Two Books

I'm dealing with some "life issues" at the moment and they have really darkened my outlook on just about everything. Knowing that my outlook has been darkened I know that my views on writing and movies are unfairly slanted towards the negative. Instead of making negative comments about the last few books I have read I have put them aside to read again later when things are better.

Let me go ahead though and mention a couple of books that I think you would enjoy.

• Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill. A ghost story with a love story thrown in. You won't see the love story right away, but it will sneak up on you. Good book.
• Everything's Eventual by Stephen King. This is a great collection of short stories. One of the stories, 1408, has been made into a movie that should be on the big screens this summer. There is a little of something for everybody in these stories.

There you go. Two suggestions that I promise will entertain you.

Lisey's Story

For those of you that have seen Lisey's Story at the stores but have been hesitant to buy it since it came out let me tell you it’s worth it. The book weighs in at just over five hundred pages. The first thing to note is how the title is pronounced. It’s Lee-cee’s Story. Not Liz-ee’s Story. Stephen explains that early on in the book.

It turns out the book is a love story. Lisey Landon is the widow of writer Scott Landon the focus of the story is how she is coping with the loss of her husband two years after his death and dealing with her sisters. One sister has a superiority complex. Another tends to think the other three lie. Yet another seems to have given up on the family and the last one is crazy. The last one is the kind of crazy that uses sharp edges to bleed out the bad. I know this doesn’t seem to have the makings of a love story, but trust me, it is. There’s also Booya Moon but I’ll just let you read about that.

Does the book have the monsters, twists and moments of pure terror that Stephen King is known for? Oh yeah! But, you have to be patient. The first half is setup for the action that follows in the second half. You won’t see a monster or evil spirit or even a haunted desk lamp in the first half but you will read some great character development. You will have a feeling though that something very wrong is about to happen when you learn the story behind the Yum-Yum Tree and the grave marker for Paul that is illustrated on the book’s cover. The shovel on the cover will make sense too. Once you finish the novel spend some time looking at the cover of the book to see what’s there. It makes sense once you’ve reached the end. Also, the paperback probably won’t have the same cover. If you look at the paperback versions of SK novels on the shelves today you’ll notice the incredible cover art of the hardbacks is gone.

I really liked the creative way Stephen handled profanity in this novel. It’s still not a novel for young kids and it would easily earn a PG-13 rating if it was a movie. Why not an R rating? Because Stephen does a wonderful job of not pouring buckets of blood across the pages. Yes, there is blood. Yes, there is death. No, it’s not done in a gorefest fashion. The two most graphic moments are no worse than what you would see in PG-13 movies today.

It’s a good read and I think any Stephen King fan will enjoy it.

BOOL! The End!