Books!

I'm glad to see my book blog from yesterday getting a good reaction. Jen, I'll take a look at that book that you mention, and Queenie, Stephen King is usually worth a good re-read.

I've read The Stand numerous times, and have really enjoyed it. I did read "Everything's Eventual" earlier this year, as I went through one of my King kicks I go through every 10 years or so... I tend to burn out on King, and then save up a bunch of his stuff to read, and then get into reading them all at once. This most recent kick started out after finishing The Dark Tower series (made me cry, by the way). I picked up "Insomnia," and even though I recall it getting some poor reviews, I actually really liked it.

Lou, one of my college friends, tends to think that many of King's books don't have really good endings, and I can agree with him on that. Some do have the whole "deus ex machina," let's pull a rabbit out of the hat conclusions. The Stand is actually kind of like that, but since the subject of the book is all about good, evil, God, and mystical forces, I can see where it comes from there.

I also enjoyed Desperation/The Regulators when I read them both in a row. Desperation was the better novel, but having the same cast of characters in two very different novels was an intriguing experiement. Bag of Bones, I read a few years ago, and thought it was a good return to form for King. Next time I'm in a bookstore, I may have to pick up some of his newer paperbacks that I haven't read, to finish off the tail end of my 10 year kick.

I do have to give honorable mention to King's short story, "The Boogeyman," in the Night Shift collection. If you haven't ever read this story, I recommend you to go out and find the book in your local bookstore/library, and read it. I believe it's the second story in the book, and when I first read it as a youth, it really got me. I mean, it got me good. I mean, I was frightened to sleep. I mean, I couldn't not think about the story for quite a long time. I mean, it freaked me out, MAN!!!!

Sorry, a bit of a flashback there...

The Harry Potter books were also suggested as a possible re-read. I could definintely do that at some point, but I really just started reading them all late last year, so it's a bit too soon for a re-read. Looking through my bookshelves today, I noted Kim Stanley Robinson's "Mars" trilogy of books. They're worth a re-read, but I last re-read them (for the first time) right before I got married back in 2004, so like with Potter, it's a bit too soon to jump into them again.

I got strange looks at lunch today when I mentioned that I had re-read the Lord of the Rings trilogy perhaps 10 times in my life. Perhaps it's more like 8 or so, but I don't think, for work that good, that that's too many times... Although if I go the Tolkien route with my next read, I very well might pull out The Simirillion instead of LOTR. It's a tougher read, but I think I'm still getting more content out of reading that at this point. It's dense, like reading a novel with no dialogue, but very rewarding for the depth of the story. And it sets up all the sadness that happens in LOTR, giving the entire world of Middle Earth the context of what happens in the Third Age (when LOTR happens). The Simirillion details the First Age of Middle Earth.

Have I lost the non-geeks out there yet?

With all this being said, I still haven't decided what to re-read yet. King is coming up fast (hrm, perhaps the "Four Past Midnight" collection, I recall enjoying that on the first read...), but there still might be some SF dark horses out there. And, of course, the Tolkien is always a strong option.

NP: Camper Van Beethoven - Shut Us Down