Being Bookish
17. Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
The most enjoyable of the three Sedaris books I've read (the other two being Naked and Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim) yet strangely also the most annoying. While there's lots of laughs, especially in the stories that deal with living in France, I found myself thinking that were I to meet Mr. Sedaris, I really wouldn't like him very much. I suppose there's something to be said of an essayist who doesn't try to disguise his own shortcomings, but there's something that bothers me about one who seems to revel in them. *shrugs*
272 pages.
18. Ava's Men - The Private Life of Ava Gardner by Jane Ellen Wayne
Check your brain at the door and delve into the love life of Ava Gardner. Having lived on a steady diet of '30s, '40s and '50s movies thanks to my wonderful mother, I was familiar with some of Ava's work and some of her background (her marriage to Mickey Rooney) but somehow I had no idea she'd been married to Frank Sinatra. It seems like she was quite the free spirit, and in those (restrictive) times I found that wonderfully refreshing.
268 pages.
19. Stunts by Charles L. Grant
A man gets possessed by the spirit of a fabled hunter. Or something. Then another man gets possessed, coincidentally in the same town that our hero has fled to in order to escape Hunter #1. Much stilted dialogue. Random teenagers who all sound alike. The conclusion is that bad things will happen even if you try to warn people about them. Um. Yes.
438 pages.
20. Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub
Sequel to The Talisman. I LOVED The Talisman. Adored it. Both our world and the world of The Territories were wonderfully realized, rich and full of detail. The people that inhabited both worlds were beautifully fleshed out, and the links between them and their individual motivations were clear. Here? Not so much. The book starts out with an omnipotent POV, a bird (?), and that's annoying enough. That's eventually dropped, but it takes up to page 182 before Jack -- lovely Jack, now in his early 30's -- even remembers his travels in The Territories and how to flip back to that world. Now Richard -- Richard I could see repressing memories. Not Jack. Not smart, resourceful Jack, who travelled across the country on faith alone.
I wanted to love this book. I was always intrigued by that glimpse we got of the fate of the boy who escaped the home in The Talisman... captured and enslaved in The Territories (which it now turns out is not The Territories, but another world entirely.) I used to enjoy when King would include little references to his other novels... a little one-off sentence about a dog gone rabid in whatever-town and the reader could go "Hah! Cujo!". Now it seems everything has to be linked to The Dark Tower... and that's just annoying. Why can't the world of The Territories have absolutely nothing to do with breakers and crimson kings? WHY, I ASK YOU?
Wonderful ending, though.
564 pages.
21. Autumn by David Moody
and
22. Autumn: The City by David Moody
ZOMBIES. Yes. So, weirdly, I had no idea that there was actually a zombie-book market. Did some scouring and most of them appear to be pretty bad. But I decided to pick these up (I got the trilogy, haven't read the third yet) based on reader reviews.
They're not bad. A bit repetitive, as we go round the should we leave our safe house/this place will not be safe for long debate several times throughout each book. Character voices are rarely distinctive -- the university professor uses the same language, word choice and cadence as the 14 year old student, every single character says "Don't know" instead of some variation (I don't know, Dunno, etc.) The author seems to be getting better at that midway through the second book, as the character of Donna is a little more feisty than the others. Interesting and has kept me reading.
283 pages and 276 pages.
Book Count: 22 of 50
Page Count: 7,257 of 15,000
x-posted to 50bookchallenge and 15000pages
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