roller Derby and inflatable beds. Other stories like Grail are downright lovecraftian in their gruesomeness, as a drug dealer from Laos spends twenty years of his life tracking down the most fabulous object in existence, and needs to enlist some of the more fetid demons of hell in order to find it.
The stories are interspersed with "scenes from the real world" which are essays relating Ellisons thoughts on certain topics in the news or pop culture at the time, or are cautionary tales built around professional or personal experiences from his own life. For instance, "We're Not In Kansas Anymore Toto" relates Ellisons mind numbing experience on the failed sci-fi TV show the Starlost. As an aspiring writer, the story, while at times humorous, is cringe inducing, as the whole ordeal gets Ellison labeled as a scab during a writer's strike and threatens to jeopardize his standing with the Writer's Guild, and for never have written a thing. Another incident he relates is a violent confrontation he and a friend bore witness to in a movie theater in times square in the early 70s. Its equal parts harrowing and hilarious.
What makes the style of story telling interesting is that its a mash up of sorts of the kind of high minded science fiction one might see from the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, and the beat-nick insanity of a Hunter S. Thompson. Its this fine line between saint and savage that is what most likely kept Ellison revelant all these years.

I'm reading this one in october to get me ready for halloween. I'm a huge H. P. Lovecraft nerd and this short story collection was a massive influence on Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos, so much so in fact that Lovecraft eventually incorporated the fictional King In Yellow play that connects Chambers' short stories into the Cthulhu mythology.
Apparently the stories follow the pursuit and/or discovery of a obscure play called The King In Yellow, which leads those who view it to go violently insane. Sounds like fun!

So I picked this one up at a book sale after my girlfriend told me it was one of her favorite novels. That was well over a year before I attempted to read it. I had been promising her for a while I would, but honestly, the sheer size of this one sorta scared me. It's 600 pages in length, and the last time I tried to tackle a great american novel that big, it was Moby Dick, and it took me the better part of 2008 to get it all read. Late this summer I decided to just knuckle up and get it done (it helps to be self employed too).
I was told by others, NOT my girlfriend, that I'd be bored to death with it. I found that not to be the case. The book follows the exploits of Adam Trask, a modern day Book of Genesis Adam, and how his trek through life affects those around him. He goes from weakling brother, to Calvary general, to prodigal son/hobo, to rich California land baron and foolhardy husband and absentee father. The book is a mixture of Old Testament retelling and Steinbeck's family history. I'm not sure how true most of it is, but Steinbeck claims that Adam is a distant relative of sorts and peppers the narrative with interludes into his own childhood and immediate family history.
The most unexpected thing about the book, for me, was just how damaged most, if not all the characters seemed to be. There isn't one character in the book I can think of that isn't screwed up or touched by tragedy somehow. Even Lee, Adam's level headed and sensible chinese american servant has an origin only hinted at that is tremendously tragic. Then there's Cathy, Adam's murderous wife. It's never explicitly stated, but Cathy seems to be a dyed in the wool psychopath. She sends Adam into a downward spiral that he never really seems to recover from. Of course their offspring, Aron and Caleb, modern day Cain and Abel respectively, are touched with some of their mother's madness. It leads to a slow burn of a climax in the book's latter section, and Steinbeck wisely keeps his reader on edge, trying to guess which one might actually be the murderous Cain.
The overall vibe I got from the book is that its a story about lineage. Steinbeck studies his own family tree and the metamorphosis of his home town and his country, as his little home town of Salinas goes from being a settlement at the edge of western expansion, to a sleepy country town ducking its head from the loud noises of the first world war.
I found this book to be a very good read. It's scope is surprisingly ambitious, even after one considers its age. Don't let its size dissuade you. Steinbeck's style here is flowerly and a bit over descriptive at times, but its never dry and will never lead you lacking interest.

Here is another author who I feel guilty about never have read. I plan to rectify that by reading this collection of short stories. It should make for a nice transition from Steinbeck to the horror novel I have on the docket for October. See you soon.

So we're half way through 2009, more or less. As of late, I've decided to switch up my reading material, and go for some nonfiction. I think its healthy for anyone of reasonable intelligence to throw in some real world stuff into their reading material every so often. It keeps one grounded in reality.
Now that I'm done preaching about people's reading habits, Columbine. Just to give you a short history lesson, I was a junior in high school when Columbine occurred in early 1999. Not only was I a junior, but I was considered one of the misfit kids who listened to heavy metal like Marilyn Manson, and Metallica. While I didn't experience any harassment first hand, I did at times perceive that teachers and students alike might look to me first if something were to happen on campus. Add to that the sense that if something like this might occur at an upper class school in the middle of nowhere like Columbine, then it could surely happen at Neshaminy. It all makes the columbine incident one of the touch stone moments for not only myself, but for people in my generation.
Like many, I took some of the proposed causes for Columbine on good faith. A lot of people claimed it was the music they listened to, and/or the video games they played. People also blamed school bullies, or bad parenting. While I immediately dismissed the music and video game hypothesizes, I had experienced some bullying in my younger years, and watched close friends of mine deal with it. However, I always believed in personal choice ultimately, even perhaps if those choices were influenced by bullying. I also accepted the idea that the parents of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were to blame. How could the parents not know that their sons were constructing pipe bombs and buying guns illegally?
What author Dave Cullen (who's covered Columbine as a news journalist since the very beginning) does is dispel much of the rumors and falsehoods that have been reported for fact for the past ten years. First off, Eric and Dylan, were not only popular, but reveled in being bullies. They had lots of friends, and plenty of girls who were interested in them. Eric was also a psychopath, and was skilled at not only reading people, but subterfuge, so if he didn't want anyone finding out their plans, then no one did, including his parents.
Overall, the book is a fascinating read, even though its at times a sad and depressing one. It not only deals with the failed bombing attempt by the two boys (contrary to popular belief, it was not intended to be a school shooting) but the fallout that would occur for years afterwards, as the myths would become facts and the facts would get covered up. I'd recommend the book to any fan of true crime, or anyone who wants to know the truth behind the tragedy that happened ten years. I'd also hazard a guess that this will be considered one of the best nonfiction books of the year.

Sticking with the nonfiction kick, my next stop was Levittown. For those that don't know, I actually grew up in Levittown, in fact, I've spent all 27th years of my life here. Not only that, BUT, my father is the son of original Levittown home owners! I think that there are few people who can claim to have Levittown in their blood like I can. So of course, when I heard about this book, I felt it to be mandatory reading.
For the uninitiated, Bill Levitt, along with Father Abe, and brother Alfred, founded Levitt & Sons, a real estate construction firm specializing in setting up the suburban dream for post WWII Americans. What a lot of folks in my age group may not know, is that Bill Levitt had a firm policy of not selling homes to black families, and at times, even Jews. The company had a firm whites only policy that was not only in effect for their Levittown Pennsylvania community, but had been in effect from the start when Levittown, NY was first unveiled. The book chronicles Levitt's racist policies, while also documenting the trials and tribulations of Daisy and Bill Myers, the first black family to move into Levittown Pa, and their neighbors the Weshlers, a family of communist jews from the Bronxs who helped arrange for the Myers to buy and move into their neighbors home clandestinely, lest not they be thwarted. All of what happens after is true, and a lot of it makes a member of the later day generation of levittowners like myself just shake my head in shame. Its the type of barbarism you'd expect to read about in the deep south, where racism is institutionalized. Of course, one has to also remember that Pennsylvania has long had the highest per state membership of KKK in the country.
I'd recommend this for anyone who has grown up in suburbia and knows full well that the most serene residential neighborhood can bring the ugliest nature out of people.

I have no clue what this is about, other than its a classic. I bought it a long time ago and have been promising my poor girlfriend that I'd read it at some point. It's one of her favorites. At 600 pages, I'm hoping it won't be quite that task the Moby Dick was. See you soon!

Some of you reading this who may not have looked at my other lenses should know that I am a huge Godzilla nerd. Huge in the way that you think of Godzilla as big. It's an interest that I've never quite grown out of. I always get excited to find a new book that dissects the different aspects of the giant monster genre.
This particular book is a catalog of the works of Eiji Tsuburaya, a man made famous the world over for his development of "suitmation", the primary special effects technique behind the Godzilla series. A style of special effects that if often ridiculed and misunderstood outside of the native country that embraced it. As a Godzilla nerd, there isn't a lot I don't know about the movies themselves. Even still, this book managed to inform me of things I never knew. For instance, while famous overseas for created the special effects behind the Godzilla series and all its spin offs and tie ins, as well as being the primary creative force behind the 60s TV show Ultraman, Eiji was also famous in his native land for his war films. These films were so realistic, that many US forces in occupied Japan mistook some of the scenes at pearl harbor for real wartime footage. I also didn't know that before world War II, Tsuburaya was famous as a Director of Photography, so famous in fact that movie tickets could be sold on his name alone.
I'd recommend this book for any who is a Godzilla fan, or a movie fan, as it is filled with so much information that any one who calls themselves a fan of cinema who find in invaluable.

Believe it or not, I have sort of a personal stake in the columbine story. I was a 17 year old junior in High school when the Columbine Massacre happened in 1999. I was also a Marilyn Manson fan attending what was then the fifth largest high school campus in the country. Time pretty much stopped when that happened, and I'm sure I was looked at with a good amount of suspicion. Apparently David Cullen was one of the first reporters on the scene when the massacre happened, and has tracked all the fallout since then, and thus is considered THE expert on Columbine. I'm curious to start digging into this one, as Cullen says on the outside flaps that he dispels many of the myths about Columbine that have since become fake in the massacre's wake. See you soon.

So its been a while since I've updated this thing. Of Human Bondage actually took quite some time to read. I think it's probably because I hated the characters for the most part. The book is filled to the brim with unlikable, unsympathetic characters. Philip, the protagonist is an alright character, until he encounters Mildred, who could arguably be called the antagonist of the story, and the center of Philip's unhealthy obsessions. Of course then there is Philip's uncle and guardian, a cheapskate vicar in the english countryside who cares for nothing more than to spend as little money as possible on his wife and nephew. There are some other characters who come in and out of Philips miserable existence. Some are would be mentors, others are rainy day friends, but none ever really get to have any kind of impact on Philip, because he's a miserable dick.
What makes him completely unlikable is his obsession with Mildred, a woman whom he describes as unattractive and off putting. He spends hundreds of pages desperately attempting to win the affections of this loser waitress. She treats him horribly in return, at one point even running off with his best med school friend. Philip not only allows this mental abuse to happen, he encourages it! He doesn't even have the self respect to grab a knife and slit her throat, thus giving in fully to his twisted obsession with this woman.
I've read in other places that Maugham was a homosexual. One only need to determine that by reading this book. His descriptions of most of the women he encounters are flat, lifeless descriptions, and that's if Philip is suppose to find the woman attractive. when he introduces a new male character, the prose become so flowery in their over descriptions that one unaware of Maugham's sexual orientation who probably wonder if they man was gay or not.
Bondage is widely considered to be Maugham's masterwork, although I'm not entirely sure why. The Razor's Edge had the same wandering spirit vibe that this does without being off putting to the reader with vile characters.

I also managed to fit in Timequake this month. This one was thankfully (after Bondage) a quick read. It was Vonnegut's last work of fiction. You can tell it was written later in his life, because it has a sort of meandering, lost in thought quality to it, that while might be jarring, is none the less interesting to read. The story, much like some of Kurt other works, is barely fiction, as a lot of the details come from his own life. He intertwines his life and the people in it with the fiction winter years of his alter ego Kilgore Trout, then puts them all in a blender with a fictional event he dubs a timequake, in which the universe suddenly deicides to contract backwards ten years, thus forcing everyone in the universe to relieve the last decade of their lives. Every mistake, joy or hardship has to be run through again.
Some of the details he gives are at times touching, or even saddening, as he gives a melancholy requiem to his first wife, who has died, or his older sister, who died from cancer of the everything, as he describes it.
The book is a quick read, and an interesting one for any fan of Vonnegut.

I'm a huge Godzilla nerd, and this is a massive book all about Eiji Tsuburaya, the special effects director behind all the original Godzilla movies, as well as the creation of Ultraman. I haven't read any filmmaking books in some time, so hopefully Ill learn some new tidbits from this one. See you soon.

It ain't easy being the Kizwat Haderach, as I've found out in Dune Messiah, the late Frank Herbert's surprisingly short follow up to his science fiction touchstone Dune. The book picks up roughly a decade after the events of the first book. Paul Maud'Dib, our hero from the first Dune, has ruled as Emperor of the known universe with a worried brow. Try as they might, Paul, and his mate Chani, cannot conceive an heir for Paul's throne. Unbeknownst to Paul, his wife of convenience, Princess Urulan, has been slipping Chani a dangerous contraceptive to prevent her from carrying the child that she feels is rightfully hers. As if this weren't worrisome enough, Paul has to contend with the moral quandaries of the Fremen Jihad in his name, now in its tenth anniversary, which has cut a bloody swathe across Paul's empire. Paul gives the reader a sense that this whole Messiah ruler thing has sorta got away from him.
As epic as all this sounds, it really isn't. The wisp of a plot here is paper thin. At 200 and some pages, Dune Messiah is barely a book and feels like an unfinished thought of Herbert's. While it manages to occasionally hold onto the political and religious intrigue seen from multiple character POVs that made the first book so engrossing, most of the time events are shown from Paul's prespective, however, so much of that is filtered through Paul's messianic, psuedo-quantum physics point of view, that it quickly becomes tiresome. Early on, the book appears as if it is going to be told from the perspective of heads of states from the previous, deposed emperor's regime as they conspire to turn Paul into a puppet ruler. However, Herbert more or less dumps this angle 50 or so pages in as the the tool of their conspiracy takes center stage. this tool is Duncan Idaho, now known as Hayt. For those not in the know, Duncan was a minor character who was killed off early on in the first Dune. The remains of Duncan, once the sword master and mentor to a young Paul, has been remade into a "Ghola", a being that is an exact physical copy of the deceased, but who doesn't necessarily retain that person's memories. I found it an interesting narrative choice on Herbert's part to take a minor character he killed off in the previous story, and remake him into a main character with the strongest arc in the second story. Duncan/Hayt is a manchurian candidate of sorts. Not only is he meant to invoke Paul's fond memories of Duncan to cloud his judgement, but he's also programmed to be an assassin.
Overall, Dune Messiah feels like a filler book written long after the true sequel came out to fill in some of the blanks from point A to point B, sort of like one of those Star Wars tie in novels. Hopefully Children of Dune is more epic is scope.

This seems to be widely regarded as Maugham's masterwork. That excites me, mostly because the only other experience I've had with Maugham is the Razor's Edge, which is one of my all time favorite novels. From what I can tell, this is in somewhat of a similar vein, as it follows a young man, who eschews the goals and wishes set forth for him by his family to take a journey of self discovery, in Germany. Join me when I finish this one.

So its another month and I've defeated another book in mortal combat. This time out it was Letters from the Earth by Mark Twain. As stated last month, this is my first foray into Twain literature. I'm sure any Twain aficionado would be horrified at the idea of someone completely fresh to his writing starting with this book, and I can't say thats a completely baseless reaction. If one is trying to get a sense of a writer's style, I'm not sure this would be the best place to begin. Edited by Bernard DeVoto, the book is a collection of essays and short stories published some 50 odd years after Twain's death.
The two stand out pieces of writing in the entire collection are the two that bookend it. The opening story "Letters From the Earth", which the book derives its title from, involves the Archangel Satan, a servant of the Supreme Being, who journeys to Earth. The structure of the story is written as a series of correspondence to Satan's fellow Archangels Gabriel and Michael, as Satan relates his observations of the development of humanity down through the centuries and their distortion of the Supreme Being's mission and ideas via the Bible. It's interesting to see Twain's thoughts on judeo-christian values and how the rules and belief systems are often paradoxes and contradictions of one another.
The other story, found at the end of the book, is "the Great Dark". As a long time fan of H. P. Lovecraft, this story seemed more in keeping with that author's works than anything by the guy who wrote Life on the Mississippi. The story follows a seemingly happy family man, who after presenting one of his daughters with a microscope for her birthday, takes a nap, only to find himself onboard a whaling ship, accompanied by his entire family, as it sails across the very drop of water he and his daughter observed under the new microscope back in the waking world. The story progresses over several years as the ship and its bewildered crew evade numerous single celled organisms, which are now monstrous leviathans intent on taking down their ship. The story was never completed before Twain's death in 1910 and DeVoto adds a postscript summarizing what Twain intended to do with the rest of it, based on notes found with the unfinished manuscript.
Overall, its an interesting read, even if it's a lesser work by Twain, and not even something he intended to publish. Someone looking for a more standard introduction to Twain and his works might be better off with Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn.

For those not in the know, this is the second book in Frank Herbert's Dune saga. The first book is widely regarded as one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time. I'm inclined to agree with that sentiment. I read it for the first time only about three years ago and was impressed with its complexity, especially for a genre that is more known for space ship battles and laser guns instead of the complex character arcs and political intrigue that filled Dune.
The second book apparently finds Paul Mau'Dib finding out that being the Messiah of Arrakis is not all its cracked up to be as he takes on political and physical foes from all sides. Are you excited? I'm excited! I'll see you on the Desert Planet next month.

Here's my latest conquest in the land of literature. I don't really remember how exactly I heard about this book. I think it might've been an article on CHUD.com about a movie option on the book for the Coen Brothers to direct. This sounds about right, so I'm gonna go with this story.
The story follows Meyer Landsman, a hard edge, hard drinking policeman in the Sam spade/Popeye Doyle vein, living and working in the Jewish federal district of Sitka. Sitka as it turns out, is dirty patch of land off the coast of Alaska that was given to the jewish refugees of Europe and the Middle East following World War II. See, once upon a time a proposal was killed in congress for the jews to live there instead of the Middle eastern patch of desert they inhabit now. Chabon takes this idea and turns it in a "What If?" universe were the jews flourished in a 60 year arctic layover after the utter failure of the Israeli state in 1948. After finding that one of his fellow red sea pedestrians is murdered in the very building where he dwells, officer Landsman goes through hell and high water to find out who or what is behind the death of this unassuming yid junkie he lived next door to.
The book is amazingly bleak, partly due to its location in Alaska. Chabon paints a world that is windy, rainy, and always cold, all the while orthodox jews, known as Black Hats in the book, wander about their business as if they live in the jewish neighborhoods of Brooklyn. It must be this bleakness that made it hard for me to be engaged by the characters. Everyone is very down trodden and seem to admit defeat from the word go. Through the course of the story, we're shown the hard knocks that have brought Landsman to such a lowly state. It seemed to lack a compelling nature, as its all handed over so matter of factly. At the start of the book, its also made known that the land they occupy is going to revert back to American sovereignty. It adds a sense of shiftlessness to all the characters, as none of them seem to know where they'll end up in five months.
There's some interesting parallels drawn between this make believe jewish state and the real Israel, in particular the jewish people fighting a territorial war with the native americans in the area as opposed to palestinians. Overall, it was an interesting read that reminded me some what of Phillip K. Dick's superior the Man in the High Castle. Another alternative history story where the Axis wins WWII instead of the allies, leading to a cold war between the Third Reich and the Greater Asian Empire. The moral of both books seems to be that no matter how different history turned out, the ultimate modern day results would more or less be the same.

Embarrassingly enough, I have never read one sentence worth of Mark Twain's writing. Shameful, I know! I plan to rectify that. This is actually a book I've been wanting to read since my senior year of college. It's a collection of his writings. I'm not exactly sure what I'm in store for, other than one essay is written from the point of view of the Devil, so that should be something special. Check back soon for my thoughts on this one.

So this is my first book of the new year. It's my first Stephen King book in more than two years, the last one I read being Hearts in Atlantis sometime around 2006. After reading straight through all seven of his Dark Tower books in 2004, I've been slowly going back through his catalog and reading his other books that tie into that series. I'm in no hurry, as it will more than likely take me years to read all of it, since most of his work is somehow tied to the Dark Tower.

I found this to be more of a downer than King's usual stuff. I'm not sure why. Part of it might have been that Ben Mears, the main character, is a guy not much older than myself, who's forced to kill the girl he loves when she's turned into a vampire. Also, I won't spoil the ending, but its much more bittersweet than some of King's later novels. In fact, its not much of a "happy" ending at all. Ben doesn't win the conflict in the story so much as he survives it.

A couple people I've talked to have told me that this is the only King book they read, the reason being, that it creeped them out so bad that they couldn't bring themselves to crack open another. While I've read and watched far too many horror stories for it to have the same effect on me, I could certainly understand how some people might react this way. I stayed up until 2am earlier this week, burning through a lot of the rising action in the story, then caught my self tiptoeing around in the dark, and jumping into bed to go to sleep. As silly as that sounds, the book does have an eerie enough quality to it to make you look over your shoulder while in a dark room for a while after being done with it.

I don't really know much about the plot of this one, other than it takes place in a fictional Israel, established on a coast of Alaska, instead of in the middle East. Doesn't that sound lovely? I figure since the east coast is in a deep freeze at the moment, I'll stick with books that take place in northern points of North America, and have bleak story lines. Check back soon for my thoughts on this one.