Well it doesn't change anything. I'm pretty sure your summation is kind of the opposite of reality for that book.

Just back from holiday. Read two books out there:

The Flying Troutmans, Miriam Toews

Great easygoing on the beach read, very similar to the film Little Miss Sunshine - if you liked that film then you'll like this.

Way of the Peaceful Warrior - Dan Millman

My gfs dad is a buddhist/karate instructor, he reccommended this to me as a good introduction to some alternative ways of thinking. If you haven't read it and are open minded, you probably should. Not overly life changing personally, but definately made me do some thinking as to how I do live my everyday life. Would like to read something a little more sophisticated.

Just finished Long Walk and I totally disagree with it being the best story in the collection. To me the story was just as boring as a really long walk would be, drawn out and with no real climax. I mean, a few parts were cool about, like the conflicts and story telling between some of the walkers, the warnings and executions by the soldiers on the jeep, and the effects of the built up fatigue, but after these same things happened a dozen times, I became really bored of the book. Not to mention that it doesn't even explain the end of the race, and who was the winner*.

I would much rather read about the antics of the crazy guy in Road Work, the suspense of Running Man, and the psychology of Rage, so for me the ranking is:

Road Work, Running Man, Rage > Long Walk (the first three are interchangeable, imo.)

*I'm actually confused about that part. It said that he was the last surviving competitor, but then again it also never described the executions of like 4 other walkers who were supposedly still competing. This coupled with the fact that the narration became kinda of incoherent, since it was told from the main character's POV, really had me unsure of who ended up winning.

Abraham Lincoln Award Nomination:

I've talked about these before and how they're pertinent to my profession, especially the freshmen and sophomore students, as these novels are aimed at those ages. I've already commented on one of the 2010 nominations (there's 22) in The Hunger Games which while not entirely original, was a wonderful little novel that I'll recommend highly to my students.

I just finished reading my second of the nominations, Wake by Lisa McMann. It's a really short book, clocking in at 200 pages in a pretty large font. The novel follows Janie, a high school girl who, for reasons unknown, jumps into the dreams of those who are sleeping around her. This gives a high school girl some wild insights into her friend's lives and secrets (e.g., one of her classmates has lesbian dreams. neat-o).

The characterization of everyone is pretty thin, with some thin cliched hints toward parental abuse, both physical and emotional, toward some of the leads. Beyond that, the plot is mostly about her trying to cope with this strange "power" of hers. It's made especially difficult by her desire to keep it hidden from everyone important to her (else she be called crazy).

A freshman student of mine read this story and said that it was sort of confusing because of the constant in-and-out of the dream world. I have no idea how that's possible. The author changes for font for dreamland, and it's really not too confusing at all. I honestly do not think the average fourteen year old would struggle with this book at all.

It's not bad, but basically the best thing about this book is that it has a neat little idea and it's pretty short and easy to read. I doubt that this will be one of my favorites on the Lincoln nominations.

2.5*/5

Just finished the crying of lot 49. Weird. Interesting. Possibly brilliant. I will never look at w.a.s.t.e. the same

h-a-t-e-d it

Not going to pretend I'm smart/knowledgeable enuff to understand pynchons stuff. But it is uniquely fun and the dialogue and characters engaging.

I liked the Passage, and this isn't at all my typical reading. I finished it a few weeks ago and still find myself thinking about this book almost daily. Wish that I got into it years too late, like the GRRM or Steig Larson books, so that I could read the sequels now. I have questions about the last 100 or so pages that I don't want to wait 2 years to find out.

Since I got the Kindle I've been plowing through books. I just started the Sharpe series by Cornwell - have seen referred to as Patrick O'Brian on land - story of a British officer through a number of conflicts in the early 19th century. Only a few pages in, but seems good so far.

For next Fathers' Day - Longitude, by Dava Sobel

I don't post much but nice avatar! And, since that's low content.

Reading:

DFW- Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.
If you like DFW, this won't disappoint, particularly the self titled stories, Signifying Nothing, and Octet. If you find him overly self-indulgent and eself aware, then this is more of the same.

Penrose-Road to Reality. Really interesting but unfortunately, I'm not so much reading this as just turning the pages and oogling the diagrams. It's way above my level and I haven't been able to pick it up for two weeks.

Read the first 30 something pages of Carrie by Stephen King, and have liked it so far.

Wowow, what a crazy bitch Carrie's mother is, and it's kind of sad that the inspiration for Carrie's character were two girls that King knew growing up in middle/high school. They were both social outcasts because of crazy over religious/protective parents and one even had a condition that involved epilleptic seizures, which I'm sure didn't help.

Stephen admits to standing by why his peers were relentless in their teasing of these two girls, one of them driven to the point where she ended hanging herself in her basement. And the other sadly died early from complications with her seizure condition.

I can kind of relate to not quite fitting in when I grew up, having really mentally dysfuntional parents who never raised me to be prepared for the social world. I wasn't given the most basic of guidance, things like how to make friends, how to dress correctly or do the wash regularly, or how to take care of the most fundamental aspects of my hygeine. Thankfully my situation wasn't ultra extreme, and I was never sent to school with the same set of clothes everyday for years like one of the girls he used as inspiration for Carrie (you guessed it the same girl who ended up committing suicide).

Anyways, I'm expecting this to be a good read, since the content hits so close to home, plus i've never seen the movie.

I read an absolutely awful YA book called Hell Phone. Ugh. Never again will I refer to that book.

I've started reading The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz. I got turned on to it after watching him give a talk on TED. Pretty interesting so far about thirty pages in.

Carrie was described as a simple "potboiler" when it came out, but it picks good characters and situations and handles them sympathetically, and tells a good story. That's more than a great deal of "art" manages to do.

Or most Stephen King books.

Yup. I was a huge fan when he was new, but haven't been for 20 years or more

LOL I'm not sure how I feel about you or I taking a shot at ol' Steve every time someone mentions one of his works. It's just so easy. And I'm so bitter about how bad I think he has become.

I'm willing to admit when he's good and started out as the biggest fan possible, so I have no qualms about pointing out a more complete picture. You can't really get at a true picture of his output by only pointing out the best parts anyway.

That's true. I just sometimes feel like a broken record player. I know we share an opinion on his longer works. Have you read any of his recent short stories? Do you feel the same way about those? I tend to like his short stories, including the recent publications. When he maintains focus he can still be outstanding.

I think the last round of short story attempts didn't go so well for me, and I suppose it bothered me even more that the raves about them were still sometimes so over the top. It made me trust people's Stephen King raves even less than usual. I suppose I thought that even the ravers would have calmed down and gotten some perspective over time, as if new ravers weren't minted every day and as if I were dealing with a settled quantity. Brain turning into swiss cheese with age, I guess.

The one I recall reading second to last is old news by now. It was about a vampire flying in to small airports. I didn't find it particularly believable even within its own world, or good in any notable way. The last one I recall reading was about people on an island up Maine way getting lost in the snow on a trek across the sea ice, or something like that. The raves for it made it sound deeply moving and overall astoundingly good. I found it extremely long without going much of anywhere, the characters dull, and the one scary part there was only came at the very end of it. When it did, it wasn't scary and didn't quite fit; it felt like not only too many dozens of pages about nothing, but a double insult in that he put a cheat into the story. After all that drudgery, a payoff was in order, and a cheat almost felt like the author flipping the reader off.

It made me feel sad in two ways -- that I had wasted so much time being so bored without a reward ever manifesting, and that King seemed to have lost not only the inability to fill a story with interesting incident and character, but to even realize that you can't go 30 or 40 pages taking your reader for granted like that. It's bad enough in a novel, but who wouldn't understand that about a short story? It was my last of a half dozen tries to go back to Stephen King and still find his stuff rewarding.

And I know it's not just me, either, because when I went back to Night Shift, I found those short stories much tighter, and more clever and alive. He didn't seem so absent from his own pages.

Maybe the circle is closing and Stephen King is slowly turning into one of his own corny characters.

The story with the Vampire flying around, "The Night Flier", was published over 20 years ago.

Unfortunately, the last one I read was even worse.

Blarg,

Collection of short stories you'd recommend by S.K.?

Also, what are his must read books?

I don't read horror but you've made his earlier work sound interesting and I want to give him a go.

Nightshift for short stories. He once said his favorite of his novels was Salem's Lot, and as I recall that was his tightest and best put together of the ones I read before I stopped reading him actively.

The Shining is pretty good if you can get past the first 50 pages, but those first 50 throw a lot of people off. He was deep in his alcoholism then, and that is perhaps reflected in their lack of focus. But at any rate he snaps out of it eventually and then the book is really good.

But probably a better recommendation would be The Dead Zone.

His nonfiction book Danse Macabre is a really fun exploration of the major themes and branches in horror and science fiction in fiction, TV, and film and is among my favorites.

You thought Salems Lot was one of his tightest? That is the last of his novels that I put down only 50 pages in, convinced I would never pick up another of his novels. I recognize it came early in his career, but I found it to be a shining example of the unfocused stories and dim-witted characters that would form the basis of most of his modern fiction. The concept seemed brilliant. The execution made me groan.

I haven't read The Shining. Lots of rave reviews over that one, but like you, Blarg, I give little credit to those reviews when those same critics are praising things I think are terrible.

demon veen, for his short fiction, I suggest three collections I hold in high regard and have reread many, many times:

Hearts in Atlantis
Different Seasons
Everything's Eventual

The thing about King is that when he gets it right it is out of this world. But he produces so much utter crap that it can be easy to forget he is capable of such mastery.