22. Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

By: Cory Doctorow

You have to love Cory Doctorow- not only does he provide hours of entertainment through his contributions to one of my favorite procrastination tools Boing Boing, but he releases his novels for free under a creative commons license. Therefore, you can download Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town for free... however, there is something about actually holding a book as you read it, and that's the way I had to proceed.

Speaking of surreal, SCT,SLT reads like two seperate styles of novel rolled into one. On the "real" side- Alan moves to Toronto in order to write a book. There he meets some people, one of whom wants to create a free WiFi system using junk parts for the whole city, and Alan joins him in his campaign. On the "surreal" side, Alan's parents are a washing machine and a mountain, his brothers are a set of nesting dolls, a psychic, an island, an undead homicidal maniac - and his new girlfriend has wings. The plots run parallel to each other, not so much intertwining as occasionally bumbing into each other; and that's ok. The character doesn't understand who or what he is - the book doesn't seem to either. And yet, that doesn't detract from it too much, as bouncing back and fourth from plot to plot, from reality to reality gives the book its momentum.

The Wifi plot is exactly what I'd expect from Doctorow- in fact, it often reads like a novelization of Boing Boing; theres a lot of offbeat pop-counter-culture (cause is counter culture and pop culture really that different anymore?) references mashed in with some techno-babble, and a good many rants about censorship, freedom of information, and the democratization of the internet.

The more surreal plot rings a bit clunky, but perhaps that's my own bias. I was thinking about this after finishing Creul Shoes and I think it just comes down to the fact that I'm not as big a fan of Surrealism in writing as I am of it in art. When you look at a Surrealist painting - a good painting, its almost empowering to let it speak to you, to try to understand its secrets. In the written form, it just comes accross as different for the sake of difference. And it might just be something I don't get, although I'm open for an explanation.

The other odd thing about it, is that a book that is so much a commentary and refelction of its time, and this book is more 21st century literature than anything else I've read, it totally ignores the 21st century political landscape. I don't know if that is a bad thing or not. Certainly not everything thats written about the 21st century needs to address the mess that the Neocons made of the world. Its also likely that I'm being America-centric about a book takes place in Canada. However, I've never been so aware of the world changing around me as I am today, and it seems a little odd that this goes unacknowledged by the book. Perhaps there's an alegory trapped in the surreal part of the story that I'm missing.

21. Cruel Shoes

By: Steve Martin

I stumbled upon a copy of Cruel Shoes at the tiny used bookstore next to my sister's apartment in Brooklyn. I don't think I'd even known it existed before reading a blurb on the back cover of Jon Stewart's Naked Pictures of Famous People (See Print is Dead 2006) to it favorably. Now, I consider Steve Martin a comic genius, especially in his writing, but I am baffled about the critical acclaim of CS.

Perhaps its a book that is bound to its day. The humor, which never goes for the LOL, strives instead for the surreal. Perhaps this form of surreal-comedy was unique in its day, although Woody Allen's Without Feathers managed both the surreal and the LOL in the same decade. Familiarity with the Martin of the 70s though would suggest that he was aiming for something else. He certainly knows his comedy, and I have no doubt that's what he would have delivered if that's what he had intended. What he did intend though, I'm not entirely sure.

CS is a series of (very) short stories and poems that conjure bizarre images and ideas. Its often strange and always silly, but meanings and conclusions dont' come as readily. And maybe that's the point of it - strangeness for the sake of being strange. Oddly, that's something that I really appreciated about, for example, Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, but not so much here- perhaps I just expect some LOLs from SM.

20. The Accidental Masterpiece

On the Art of Life and Vice Versa

By: Michael Kimmelman

It is a nice surprise to find a celebration of amateur and professional art together in a book authored by the head art critic of the New York Times. The subtitle, On the Art of Life and Vice Versa explains Kimmelman's MO- to investigate how artists have integrated their lives into their art and how their art has become part of their lives. Although the idea "write what you know" is familiar to all writers (and no doubt has been extrapolated by all types of creatives- paint what you know, sculpt what you know, cook what you know... well, maybe not...), The Accidental Masterpiece illustrates the significance of this statement. However, Kimmelman describes his purpose better than I can:

This book is, in part, about how creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make a living a daily masterpiece. I don't mean that every day becomes perfect if we enjoy art. But having spent much of my own life looking at it, I have come to feel that everything, even the most ordinary daily affair, is enriched by the lessons that can be gleaned from art: that beauty is often where you don't expect to find it; that it is something we may discover and also invent, then reinvent, for ourselves...

He illustrates these points through various examples- he writes about Frank Hurley, a photographer who found himself stranded in the Antarctic in 1911, and documented his life, the ship that he just missed, and the landscape around him. He also writes about Charlotte Salomon, who detailed her life as a Jew living in pre-war Germany in a journal of writings and paintings. Now, we don't all lead lives in such circumstances. However, he also writes about people who collect light bulbs, and construct their meanings in new and unique ways for themselves.

Art should be informed by how you live because each of us have something important to say. This is a useful message for artists and art teachers, as we struggle to make meaningful art; and its something we all know, Kimmelman just makes that idea very accessible.

19. Marvel's Civil War

By: Mark Millar

I've been largely put off super-hero comics since high school, but was intriuged by news of Marvel's Civil War as an allegory for the struggle to retain civil rights in a post 9/11 America. Civil War brings superheroes into the new Neocon America where they fight each other in a battle to defend their own rights in a somewhat surreal twist on 21st century politics. After a botched attack on some run-of-the-mill villains by a half-assed super-hero group (who are filming a reality TV show) ends up destroying a good couple blocks of Stamford, Connecticut, the paranoid eyes of the government turn on all heroes who hide behind masks in attempt to hold them accountable for their actions. The government finds an ally in Tony Stark (a.k.a. Iron Man) as a spokesman and leader for advancing their "Superhero Registration Act" - however, not all Superheroes are willing to put their identities on the line and thus put their families at risk. The first skirmish in the new war occurs when the agents of S.H.I.E.L.D try to take down good old Captain America himself- in a twist which pits the Capt against the country he's named to defend.

And so the superheroes of the Marvel Universe take sides against each other. Iron Man finds allies in the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man (which leads to his news-making public unmasking), while Captain America finds his own allies willing to go underground with him.

Overall, CW raises interesting points about privacy and terrorism through the lens of their alternate superhero-infested universe, but never really commits to a strong stance on the matter. It ends with a bit of ambiguity, although to be fair, it looks like they may be tying up loose ends in their Death of Captain America series- the title of which alone is loaded with meaning.

18. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell

By: Suzannah Clarke

The problem with trying to read 50 books in a year is that it discourages you from picking up a tome like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which weighs in at just over 1000 pages. I'd been wanting to read this since last year since my friend Mark's recommendation, and there it was sitting on the shelf among very few other english books at a book traders in Li Jiang. Tough descision - I could easily read three other books in the time it would take to tread JSaMN, but could I just let the opportunity pass? It was too much good fortune to find this book in a country where English books are hard to come by and usualy overpriced.

It was a good gamble- JSaMN is great read. The story follows the lives of title characters, two magicians who are intent on bringing magic back to england in a world where magic once ruled but has long since been forgotton. Until recently, the only magicians were "theoretical magicians" who study magic, but never perform it. Their excuse is that they are above doing the magic, they are scholars who study it instead. All this changes with the reluctant appearance of Mr. Norrel. He is a reculsive and disagreeable magician who is brought out of obscurity by a Mr. Secundus, one of the few theoretical magicians who has any real intellectual curiosity. For the first 250 or so pages of the book, Norell helps England rediscover magic, but is so neurotic about its application, that he refuses to share his skills with anyone else. This sets the stage for the appearance of a second magician, the younger, more forward thinking Jonathan Strange to appear with a slightly different set of values.

The book is anything but predictable, and as the plot winds through the slow re-emergence of magic in England, the relationship between Strange and Norrell shifts downhill. Magic that they have invoked brings all kinds of unintended consequences, and they soon become embroiled in the Napoleanic war, an old prophesy, and a unwittingly evil fairy.

JSaMN is a highly original book, told as if the author is reciting an exciting bit of history (and complete with a ton of funny and detailed footnotes which expand her universe), although it also owes a great debt to the canon of British fantasy that came before it. Certainly the irreverent tone is reminiscent of Douglass Adams, the sense of magical wonder of Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling, and the attention to detail of a truly unique world of Tolkien. Clarke masterfully weaves some of the best threads of her predecessors into a completely new tapestry. Highly recommended.

17. Teacher Man

By: Frank McCourt

This book was my selection for our school's biannual professional development book club. Its a nice little thing they do. You choose a book about teaching, discuss it with some other teachers, they buy you said nice little book (the last one I read was Mediated, which I thoroughly disliked, and had a fun heated debate about it with some of the other teachers).

Teacher Man is McCourt's third biographical book after Angela's Ashes and 'Tis. I haven't read either of those, but he talks just enough about his Childhood in TM to give you an idea of his past (and develop enough interest to read the other two).

Although the book is about teaching, I didn't find it terribly helpful as far as professional development goes. That is more of a criticism as using it as a professional development tool then the book itself. That is, although his writing is as engaging as charming, it doesn't do much in the way of suggesting new alternatives for teachers. Or at least, his observations, while enjoyable, also seem obvious. He spends a great deal of the book discussing all of his initial mistakes and all of the problems in the system and the classroom that he was working against. Although the book is about his teaching, it is actually more about him learning- going through the process of becoming a good teacher by turning his failures into successes.

The interesting thing about the book is how he comes about realizing his own personal pedagogy- through these mistakes and failures. What he stumbles upon is essentially student centered learning through critical pedagogy - only for him it begins because he has no idea what to teach them, so he just takes whatever lands at his feet - whether it is a local production of Hamlet or a sandwich (which literally lands at his feet).

The sandwich story is actually quite funny, and worth picking up the book for... should it land at your feet.

16. The Rule of Four

By: Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason

One of the neat things about the Rule of Four is that the two authors are recent college graduates who demonstrate an amazing amount of well researched history as a pretext for a modern mystery. I know though, that I'm starting to get older when the small hints that the authors are younger than I am become glaringly evident. Nothing specific, just small details about college life that would only be of interest to other college students.

The story centers around four friends who are in their last days of their college career at Princeton. Paul is finishing his research paper on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a 15th century novel that has puzzled historians for ages (the authors create a very interesting story about the history and authorship of the book, but how much of it comes from research and how much of it is fiction is deliberatly left unclear). In the tradition of the DaVinci Code, an ancient mystery results in the modern deaths of the people trying to unravel it.

Overall, TROF is not only a page turner, but one of those books that makes you want to look deeper into history to find out what really happened (which unfortunatly has wound up being an extra 15 minutes on wikipedia for me, so far). On the downside, I would have liked a more detailed afterword from the authors deliniating what was reserach, what was speculation, and what was pure fiction. There were only a few lines dedicated to that explanation. A good read for those who enjoyed "The DaVinci Code"- not quite as tight a novel overall, but enjoyable none the less.

15. Murder on the Orient Express

By: Agatha Christie

Picked this up at a little booktrader in Yangshou on vacation- I haven't read any Christie since college, and never got around to reading this one. Since Christie has a penchant for writing mysteries that are totally unsolvable to her readers and easy as pie to her detectives, what makes MOTOE an interesting book (more than the murder enigma) is the picture of class and culture from the 1920's English perspective. The European cast of characters are each opinionated about every other country and character represented, as well as a host of those who are not.

The Orient Express has become stuck in a snowdrift on its way back to Europe. Of course, because detective Hercule Poirot is on the train, one of the most complicated murder schemes ever devised must be the journey's second setback.

As mentioned earlier, the ability to solve the murder as a reader in advance of the detective would require an intimate knowledge of 1920s high culture, train construction, and its not even clear if the clues that are given are based in reality or are part of Christie's world alone. That doesn't necessarily detract from the mystery, its still an enjoyable read, and the ending is still nicely surprising even 80 years later.

14. Hearts in Atlantis

By: Stephen King

Although I continue to despise and disrespect King for his big cop-out at the end of lengthy The Dark Tower series, I've continued for some unexplained reason to read his tangential novels -Despiration, The Regulators, and now Hearts in Atlantis. This time, however, I was not let down.

HiA tells the story of an ensemble cast of characters as they experience the various turning points of their lives before, during, and after the Vietnam war. It wasn't the book I was expecting at all, because the trailer for the the movie is only the first story from the book, which is odd because it takes its name from the second part - I wonder how they explain that?

Anyway, each story is connected by some character and the changing world of the 1960s. The characters are each affected both directly and indirectly by the other stories of the book, and events effect each other between stories like ripples in water. Although I began this book for the Dark Tower connection, that is only a small and tangential element. Instead, the bulk of the book isn't concerned with mythical gunslingers and quests, but is a very in depth and heartfelt look at how the 1960s and the Vietnam War twisted and changed the lives of those it affected. Although many war stories do the same, the reason that this one is so effective is that almost none of it takes place in the war itself- although its presence is felt - it looms in the distance in the first story at the begining of the 60s, hangs like a cloud over the second story, as it begins in full, and the last stories see the lasting effects on a few of the characters years later.

This is perhaps the most insightful of King's books, one particular passage that has stayed with me remarks about the college students as the war is raging. Even though we look back and think of that time as people fighting in the war or against the war, at the time, many students simply kept their heads in their history books while history was happening all around them, choosing to ignore.

HiA is inconsistent- and sometimes this is a plus and sometimes its a minus- a plus because it doesn't fit into any mold of demanding connections everywhere in every story and thus creating too false a reality, but also a minus because we're left with some characters and ideas that seem incomplete. Overall though, the pluses outweigh the minuses, and it weighs in as my favorite King book so far.

13. Running With Scissors

By: Augusten Burroughs

That this book has been widely compared to David Sedaris is understandable, but only on the very surface. Both authors are gay, and both authors write quirky and humorous memoirs about their dysfunctional families. Ok. If the dysfunction in Sedaris' family could be described as an irritating rash, the dysfunction in Burroughs' would be the slightly more irritating affliction of leprosy.

Which is why, as the devastation that is Burroughs' life unfolds, the comparison rings so false. After spending a few hundred pages with Sedaris, you're comfortable in the knowledge that what ever sets you and/or your family apart, you're not alone. After spending a few hundred pages with Burroughs, you're left wondering how its possible for people like those he grew up with to have actually existed, and how he retains any kind of humor about his situation.

His situation just goes from bad to worse. His mother goes crazy, he goes to live with a crazier family, he gets raped, his mother gets raped, his closest friend prostitutes herself, and anyone who reaches out a helping hand to him ends up, well, not exactly helping.

Its a strange kind of book, I don't know exactly if I've ever read anything so tragic that was dealt with so humorously before. As a result, I feel glad that
Burroughs' made it out alive, much less with the ability to laugh (and make others laugh) about it, but at the same time, theres something very discomforting about turning the story into a comedy.

In conclusion; funny like leprosy, a little uncomfortable, not like Sedaris.

12. How to Be Good

By: Nick Hornby

H2BG starts out as a pretty depressing read actually - Kate is in a miserable marriage, married to David, "The Angriest Man" (according to his newspaper column), and is in the middle of an affair with a guy she could really couldn't care less about. Just when things couldn't get any worse- they do. Because David suddenly becomes "nice", and that just makes things harder.

David becomes a model citizen and all-around-good guy when he visits GoodNews, a faith healer. The irony of course, is that he visited the faith healer with the intent on pissing off Kate. However, David and Goodnews strike up a friendship and then set about on devising a plan to save the world, or at least, make it a much nicer place. This makes things even more difficult for Kate.

H2BG changes tone around the time that David makes his transformation, and becomes a reflection on all the denial of harsh realities that makes middle class life possible. It does this quite well- Hornby uses David's over-zealousness at doing what he can to help others to show how this willful ignorance is what holds society together, but also that being mindful of it doesn't help either.

One of the nice little things I enjoyed about this book is a passing reference to the character of Dick in High Fidelity. He has a small inconsequential cameo. Sometime I think that these little self-referential moments are nothing more than ego-boosts, but there is something fun about that recognition of a character from another book. Its like spying someone you know on the street. Hey! What are you doing here?

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".

4-6 Vertigo: Fables

4. Fables 1: Legends in Exile

5. Fables 2: Animal Farm

6. Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall

By Bill Willingham

These three graphic novels include the first two in the "Fables" series, and the "Special Edition" graphic novel. As a begining series, Fables isn't bad, but its not great. Theres a little too much reliance on the clever references and so far, the characters remain shallow. Its as if Willingham is willing to give them a new life with new personality traits which are the result of living for a few hundred years, but they basically remain simplistic and two-dimensional. The murder-mystery plot of Fables 1 gets the story started, but isn't very engaging. The ironic thing is that the most interesting thing about the story are the veiled references to "The Advesary" - the mythical evil force that conquered the fantasy lands drove the Fable characters into the "real world". The few clues we get about this story are enough to continue on with the series.

Fables 2 picks up where the first left off, and is marginally better. The momentum of the series begins in this one when the non-human fables begin a rebellion against the humans who keep them tucked away on a farm. Again, the characters aren't very complex, - it would be more interesting, I think, to have seen these characters in a more human light- a difficult task though, to create a complex 'real' character out of an archetype from a kid's story.

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall is a different story. This is a beautifully illustrated series of short stories, each one with a different guest artist, including Jill Thomposon and Esao Andrews, who is one of my favorite illustrators. Willingham uses the Sheherezad template to tell the 'inbetween' stories of his fable characters (what happened to them between the fables we know and the comic series). Some of these stories are interesting and fun (like Snow White's Revenge story), some are creepy and uncomfortable (The Frog Prince's family meets an unpleasant end), and some are silly and fun.

The results of the collaboration between Willingham and all of these artists succeeds exactly where Flight 3 failed- the book is a compalation of stories from multiple talents, woven into a single theme. Granted, this book has the advantage of a single author's vision.

1001 Nights is a good read, even if you haven't read the rest of the Fables comcis (or if you only read the first two). The series itself gets off to a mediocre start. I will pick up the next few on my next trip back to the states - it looks like it has potential.

3. Flight 3

The original Flight is a pretty interesting story of innovation - and by that I mean how the actual graphic novel came about. A bunch of web comic artists who met online got together and decided to pool their collective talents to produce their own graphic novel. They used the popularity of their own sites as well as other linking sites to produce the book. Each artist contributed a short story which may or may not have had something to do with the word "flight". At least, it seems to me, that was part of the idea behind the original, but it doesn't seem to say anything about that on the website. Nor does it seem to have become a general theme of the series.

I really enjoyed reading Flight because of the idea of it- and some of the stories were actually pretty good. Flight 2 felt like a bit repetitive and less innovative. By the time we get to Flight 3 we know the deal, its not innovative anymore, and all we're looking for is good art and good stories. Hard to find in this one.

It seems to me that short stories are harder to write than full length ones. There is little time for character or plot development, and without just enough of both they tend to fall flat. The other problem i find is that new short fiction writers are too easily drawn to the Twilight Zone ending. Instead of creating a story that's memorable, they spend the entire plot working up to a memorable ending- which ends up not being that memorable at all. I guess I'm also sort of twist-ending-ed out.

Not all of the stories in Flight 3 relied on that device, but unfortunately, there were very few stories in here that were actually memorable. In fact, I haven't gotten up from my seat to get the book yet, and I'm having a hard time remembering which stories were worth reading.

Some of the stories had beautifully done artwork and some of the stories had intriguing ideas. unfortunately, only one or two of them had both. I was about to go into more specifics about the individual stories, but I think it would just be a better use of our time to sum the whole book up in one word: "meh".

2. The Regulators

By: "Richard Bachman" (read: Stephen King)

Ok, this is my last King book for a while.


The Regulators is the "companion novel" to Desperation, and as intriguing as that concept sounds (the original novels had covers that made a larger picture when you held them together, it really ends up being more of a gimmick than than anything else.

Its hard to discuss these books without giving away some minor spoilers, so *highlight* to read, or just skip to the next paragraph:

Both stories are about Tak - a kind of 'vampire of the soul', in Desperation, he invades the body of his victims and uses them to wreak havok on the small town which bares the same name as the book. However, he is unable to last long in any given body as they start to decompose. However, in The Regulators, Tak finds that he is able to survive in the body of an autistic boy who has his own supernatural powers.

The books can be read in either order as one is not a sequel to the other. Its more like one is an alternate reality to the other. This idea is *very slightly* touched upon in one of the books, and more dominant a theme in the Dark Tower series.

The problem though, is that there is not a great deal of innovative use of the "alternate reality" idea between these two books. Most of the similarities are superficial (some of the same characters appear, some characters re-appear with slightly different names).
Desperation was a fast paced engageing horror story right from the begining. The Regulators also starts off well, however it quickly becomes a gore-ified version of a twilight zone episode. And by "Twilight Zone", I'm not talking about the Rod Serling classics, I'm talking about the campy 80s remake.

The idea of alternate realities between 'companion novels' is intriguing to me, but not realized to any interesting conclusion in these books. They can easily be read alone and you wouldn't miss much.

I'd recommend Desperation, and if you're des.per.ate for more (hat tip to jarrett's sense of humor), then read on to The Regulators.

1. Desperation

By Stephen King

Like an abused spouse, I return to reading Stephen King as my first book in 2007, so quickly after being so let down by the conclusion of The Dark Tower series. However, Desperation has been on my list for a while. First of all, there are some interesting tie-ins to the DT series. Secondly, Desperation came out with a "companion novel", The Regulators by "Richard Bachman" (SK's alter ego). I'm not sure if that was just a little gimmick or something that will pan out as actually interesting when both are read together (stay tuned for a review of that book as well). Finally, I caught the first 20 minutes or so of the televisonification of the book, and it wasn't that bad at all. In fact, its a pretty good opening;

Soon after passing a road sign for the town of Desperation that has a dead cat hanging from it, Mary and Peter are pulled over by a local cop in the middle of nowhere. The cop finds some of Peter's sister's pot hidden in the trunk, and arrests the couple. Mary and Peter think they're in deep shit, but it turns out that this shit is much deeper and much shittier than it appears.

The begining is indeed, the best part of the book - which isn't to say that the rest of the book is bad. The problem I find with horror books and movies in general is that they're more enjoyable before you really know what is going on. The mystery is the page turner, but then if it drags on to long it becomes tedious. Once the initial mystery/horror is revealed, King builds the tension in the way he does best: blood and guts.

The world that King creates around his Dark Tower universe is indeed intriguing, and there is a certain satisfaction in picking up on the little tie-ins that connect that world to the worlds of his other novels. Even though these novels are enjoyable on their own, the connections give a sense that each book is a piece of a puzzle.