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Monday, July 26, 2004

Well, the world keeps turning, luckily for all of us onboard.


I finished
From a Buick 8 by Stephen King
on friday.

From a Buick 8 wasn't a terrible book. I pretty much challenge any avid reader to start any of King's books, give them more than 2 pages, and then put one down. I think it's impossible. Since King has sold more books than the bible (literally) I think he is a fascinating study in the type of writing that actually DOES interest the modern populous. So, I've made an effort to read all of his work to date, with the exception of the last 2 Gunslinger novels, which I just didn't really care for.

From a Buick 8 is the story of a Troop of Pennsylvania State Troopers who take custody of a strange car in the seventies. They keep the car in a shed. The car is an intra-dimensional portal of sorts, and should be familiar to readers of some of King's other recent work, Hearts in Atlantis, or the twin novels Despiration / The Regulators. King tells the (fundamentally dumb) story well, although his usual just-plain-folks mechanism of storytelling is a bit overdone, especially in the beginning.

Stephen King is a master story-teller. He is not (necessarily) a master of language, or concept. But he unapologeticall spins a hell of a yarn in every book he has written. This one is no exception, though I would suggest an interested reader check out at least 15 of his other books first. (A few in order: It, On Writing, The Stand, Different Seasons, The Dead Zone, Hearts in Atlantis, Salem's Lot, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, The Green Mile, Graveyard Shift)

For those curious, or my own records, I'm still reading the Rushdie novel, and I still really think it is wonderful, but for some reason, it just dropped my reading to a crawl... Hence the King book, and several others I've started. I'm midway through Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace by Gore Vidal right now, as well as Small Unit Leadership by Col. Dandridge Malone. Will keep you updated on these and the plot thickens!

In other news, the Professor is gone for 2 weeks to Florida to visit family. Boo. My Aunt just turned 60 and we had a nice party. Maggie Pearl appears to have had a stroke, which is upsetting. My brother's girlfriend Christina just returned from Spain, where she visited Ibeza, among other locales. LoneStar keeps on keeping on. And that's all the news that's fit to print.
=tf

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