Archive
Book Review: From a Buick 8 by Stephen King (Bottom of TBR Pile Challenge)
Summary:
When Pennsylvania state troopers are called in for an abandoned car, they expect it to be a simple report and transfer to impound. But instead they find a car that is slightly off. It looks like a Buick 8 but isn’t quite one. Plus its engine by all laws of mechanics should not work. The troopers agree to make the Buick their responsibility, putting it in a shed and keeping an eye on it. Because it’s not just a car. It might not be a car at all.
Review:
I was told before I read this by other Stephen King fans that it’s not one of King’s better books, but I would like to read everything he has written, so I picked it up anyway. This is a book that builds thrills slowly and gently to a conclusion that may not seem satisfying to many readers.
The biggest thing that I think took the thrills out of the book for me is that I am not a car person. When the narrator was describing the Buick 8, I had no idea any of it was off at all, so it didn’t give me the creeps. When they first describe the engine, for instance, I was surprised they were freaked out by it because it just seemed like a mysterious engine to me….like all engines. I definitely think there are more thrills to be found here if the reader is a car person. A car person will get caught up in what’s awry with the Buick, and see it as the mystery that the state troopers recognize it to be immediately.
What this book excels at is what King always excels at. The book establishes the place and feeling of rural Pennsylvania beautifully. The characters all speak in accurate and easily readable dialogue. There is a large assortment of characters, and they are easy to tell apart. The timeline of the book is carefully selected for just the right tempo for the book. These are all wonderful things that kept me reading and made me engaged with characters I might not normally identify with.
Some readers might find that the plot and thrills move too slowly for them. The Buick has issues gradually over time, and the conclusion they build to might not feel like a satisfying conclusion for all readers. Personally, I enjoy slower moving thrillers, so this worked for me, but it might not work for all. Similarly, I believe the ending will be more satisfying to those who have read the entire Dark Tower series than to those who have not. What is going on with the Buick is more understandable and a bigger deal if the reader is aware of all of the context provided by the Dark Tower.
Overall, if you are a car person who will appreciate a car that is slightly off and also enjoys slowly moving thrillers enhanced by a strong sense of place, this will be a great read for you. Similarly, those who have read the Dark Tower may be interested in this book due to some possible connections to that series. If neither of those descriptions fit you, you may want to pick up a different Stephen King book for your thrills. He certainly has plenty to choose from.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
3 out of 5 stars
Length: 467 pages – chunkster
Source: Harvard Books
Counts For:
Book Review: Thinner by Stephen King
Summary:
Billy Halleck is an overweight, high-powered lawyer in a wealthy Connecticut town. He’s getting a bit irritated at his wife and a bit frustrated with his weight, but he loves his teenage daughter. One day, a band of gypsies come to town, and Billy accidentally runs one of them down with his car, killing her. His law firm and the cops, naturally, get him out of the manslaughter charge, but nobody can protect him from the lead gypsy’s curse, uttered while stroking one finger down his cheek, “Thinner.” Now he’s dropping weight no matter how much he eats, and he must race against the clock in an attempt to save himself.
Review:
A book about gypsy curses could easily slide into racist territory, but in fact Thinner actually criticizes the treatment the gypsies have received in the United States over the years, in spite of them not always being the most sympathetic characters in the book. They may be a bit non-mainstream and overly quick to exact their own vengeance, but Billy Halleck and his cronies are a much more frightening type of bad. They’re the bad that comes from too much money and power. The bad that comes from being so self-centered and over-indulgent that you’ve stopped noticing the rest of the world exists.
So, the social commentary is good and not offensive, what about the horror and thrills? That is, after all, what one reads a King novel for. The grotesqueness definitely builds gradually over time, making this much more of a thriller than a horror. At first Billy’s weight loss is welcomed. He was, after all, overweight before. Gradually, though he starts to freak out about how much weight he’s consistently losing in spite of eating as much as he possibly can. He starts to investigate and discovers two others with their own unique and, frankly, much more frightening curses. Although the beginning may feel a bit slow, that is exactly as it should be. Billy goes from normal life to life under a curse to racing against the clock to save his own life. The horror builds perfectly.
That said, this still doesn’t quite read as sophisticated as some of King’s later work. It does almost seem like a bit too obvious an allegory. A bit too obvious a statement being made. In spite of the story providing chills, it’s not quite terrifying or mind-blowing. It’s a fun read, but it’s no Dark Tower.
Overall this thriller provides chills, horror, and a good social commentary. I recommend it to fans of horror and thrillers alike, although slightly more to fans of thrillers.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Harvard Book Store
Series Review: The Dark Tower Series by Stephen King (spoiler warning)
Introduction:
I post series reviews after completing reading an entire series of books. It gives me a chance to reflect on and analyze the series as a whole. These series reviews are designed to also be useful for people who: A) have read the series too and would like to read other thoughts on it or discuss it with others OR B) have not read the series yet but would like a full idea of what the series is like, including possible spoilers, prior to reading it themselves or buying it for another. Please be aware that series reviews necessarily contain some spoilers.
Summary:
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” This famous opening line begins the distinctly American fantasy epic tale of Roland the gunslinger’s quest for the Dark Tower. In this fantasy, there are multiple parallel universes, referred to as whens and wheres. The one Roland inhabits that is home to the Dark Tower and beams that keep all the worlds together and operating functionally just so happens to distinctly resemble the old American wild west. Gunslingers in this world are like the knights of the round table in old England, and Roland is the last of his kind. He’s on a quest both to reach the Dark Tower and save it and the beams, as 
they seem to be breaking. Through the course of his quest, Roland draws three new gunslingers and a billy-bumbler to become his ka-tet–his family bound by ka (fate) not blood. These new gunslingers all come from America, but from different whens and versions of America. Eddie is a heroin addict. Susannah is an African-American woman from the 1960s who is missing both of her legs from the knees down and has Dissociative Identity Disorder (more commonly known as multiple personality disorder). Jake is a boy from a wealthy family in NYC that hardly pays attention to him. Oy is a billy-bumbler; a creature from Roland’s world that looks a bit like a dog with a long snout and a curly tail but is able to talk. After training and bonding together, they continue on their quest for the Dark Tower. A quest that leads them through old ruined cities in Roland’s world, gangster territory 
and rural Maine in America, a countryside farming community where almost all births are twins, and much much more. The ultimate questions of ka, how the worlds are bound together, and just what role this gunslinger has to play in all of it loom at the center of this epic tale.
Review:
The interesting thing about the Dark Tower series is that each book has its own unique vibe, feel, and style to it, yet they together work to make up a complete whole that has its own unique feel to it too. Because of this, certain entries 
in the series may appeal less to some people than others. For instance, I did not enjoy Wizard and Glass, because it was essentially a slow-paced wild west romance story, yet I know some readers enjoy that entry immensely. Similarly, I love Song of Susannah for both its horror and the way King structured it using song stanzas to correlate with the sections of the book, yet I know some people who found it too dense for one entry in the series. The thing is though, to me, the Dark Tower is more about the experience of reading the series as a whole than the individual books. I’m perfectly willing to work through a book or a few chapters that aren’t quite the genre I prefer, because I know that will change up later on and whatever is being discussed is important to the story as 
a whole. It frankly is interesting to read a series that explores so many different genres within itself. It makes the whole concept of parallel worlds more believable as each area they go through feels different.
The characterization at first seems simplistic. There’s Roland the gunslinger. He’s got a one-track mind in pursuit of the tower. He’ll do anything to reach it, even if it’s questionable. Is he justified in his vehemence? It’s hard to tell at first. Similarly, the man in black who he is originally pursuing is extraordinarily one-dimensional. He is just an evil magician, and that is all. Similarly, when Eddie, Susannah, and Jake are first drawn into Roland’s world, they are also one-dimensional. Eddie is just the junky. Susannah is the crazy woman with multiple 
personalities. Jake is a lonely, frightened little boy. Yet as the series progresses, King gradually develops the characters to be rich and multi-dimensional. Their characters are so intensely vivid, including even Oy, that I actually found myself crying as bad things happened to various members of the ka-tet. Eddie overcomes his addiction, as well as the emotional wounds inflicted on him by his older brother to grow up and become a true man. Susannah does not lose her multiple personalities, but she learns to work with them. They are a part of her, and she grows to accept that. She stops being bitter about her accident and her lot in life and comes to be self-sufficient and caring of those around her. Jake quickly grows to become a confident young man who cares for his ka-tet, but especially Oy and Roland. Finally, Roland gradually learns to open himself up to relationships. Although 
the tower still calls to him, he finds himself questioning if maybe the ka-tet is better than the tower.
The horror elements in the series definitely live up to what one would expect from King. There are disgusting moments, such as a man sick from the weed drug in Roland’s world that makes users go insane. There are also truly terrifying moments such as when a baby boy turns into a spider and eats his own mother via her breast. Then there are mentally disturbing themes such as the children who get stolen by the wolves and are returned with their brains completely ruined. It is later discovered that their brain power was fed to telepaths in service of the Crimson King who is seeking to destroy all the worlds. Whatever flavor of horror suits you best, you will find it in the series.
The themes of love and building your own family and being at the hands of fate are what truly carry the series, though. These themes are what make the reader care about the horrors that are happening to Roland and his ka-tet. They’re what makes it possible to suspend disbelief about multiple worlds being held together by a tower, a rose, and beams. The ideas of self-sacrifice, serving your purpose, and caring for others who ka has brought into your life are powerful and subtly expressed. To me the whole concept of making your own family is the most endearing part of the series, and I loved seeing it portrayed in such a subtle, tender manner.
Of course what really brought the series to a whole new level for me is the ending. It blew me away. It was completely unexpected. Roland reaches the tower after having lost his ka-tet. He goes in and climbs with each floor displaying items and smells to represent each year of his life. He reaches the top door and pulls it open only to realize, horrified at the last moment, that he is being pulled through back to the desert where the series began. The voice of the tower speaks to him about his journey. That he’s done it before. That he’s learning a little each time. It points out that Roland realized his mistake in not taking a few moments to pick up the horn of Eld, so this time, it is strapped to Roland’s side, where it wasn’t originally. For a moment Roland remembers what has just occurred, but soon he just feels it was all a mirage. A heat-induced daydream of finally reaching the dark tower. He continues on, ending the series with the same sentence it began with.
Personally, I feel that this puts the series in a whole new light. Who exactly is this Roland that he is so important that he has to redo this quest until, presumably, he gets it right? Why did King choose to tell us about one of the times he didn’t get it right? What did he get wrong? What lessons is Roland supposed to be learning? Will Roland ever escape the cycle or is it some sort of hell punishment he’s doomed to repeat forever? Of course, it all reads a bit like the belief in reincarnation and learning something each life cycle. In any case, it made me personally want to immediately start rereading the series, searching for clues about the repetition of the journey. It brings the series to a whole new philosophical level that truly elevated it in my mind from a fun fantasy to an epic.
Overall, there are parts of the series I didn’t enjoy, and due to the vast variety of genres represented in the series, most people will probably dislike or struggle with at least bits of it. However, when the series is put together and all the pieces click together in your mind, it becomes an unforgettable, completely American epic. A wild west fantasy is unique, and the themes and philosophical questions explored underneath the entertaining prose make for something even deeper than that. I am incredibly glad I took the time to read this series, and I would recommend it to anyone. It is well worth the time invested.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: borrowed, Harvard Book Store
Books in Series:
The Gunslinger, review, buy it
The Drawing of the Three, review, buy it
The Waste Lands, review, buy it
Wizard and Glass, review, buy it
Wolves of the Calla, review, buy it
Song of Susannah, review, buy it
The Dark Tower, review , buy it
Book Review: The Dark Tower by Stephen King, (Series, #7)
Summary:
Roland and his ka-tet face their greatest challenges yet. First they must successfully save the rose in NYC. Then they must find each other, and Susannah and Jake need to escape the low men who would harm them. Also on their list before continuing to pursue the Dark Tower is to stop the breakers who mean to destroy the beam, thereby leading the worlds to ruin. Can they save the beam? Will Roland reach his beloved Dark Tower with his ka-tet whole or shattered? Will he reach it at all? The Dark Tower looms with a far greater presence than ever before, calling to both Roland and reader commala-come-come.
Review:
Now I understand why people who’ve read the entire Dark Tower series rant with showers of praise about it. This final entry in the series totally blew my mind. The settings were perfectly drawn and easy to visualize. The multiple plot lines were all complex and yet simultaneously easy to follow. I cried multiple times reading this book, including in public, and those who know me know that I generally don’t cry at stories. All of the characters of the ka-tet are treated with full-formed character development. They are richly drawn, but it is also easy to see how they have grown and changed throughout the series. The multiple, inter-locking worlds of Roland and his ka-tet suddenly snap into place in the reader’s mind, and suddenly everything is nearly as clear as it probably is for King.
This book is quite long, but it didn’t feel like it. I wanted to read it nearly constantly, yet I had to put it down periodically due to the emotional wringer King was bringing me through. It’s been so long since I read a series that wasn’t either a trilogy or a serial romance that I’d forgotten how emotional it can get to have a long, fully realized tale told with characters you’ve grown to know and care for. These people read as real people, and the world feels real. It makes me want to go look for my own unfound door to journey to a parallel reality. Even though at first I kind of laughed at the idea of a rose and a tower and beams somehow controlling and seeing over multiple worlds, at some point I bought into it. I suspended my disbelief, and that’s exactly what a spinner of tales is supposed to be able to help his readers do.
What made me truly fall in love with the story and make me want to instantly start re-reading the series over again from the beginning is the ending. I wouldn’t give it away and ruin the experience of discovering it yourself for anybody, so just let me say, it totally blew my mind. I did not see it coming. It made my perspective on the whole tale change, which explains why I want to re-read it so much. (Maybe next year). I can also say that the ending makes reading the rest of the long series entirely worth it. Definitely don’t give up on the series part-way through. Continue all the way to the end.
If you’ve been reading the Dark Tower series and are uncertain about continuing, absolutely do. I don’t hesitate to say that the last entry in the series is tied for the best and will totally blow your mind. I highly recommend the whole series, but I especially encourage anyone who has started it to finish it. It’s well worth your time.
5 out of 5 stars
Source: Harvard Book Store
Previous Books in Series:
The Gunslinger, review
The Drawing of the Three, review
The Waste Lands, review
Wizard and Glass, review
Wolves of the Calla, review
Song of Susannah, review
Book Review: Song of Susannah by Stephen King (Series, #6)
Summary:
The ka-tet faces three challenges: keep the chap from the Crimson King, save Susannah, and get Tower to sell them the rose. With the help of the Manni, they get the door to open two final times, and it sends Eddie and Roland to Maine to see Tower and Jake, Pere, and Oy to NYC in a final desperate attempt to save Susannah and the chap. Meanwhile, Susannah must face not only the foreign woman inside her, Mia, but also the figurative demons of her past and her personality in her mind.
Review:
There are elements of this book that are beautiful and quite literary, primarily everything to do with the title. There are of course two songs about Susannah. One is immediately evident. Each chapter ends with a stanza of a song, remarkably like the commala songs sung in the previous book, but of course the content of the stanza references what happened in that chapter. There’s also a song from Susannah’s past that winds up showing more about who she is and what her life has been than anything else in the books has done. What makes that beautiful is that it’s just a traditional folk song and wasn’t written by King for her at all.
Of course I’d consider this book a failure if all it did was develop Susannah’s character. The Dark Tower is about characters and the quest equally. Thankfully, this entry in the series addresses both. Various mysteries are addressed such as what the Low Men are, who Mia is, how Pere wound up in a book from another one of the worlds, and more. Plus a few new mysteries are added. But in the end the main questions remain: will the ka-tet make it to the Dark Tower and will the Dark Tower fall?
In spite of the well-written action sequences and character development, there is one aspect of this book that rubbed me the wrong way. King writes himself in as a character, but not just any character. He is the Crimson King’s opposite. In other words, he’s the essential good guy. For some reason when he writes his stories they have an impact on the worlds, so he must stay alive and keep writing the Dark Tower series if the ka-tet is to have any hope. The whole thing just reads as egotistical. Plus it forced me out of the story. I can suspend my disbelief for other worlds, but to suspend it enough to believe that the author is not only vaguely aware of these worlds but also his writing impacts them, well, it leaves you going “huh?” and kind of takes the escapism out of it. So I skimmed over the parts featuring King and tried to just focus on the ka-tet. It wasn’t that hard to do, so the King bits definitely didn’t ruin my experience; they just dulled it a bit.
Overall, this is a very good entry into the series. The characters and the plot move forward, and there are some wonderfully memorable scenes that will stick with you for a long time. If you’ve stuck with the series and enjoyed it this far, you’ll definitely enjoy this book.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Borrowed
Previous Books in Series:
The Gunslinger, review
The Drawing of the Three, review
The Waste Lands, review
Wizard and Glass, review
Wolves of the Calla, review
Book Review: Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King (Series, #5)
Summary:
The gunslinger’s katet have a lot more on their plate than just continuing along the path of the beam. Susannah is pregnant and has developed another personality, Mia, to deal with the pregnancy as it is most likely demonic. The Rose is in danger in then when of 1977 New York City. The man who owns the empty lot it grows in is under pressure from the mob to sell it to an unseen man. So the last thing the katet needs is to run into a town desperately in need of the help of gunslingers.
The Calla, a town made up of rice growers and ranchers who mostly give birth to twins, has been facing a plague once every generation. Creatures referred to as Wolves come and take one child out of every set of twins between the ages of about 4 and puberty. The child is later returned mentally retarded. Their local robot messenger, Andy, has warned them that the Wolves are coming in about a month, and their holy man believes gunslingers are on their way.
Unable to turn down their duty as gunslingers or give up on their quest for the Dark Tower, can the gunslingers pull it all off or is it just more than any katet, even one as strong as theirs, can handle?
Review:
Toward the beginning of the book, Roland says something like, “Being a gunslinger means weeks of planning, preparation, and hard work for 5 minutes of battle.” That’s really a good description of this book. It’s a lot of exposition, albeit very interesting exposition, followed by a rather anticlimactic battle that is really the exposition for the next leg of the katet’s journey. This could have gone really badly, but thankfully there’s a lot of information King needs to tell us, and most of it is interesting and relevant to the gunslingers’ world, so it works.
King is good at creating a culture. The Calla and its people possess a very distinctive speech pattern and colloquialisms that are simultaneously easy enough for the reader to learn and to follow. He hints that he just took the Maine accent and exaggerated it. Maybe that’s why a New England gal like myself found it so easy to follow. In any case, the town of twins, ranchers, and rice is rich with local legends, folklore, and traditions. It is enjoyable to read about, and the town also manages to provide information about the katet’s greater quest for the Dark Tower.
It is well-known that King’s Dark Tower series brings in elements and characters from his other works, as he sees all of his stories happening in the same world and being connected. To that end, the holy man of the Calla is the priest from Salem’s Lot, and a part of Wolves of the Calla is him relating his backstory to the katet. Something that irritated me about all of the tales told in the “Telling of Tales” section of Wolves of the Calla is that it would switch from the character speaking to an italicized third person narrative. I don’t know if all of the italicized portions were previously written for other books or if King felt that he needed to be an omnipotent narrator in order to properly tell everything that had happened, but I found it disjointing and jarring. It was only my unanswered questions about the Wolves and the Dark Tower that kept me reading through that section.
I enjoyed the growth in the relationship between Roland and Jake. Roland is gradually growing into a father figure/adviser, while Jake is gradually becoming a man and an equal with the other gunslingers. King handles this transition well, and it is believable. Meanwhile, Eddie and Susannah’s relationship doesn’t change per se, but Eddie does realize that he will always love Susannah more than she loves him. It is evident that both of them are uncomfortable with her multiple personalities. This is an issue that clearly has not yet been resolved.
I do have three gripes with King. The first is that he persists in calling Susannah’s multiple personalities schizophrenia, which is just wrong. Schizophrenics hear voices, at worst, they do not have multiple personalities. What Susannah has is Dissociative Identity Disorder, and it is just inexcusable that he would get this wrong.
Second, although previously in the series the reader isn’t allowed to know or see something Roland knows, the reader always gets to know what the other gunslingers know. Here, information is pointedly held back from the reader. I can only assume this was an attempt to maintain suspense about the Wolves, which I found to be a cop-out. Either come up with an idea creative enough that we’ll be surprised anyway or have the characters be surprised as well as us. Also, I already had the wolves figured out long before they are revealed anyway. The suspense came in wondering how the final battle would play out, not in wondering who the Wolves were.
Third, I don’t like the fact that Susannah’s main storyline is a pregnancy. I don’t like that one of her key roles so far as a gunslinger was to fuck the shit out of a demon so that Jake could be pulled through (The Wastelands). I also really don’t like that something as simple as her being pregnant causes her to abandon her husband and her katet in the form of another personality, Mia. It almost seems that King uses the multiple personalities just so that he can have a sweet woman around when he needs one but then can instantaneously turn her back into all of the negative images of women out there. I need to see where Susannah’s storyline winds up before I can offer a final analysis of the character and its implications, but at the moment, it reads as a very negative view of women.
The overarching storyline of the quest for the Dark Tower, however, is still going strong in this book. We learn a bunch of new, important information about the Tower, the beams, and the worlds, and new questions pop up. With each book it becomes more evident that saving the Tower is important to the well-being of all worlds. I am pleased to report that this was a marked improvement over the previous book, although not quite up to the intensity of The Waste Lands or pure readability of The Gunslinger. It still manages to suck you in and gets the story back on the path of the beam.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Borrowed
Previous Books in Series:
The Gunslinger, review
The Drawing of the Three, review
The Waste Lands, review
Wizard and Glass, review
Book Review: The Waste Lands By Stephen King (Series, #3)
Summary:
This entry in the Dark Tower series opens with Eddie, Susannah, Roland, and Jake dealing with the paradox created when Roland saves Jake from being killed in his own world. Now Jake and Roland are both living with the knowledge of two different ways a time period of about three weeks went down, and it is driving them both mad. They must solve the paradox before it is too late. After working out the paradox the ka-tet faces a post-apocalyptic city stuck in an age-based civil war. Can the ka-tet who fit into neither side survive? More importantly, can they hitch a ride on a long-forgotten train to speed up their quest for the tower?
Review:
This book opens with a bang. I thought King was going to gloss over the obvious paradox caused by Roland saving Jake in The Drawing of the Three, but a significant portion of this book is spent dealing with just that paradox. I think King is at his best when he writes about psychological horrors, and he gets to really exercise his hand at this with this plot point. That’s not to say there aren’t physical horrors here as well. Of course there are. They mainly show up as the guardians of the ends of the beams that function like spokes around the tower. Decaying beasts and demons haunt the ka-tet’s every move. I actually had serious issues putting the book down during its first half.
The problem arises in the second half. First of all, this book really should have been divided into two. The plots are almost entirely different between the first and second halves, and this was more jolting than if the second storyline was started knowing that it was the next entry in the series. Even King acknowledges in an Afterword that the second storyline stops extremely abruptly. I believe this is because of the sheer length the book was getting to. This wouldn’t have been a problem if this storyline was its own book entirely.
I also personally don’t like plots revolving around kidnappers out to hurt children, which is essentially what this plot is, only in a more fantastical world and with a side-mission for Eddie and Susannah. I’m sure some people enjoy this plot idea, but I personally am far too disturbed at the thought to become thoroughly sucked into the story.
I could forgive these things, mainly due to the addition of a lovable critter to the ka-tet, if it wasn’t for an event toward the end of the book that I felt was too over-top, unbelievable, and done purely for shock value. I won’t tell you what it is here, because that’d be a major plot spoiler, but suffice to say you’ll know it when you see it, and it’ll probably upset you too. It read like lazy writing, and that made me feel like I was being talked down to as a reader.
In spite of the disjointed ending that was also a bit uncomfortable for me, the beginning was truly excellent. I’m hoping the next entry in the series reads entirely like the beginning of this one, but this book is still worth the read for the first half alone.
3.5 out of 5 stars
Source: Borrowed
Previous Books in Series:
The Gunslinger, review
The Drawing of the Three, review
Friday Fun!
Reading other people’s blogs (most notably The Story Siren and Medieval Bookworm) made me decide my blog needs a bit of a consistent humanizing element to it. Non-opinion posts that just give you a general sense of who the hell this person is who’s yacking to you about books, movies, and general opinions. To that end I’ve decided to start this new (hopefully consistent) feature–Friday Fun!–in which I will ramble about general Amanda-stuff. I hope you enjoy.
This week I became the proud owner of both a menorah and a 3 foot tall fake Christmas tree. I can hear my family now. “Whaaat?! You bought a fake tree?!” But you see, a fake tree is easier and cheaper, so I’m happy. I’ll also need to skip the tinsel for the first year ever due to the presence of the kitty. She totally would eat the tinsel and we’d get to spend a lovely night in the MSPCA ER. As for the menorah, it’s the first time I’ll be the one in charge of lighting it. For the last five years, it was always a roommate or hallmate who did, so I’ve taken it upon myself to learn the Hanukkah prayers. My friend Nina helped me get the basics, but I found this website last night to help me practice when she’s not around.
I am a major online holiday shopper, and a lot of the presents I’ve been buying arrived this week. I have quite the stash in my closet, and I need to acquire wrapping paper so they can wind up under the tree. Seeing all the wrapped presents is one of my favorite things. I’ve looked for wrapping paper twice so far, but finding non-holiday-specific ones for my Chrismukkah celebrations hasn’t been going too well. And no, I don’t like snowman paper.
On the sour note, last night my downstairs neighbors complained about me walking around my apartment. Yes, walking. Personally my first reaction is that they should suck it up and deal because they knew what they were getting into when they chose an apartment that’s not on the top floor. It’s not like I was dancing or running circles or something. Upon reflection after she left, however, I realized that the new kitty addition does have a tendency to run circles (and bounce off walls and randomly do dances) in the evening, and perhaps this is what the neighbors have been hearing. I can sort of sympathize with this, but it doesn’t seem to me there’s much I can do about it. It’s not my fault the landlord has wood floors on the top floor of the apartment building. I’m thinking of stopping by and letting them know it’s probably the cat they’re hearing, so they at least know (unless that’s unnecessary?), but in the meantime, any suggestions on how to deal with the neighbors?
This weekend my plans are a bit up-in-the-air, but I do plan on decorating the tree, maybe hanging out with some friends, and reading more. It’d been a long time since I’ve read a series, and I’m really enjoying the cozy familiarity I’m starting to feel with the main characters in both The Dark Tower and Sookie Stackhouse. Of course I also have a couple of movies on my radar to watch. You’ll just have to wait til next week to find out what they are!
Peace!
Book Review: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King (Series, #2)
Summary:
After finishing the first stage in a long series toward finding The Dark Tower, Roland knows he must now “draw the three.” He will recruit three people to assist him in his quest. Now past the desert and mountains, he has reached an ocean beach where dangerous creatures lurk. As he walks up this beach he gradually finds doors to other realities where his three assistants reside, completely unaware they are about to be drawn into a quest in another world.
Review:
The Drawing of the Three makes it abundantly clear that The Dark Tower series is all about plot and not about character development. The characters do things that work for the plot, but make zero sense from a character stand-point. I’m not talking about mistakes here. I know in the real world people do stupid things. It’s more akin to say a Nazi suddenly deciding he loves a Jew. (That doesn’t happen in the book, but similar things do). I personally find this jarring, but if you’re more of a plot person than a character person, it won’t bother you.
My other issue, and bare in mind that I’ve now read three Stephen King books, is that his writing tends to be misogynistic. Sometimes it’s subtle. An example in this book is when a pharmacist who hates his job is on the phone with a complaining female client. Instead of thinking that he hates these people who complain, he thinks that he hates all these bitches who complain. I, as someone who works with the public, am certain that he has had men and women complain, so why did King specify only women? It seems whenever there’s an opportunity for a character to slur against women, they do. I’m not saying no character should be misogynistic. That’d be like saying no character should ever be racist. I am saying that King shouldn’t take every opportunity to be misogynistic and run with it.
*spoiler warning*
An even better example of this is the only female character in this book, the second assistant, Odetta. She has Dissociative Identity Disorder. (King wrongfully calls this Schizophrenia, which is an entirely different illness). Stereotypically, one personality is “good,” and the other is “bad.” The good personality is grateful to the men for helping her. She is quiet, submissive, intelligent, and strong inside. Naturally one of the men instantaneously falls in love with her. *rolls eyes* The bad personality attempts to defend herself, is physically strong, and vehemently protects herself against suspected rape. She actually tells these men that she will kill them with her cunt. The only women I know who use that word are raging feminists attempting to reclaim the word, and that is not the context here. She is also described as an ugly hag. Granted later these two personalities merge into one, but the implications are there. Men love women who act appropriately feminine. If you behave in any unfeminine manner, you are an ugly hag they naturally want to kill.
*end spoiler*
In spite of that, though, I do still like King’s stories. I’m mostly willing to overlook the bouts of misogyny, because the man can certainly write plot-driven horror. The plot here is excellent. We have doors that lead into people’s brains, horrifying creatures called “lobstrosities,” drugs, shoot-outs, infections, murderers, and more. There is literally horror on almost every page. I couldn’t put it down.
If you like plot-driven horror and don’t mind overlooking character development weakness, then you will enjoy this entry into the Dark Tower series.
3 out of 5 stars
Source: Borrowed
Previous Books in Series:
The Gunslinger, review
Book Review: The Gunslinger By Stephen King
Summary:
The first in King’s epic, Tolkien-like Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger introduces Roland who lives in a world similar to, yet different from our own. He is the last gunslinger, a kind of wild west type warrior. As he pursues the Man in Black across a desert in the first of many steps toward his goal of the Dark Tower, some elements of his dark past are revealed, as are some secrets of the many parallel, yet somehow linked, universes.
Review:
I admit it. I’m not normally a Stephen King fan, but after two people I know started devouring this series, I decided I had to know just what was so exciting.
I’m shocked to discover, I like a Stephen King book. I’m not so shocked to discover that this is an incredibly male book. Roland’s life centers around violence, guns, a quest, the women he beds, and taking care of a boy. It isn’t just the plot line that’s masculine though. The writing style is decidedly male. Roland is abrupt and to the point. Instead of talking about his heart fluttering, he gets hard-ons. Instead of his palms sweating with nerves, his balls retract up tightly against him. It’s gritty, dark, and male. And I liked it.
It reminds me a lot of watching old westerns with my father. This shouldn’t be surprising, since in the introduction King essentially says that he set out to write the American version of an epic in the style of Tolkien. What’s more American and epic than the wild west? Oh, I know, a parallel universe version of the wild west. With mutants.
It is a bit slow-moving at first. That’s not surprising, though, given that it’s the first in a series of seven. Think of it as the introduction chapter, only prolonged through two-thirds of the book. It’s not a boring introduction by any means; it just takes a while to get attached to the characters and thoroughly engrossed in the over-arching story. That’s ok though, because King provides plenty of nightmarish scenes in the mean-time to keep you reading.
I’ve always had a bit of a tendency to thoroughly enjoy more masculine stories just as much, if not more than more feminine stories. (I was the little girl who was excited to watch the war movie marathon on Veteran’s Day.) If you know that you enjoy this type of gritty story, definitely give The Gunslinger a shot. You won’t be disappointed.
4 out of 5 stars
Source: Borrowed
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Opinions of a Wolf 