11. Cell

By: Stephen King

I didn't post the cover picture here because I couldn't find the cover that's on my book online, and frankly the one with the Cellphone with all the blood seeping out is kind of gross. Not nightmare inducing gross, just i-don't-want-to-look-at-it-when-i-read-my-blog gross.

Although I was going to abstain from anymore King for a while, I found this in the airport on the way back from Japan, and there weren't too many english choices.

On to the story.

The not-quite-zombie story gets off to a good start. A pulse is sent out over cell phones, and when answered, the reciever of the call becomes, for all intents and purposes, a zombie. When things go-to-hell (or rather, when hell arrives here), its quick, unexplained, and everything turns on a dime. The idea that everything can change in a second is powerfully realized. Unfortunatly, it seems that King starts to back off the chaos at some point. The phone-crazies start to calm down and organize. However the idea of Zombies who are gaining intelligence and organizing just isn't as frightening as a total chaos of mindless hunger.

I've found that with some King books, I realize that I've read the "exciting climax" after I've passed it. Perhaps things don't seem to build up right, or it seems like more should be happening at that moment.

Overall? Not terrible, not great. There are better Stephen King books out there, and I'd take any number of zombie movies over Cell.

10. His Majesty's Dragon

By Naomi Novik


When I was loading up on books to bring back to China, I had picked up and put down His Magesty's Dragon twice. On the one hand, this trilogy looked like an interesting new twist on the dragon theme- it takes place during the Napoleonic wars. On the other hand, I find that I have very little patience for mediocre fantasy/sci-fi novels. If I don't love them, I'll probably hate them (which is why, as geeky as I am, I've never read a Star Wars novel).

However, shortly after returning to China, I read that Peter Jackson was considering making The Termiere Trilogy his follow-up to Lord of the Rings. Later that week, I found it at the English Bookstore. So, I figured, if its good enough to be considered by Pete Jackson, its good enough for me to read.

Well.

It gets off to a great start. Laurence, the captain of a British ship, has just defeated a French ship in battle, boarded them, and taken their cargo. In the hold, his crew find a dragon egg. This event introduces us to a world in which England and France are fighting on two fronts- on the sea by ship and in the air, by dragon. The acquisition of this rare dragon egg changes the life of Laurence and the direction of the war.

Once the book gets underway, Novik has this annoying habit of resolving problems as soon as they arise. Its the strangest problem to encounter in a novel about war, dragons, or dragons in war. The dragon won't let itself be harnessed on page 6? They figure out how to woo it properly on page 7. Laurence is not accepted by his new aviator companions on page 28? He wins them over on page 29. Again, and again, its as if Novik doesn't like to see her characters endure the slightest inconvenience for any length of time. Perhaps she cares too much for her characters to see them in pain, or perhaps I read too much into it. Not sure. Either way, only the final battle creates a problematic situation that lasts for more

The final air battle, although only a few pages long, is as good a read as the beginning, and its only by virtue of those two sequences that I could envision a movie being made from this book. The visuals of seeing an all out war with people riding dragons, firing muskets and dropping bombs on each other would be quite a Hollywood sight. Unfortunately, I think they'd have to draw out the tension throughout the other 90% of the story.

9. Walter the Farting Dog

By: William Kotzwinkle and Glenn Murray

Illustrated by: Audrey Colman

Overall, there's not much to say about a book in which the plot is fully explored in the title alone.

Walter is a dog. He farts. He is a farting dog.

The artist does a great job populating Walter's world with peculiar looking people, and rich textural backgrounds.

We just received this book as a donation to our library. I'm so glad that our kids are exposed to stuff like this.

Don't read sarcasm into that last statement- I wish I had this kind of thing when I was a kid.

8. Mediated

How the Media Shapes the World and the Way You Live in It

by Thomas De Zengotita

Hey, if you like being talked down to as much as I do, you are going to love Mediated Its not just that Zengotita assumes that he knows everything about you, or that he belittles every choice you've made in your life, because he humbly admits he is in the same boat. No, what makes his book *really* stand out is the boldness of putting such an academic work forward that contains absolutely no research.

For example, he talks about "Ridgewood Family Night", in which the town of Ridgewood New Jersey passed a law making one night a week "Family Night", in which local residents had to spend time with their families. Well, it wasn't so much a "law" actually, it was more of an 'initiative', and it was only for one night, to make a point. But that doesn't matter. What good are facts?

And its clear that De Zengotita has no interest in silly things like 'facts', where most authors would include some actual data, he boldly shows how little accuracy matters. For one small example, in this paragraph he's talking about a plaque he read:

The plaque said something like "To the memory of those who lost their lives in the Great Storm of 1908," or 1928, or whatever it was. An "8" figured into it, I recall.

Interestingly, he references the Unbearable Lightness of Being in a sort of flip and passing way in the context of his book, but never actually credits the book with being a philosophical precursor to many of his own ideas (with regard to the relative importance/unimportance of our lives).

Oh yeah, I the book was somewhat about how the media shapes our lives or something - i'm not sure, I guess I could open it again and check.

"Whatever".

7. Velocity

By Dean Koontz

I'm actually a few books behind now, so hopefully I'll get some posts up in the next week or so.

A freind loaned me "Velocity" after a talk we were having about pulp fiction and my recent Stephen King Binge. As you would expect from the title, its a fast paced book. Interestingly, it starts of leisurly and kind of witty, and after the main character discovers a disturbing note left for him on the car, it transforms the main character's life (and the book) into an unrelenting nightmare.

This is again one of those books that you don't want to give too much away. It begins with a note and a choice - Billy, a bartender, finds a note on his car that offers him a choice from a serial killer. If he goes to the police, he'll kill a young school teacher, if he doesn't go to the police, he'll kill an older woman active in philanthropy- his dilemas begin here, and his choices get harder.

Basically, the book is fun, and nothing more. It is the kind of book that fulfills its own prophesies- if there is a mention of a gun in one scene, you can expcet someone to get shot in the next. In that way, the outcome was relativly easy to predict, and although Koontz does manage to throw you off the trail occasionally, the scent never goes completely dead.

Overall score? A for a "sitting-on-the-john-book", and C- for "I feel smarter for having read this".