Whatcha reading?

[Kory]

32) 20th Century Ghosts - Joe Hill. Paperback, signed by the author, read on a sunny beach in Corfu. An excellent collection of short stories by a writer whose prose doesn't draw attention to itself but managed to intoxicate me with the idea of writing stories all over again. They've all got a foot in the supernatural, whether it be a love affair beginning on the set of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, a movie loving ghost (my favourite),or an inflatable boy. Most have actual human feelings in them. This guy is good

Stephen King's eldest boy, if you didn't know. I've listened to a couple of his early novels, Horns and Heart=Shaped Box. They were both entertaining, but didn't blow me away.

Have you read his comic series Locke & Key? I give it the same assesment.

[Dr. Medulla]

32) 20th Century Ghosts - Joe Hill. Paperback, signed by the author, read on a sunny beach in Corfu. An excellent collection of short stories by a writer whose prose doesn't draw attention to itself but managed to intoxicate me with the idea of writing stories all over again. They've all got a foot in the supernatural, whether it be a love affair beginning on the set of Romero's Dawn of the Dead, a movie loving ghost (my favourite),or an inflatable boy. Most have actual human feelings in them. This guy is good

Stephen King's eldest boy, if you didn't know. I've listened to a couple of his early novels, Horns and Heart=Shaped Box. They were both entertaining, but didn't blow me away.

Have you read his comic series Locke & Key? I give it the same assesment.

Heard of it, but never read it.

[Silent Majority]

33) Red Plenty - Francis Spufford. Paperback. The conceit here, which I find overly cute and annoying, is a fictionalised version of the period in the 1950s where it looked like the USSR was going to overtake the USA. I didn't realise until I started reading that it would be anything but non-fiction, so that was an annoying one with Spufford sharing a confabulated interior monologue as Khrushchev flies into address the UN at New York and all that shit, made up people in real events. The book would have headed straight for the roaring fireplace if it hadn't been the only one of three I had with me for the week. However, stuck with it, I started reading the main drive of the novel with the notes at the back which gave me an appreciation of how much research went into it and what exactly was real and what was the author's pointless lying, his fanciful invention. By the end, I'd become a lot more informed about the Soviet Union and the era and it became a begrudging recommend from me.

[Wolter]

I’m rereading The Once and Future King, a novel I haven’t read since High School. I liked it then, but I very much appreciate it now as a charming retelling of Mallory now that I’m far more versed in the original subject matter.

[Dr. Medulla]

33) Red Plenty - Francis Spufford. Paperback. The conceit here, which I find overly cute and annoying, is a fictionalised version of the period in the 1950s where it looked like the USSR was going to overtake the USA. I didn't realise until I started reading that it would be anything but non-fiction, so that was an annoying one with Spufford sharing a confabulated interior monologue as Khrushchev flies into address the UN at New York and all that shit, made up people in real events. The book would have headed straight for the roaring fireplace if it hadn't been the only one of three I had with me for the week. However, stuck with it, I started reading the main drive of the novel with the notes at the back which gave me an appreciation of how much research went into it and what exactly was real and what was the author's pointless lying, his fanciful invention. By the end, I'd become a lot more informed about the Soviet Union and the era and it became a begrudging recommend from me.

Plenty of intellectuals, including anti-Communists, thought that the West was doomed. Totalitarianism was seen as all-powerful, with China added to the Communist column, the West too soft and interested in luxury. Maybe they could hold out for a generation or so, but the tides, they believed, were against democracy. It's funny that more conservative writers, like Whittaker Chambers, were defeatist than liberals, even tho it was the liberals who got tarred as being soft of Communism.

[Kory]

Picked this up in a used shop, about halfway through. I don't always go in for oral histories, but this one is pretty good so far. Definitely giving me the urge to listen to more LA punk, it's been an age.

[Dr. Medulla]

Picked this up in a used shop, about halfway through. I don't always go in for oral histories, but this one is pretty good so far. Definitely giving me the urge to listen to more LA punk, it's been an age.

Who can forget when Howard Cosell told MNF viewers that DC died of an OD?

[Kory]

Picked this up in a used shop, about halfway through. I don't always go in for oral histories, but this one is pretty good so far. Definitely giving me the urge to listen to more LA punk, it's been an age.

Who can forget when Howard Cosell told MNF viewers that DC died of an OD?

Me, I wasn't alive yet. Some would say I'm still not.

[Dr. Medulla]

Picked this up in a used shop, about halfway through. I don't always go in for oral histories, but this one is pretty good so far. Definitely giving me the urge to listen to more LA punk, it's been an age.

Who can forget when Howard Cosell told MNF viewers that DC died of an OD?

Me, I wasn't alive yet. Some would say I'm still not.

There's an old Buddhist saying that you're not truly alive until you've met me and been profoundly disappointed. It's kinda cool that my existence is part of Buddhist prophecy, but it still kinda stings.

[Dr. Medulla]

Just finished reading Kiefer's novel Phantoms. I say this without any intended hyperbole, but it's the finest novel I've read in well over a decade. I was about two-thirds of the way thru when I realized that I was reading Faulkner (chiefly Absolom, Absolom). From the elongated sentences, filled with commas that turn the phrases into lines of a poem; to the themes of history as a tragic snare and of the past not actually being past; or the seamless interweaving of timeframes. There were even the occasional sentence when I thought, "Damn, am I supposed to think Faulkner here?" The foundation of the novel is of how two families, one Japanese immigrants and the other white Americans, were pulled apart by World War II and the internment, but also fear, racism, and confused loyalties. Mysteries upon mysteries, where revelations don't bring peace, only regret. There is such a tenderness with the words. It's relating a narrative, but it conveys the sense that this is important. It's fictional but it's certainly true, too. I don't often recommend books beyond a "you might enjoy this," but I truly recommend this.

Tub book to start tomorrow:

Who doesn't like kicking an awful person around?

[Silent Majority]

34) Dr Sleep - Stephen King. Paperback. Easily the most formats I've ever read a book across and one of the longest times I've ever taken to complete a book. I started, with a flush of enthusiasm and anticipation for a sequel to the Shining (I must have read the original novel a dozen times as a teenager), a few weeks after it came out when I lived at my mother in law's house, reading it online with a lot of the punctuation turned into hash and question marks against a light blue background. I read about 253 pages of it like that. Then, for some reason, probably another book, I stopped. I picked it up again in a torrented audiobook for about an hour maybe two years later, living in Twickenham, but didn't get on with the reader. A few years after, in Birmingham, working at a bookies across the road from a shit library, it was the only book that caught my fancy when I popped in for a break from the gambling misery and I probably knocked out another 100 pages over the course of a month. Asked for a birthday present request from a relative who will not accept I'm nearly 30, I passed along the title of this book as a cheap suggestion and it sat on my shelf, not quite guiltily, until the Mrs needed something to read on holiday and my shelves filled with obscure nonsense didn't appeal. After I finished the two books I brought with me, I picked this up and finished it in an afternoon.

The story - written at the height of the Tea Party Glenn Beck era - essentially has little tricycle riding Danny Torrance as a recovering alcoholic 40 something fighting some Trump voting vampires who feed off little kids who shine. The group, with their all American exterior and RVs are a compelling set of characters and a new little kid with the Shining helps battle them. The story rings true as part of the same universe as the earlier novel and is an excellent read, but can't help but diminish the earlier work somewhat. I still think King hasn't yet lost his fastball, to use a metaphor I think he'd approve of, and the familiar tropes are more reassuring than tedious.

[Silent Majority]

Just finished reading Kiefer's novel Phantoms. I say this without any intended hyperbole, but it's the finest novel I've read in well over a decade. I was about two-thirds of the way thru when I realized that I was reading Faulkner (chiefly Absolom, Absolom). From the elongated sentences, filled with commas that turn the phrases into lines of a poem; to the themes of history as a tragic snare and of the past not actually being past; or the seamless interweaving of timeframes. There were even the occasional sentence when I thought, "Damn, am I supposed to think Faulkner here?" The foundation of the novel is of how two families, one Japanese immigrants and the other white Americans, were pulled apart by World War II and the internment, but also fear, racism, and confused loyalties. Mysteries upon mysteries, where revelations don't bring peace, only regret. There is such a tenderness with the words. It's relating a narrative, but it conveys the sense that this is important. It's fictional but it's certainly true, too. I don't often recommend books beyond a "you might enjoy this," but I truly recommend this.

Tub book to start tomorrow:

Who doesn't like kicking an awful person around?

Wicked, I'll add both of them to the list.

[Dr. Medulla]

I won't say I outright hated Dr. Sleep, but it was so blah that I couldn't imagine why he felt the need to return to that character. It was the kind of dumb sequel that you'd think Hollywood would make of his stuff.

[Silent Majority]

I won't say I outright hated Dr. Sleep, but it was so blah that I couldn't imagine why he felt the need to return to that character. It was the kind of dumb sequel that you'd think Hollywood would make of his stuff.

I think it's fair to say that some of my lukewarm approval springs from my affection for the original.

[Kory]

I’m rereading The Once and Future King, a novel I haven’t read since High School. I liked it then, but I very much appreciate it now as a charming retelling of Mallory now that I’m far more versed in the original subject matter.

How weird. This plays into X-Men mythology and I was just about to research it this morning.