I’m a huge Stephen King fan. I have been since I started to get interested in reading books when I was about twelve years old actually.  I’ve read almost everything by the prolific author, except for his Gunslinger series, which I’m not sure is quite for me, but I’m sure once I run out of new books to read by him, I’ll go backwards and start  those.

King has put out some good collections of short stories lately, or novellas. His latest collection, Full Dark, No Stars, is definitely one of his better collections. Perhaps it’s that a lot of the significance of these stories is of modern importance, or reminded me of past news stories, or perhaps it’s the very human, normal touch he put on them.

As he says, he find ordinary lives very interesting to write about, and he made these normal people extremely riveting to read about. The first one is about a farmer, set in the pre depression era of the 1920′s.  The farmer’s name is Wilf, and he has been having some bad thoughts about killing his wife.

He doesn’t hate his wife, but he resents her for making him sell their home after a large commercial farmer has offered them a lot of money for their acreage. Sealing his spot in hell, he enlists the help of his young son, only 15 years old, preying on his hesitance to leave their farm and their life – and his young girlfriend, as a good reason to help him do the dirty deed.

This story is definitely hard to read in parts. It tells the story of a murder in gruesome, too-real detail, and it also goes into detail about the hurt, pain and suffering that their evil deed does in the aftermath. An excellent story that will unfortunately leave you with a heavy heart and questioning why you started to feel sorry for this cold blooded murderer.

The first story is the longest.

The second story is about a brutal rape, and how a woman, who is single and an author or old lady murder mysteries, seeks her revenge on her rapist and the ensuing story of redemption and moral ambiguity of an eye for an eye. Also an excellent, absorbing story.

The fourth story, the shortest by far, is engrossing as well, and a very quick read. It’s about something that we all deal with – envy and jealousy – even of the friends we may hold dearest, and the darkest thoughts that accompany such counterproductive emotions of the human sort.

It’s about a man who lives a modest life as a banker who finds out that he has terminal cancer. He questions the fairness of it, and upon chance one day comes across a pudgy man who happens to be a demon or a wish granter of some sort who simply wants money in return for granting him a “Fair Extension” on his life (incidentally this is the title of the story as well).

Not believing it is true, he takes the man up on his offer, and is ok with the fact that in exchange for his good luck, he must stick it to someone he hates, who happens to be his best friend who is rich and has everything he wanted in life.

The fourth story, and my favorite by far, because I couldn’t wait to read the rest of it and got mad when I actually got so tired I couldn’t go on reading, was “A Good Marriage”.  I don’t want to ruin this one at all for anyone. It’s about being married to someone for a long time, and how you can never truly know anyone.

It’s excellent – very engrossing, and probably one of my favorite short story by King.

So I just finished the massive tome I’ve been reading, one of Stephen King’s latest books which is at a massive plus 1,000 pages – not unusual for the notoriously prolific writer.  Under the Dome is a great book. At times it’s dark, and the rape imagery will definitely disturb the female readers – I know it did me.  Although it clocks in at just over 1,000 pages, King keeps your rapt interest by doing what he does best – weaving a tale about character you come to know and love, even if your time with each of them is limited because of the large “ensemble cast” in this one.

Under the Dome is a book that I could definitely see made into a movie, but it would have to be crafted by a master movie maker or it could decidedly come out cheesy and poorly done.  The story line goes like this. Folks in a town called Chester’s Mill are living their small town lives when a mysterious clear dome smacks down over their town, cutting off most of the fresh air supply and trapping all of it’s inhabitants, as well as causing havoc at first from it’s sheer physical presence in the form of things like airplane accidents and car accidents.

The story follows several of the town’s inhabitants, many of which we instantly know are the “good guys” and also about half of which we instantly loathe as the evil ones.  King really makes you hate the characters that he weaves as evil control freaks, and that’s why he’s so gifted as a writer.  In this ensemble cast, you know who’s good and who’s not, and you’re rooting for the “good guys” from the beginning, hoping he doesn’t take them from you in a violent death.

I’d say that this story is not only somewhat of a commentary on ecological issues such as air pollution and us not taking care of mother earth the way we should be, but also on how small and insignificant we are when we think we are very significant, if that makes any sense.  The story also may have some parallels to some well known politicians and I also wonder if he meant to draw parallels to the Bush administration or whether this might not have been accidental.

As you follow the characters, you are overcome with emotion at the trials and tribulations the “good guys” are put through, and on the edge of your seat for their survival.  That’s all I can tell you without giving away the story, but ultimately, this is another tale about the battle between good and evil ala “The Stand”, only under a dome where everyone has been sequestered from the real world and now is involved in it’s own little ecosystem and crooked politics.

I really was looking forward to reading the Dennis Lehane thriller book “Shutter Island”. I must confess though, I had not heard of the book before I read about Martin Scorsese making a film based on the book’s story line.  My sister recently stayed with us and was reading it, and lucky for me, she left the book here at our house, so I picked it up and started reading it about four weeks ago.

It was one of those books that inrigued me, but I often had a difficult time really caring for any of the characters, or really getting drawn into the story line so much that I found it hard to put it down. Many times when I have a really good book to read, I’ll read way past my weekday bedtime, but with this one I felt sometimes like I had to force myself to keep reading just to get through to the next part.

I know the premise probably makes the writing come off like this (you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve read it), but it often came off as disjointed and confusing. You were not sure if the author was talking about reality or not (which I get now was kind of the point), but it could have been written better to maybe convey that point.  Also, I noticed a lot of run on sentences. Only reason I noticed that flaw was that I’m guilty of that myself and have been told, so I’m aware of it.

The movie adaptation stars Scorsese’s favorite muse, Leonardo DiCaprio, as Teddy, a US federal marshal, who is sent to a mental hospital for the criminally insane, most dangerous criminals in the US, on Shutter Island.  He is sent there to investigate the disappearance of one of the mental patients Rachel Solando, who is in the hospital because she drowned all three of her children.

We soon find out that nothing really is what it seems, but we’re not sure why.  There are tons of codes, and interesting back stories, but you don’t really know what the hell is going on until the very end.  It’s interesting, and the end may make the sometimes cumbersome reading worth it (and the macho fifties language, something about that just irritated me).  I’d recommend the book, but probably more so if people were already a fan of Dennis Lehane. This was my first book of his I read, and I’m not sure I get his writing style entirely. He also wrote Gone Baby Gone, which was also turned into an acclaimed movie.

After hemming and hawing about how I didn’t understand how the Twilight books were so dang popular with women, because I quite frankly thought it sounded like somewhat of an ammature, teeny boppish foray in to a romance story that may have been a bit too sappy and overdone for my taste, I saw the movie Twilight. From there, because the movie held my attention and I was thoroughly entertained, I decided that reading the book might not be such a bad idea after all.  So, my husband got me the first three books in the series of 4 books (the fourth is not available in soft bound yet, and I hate hardback books, just a weird preference of mine).

I have finished the first one in the series by Stephenie Meyer called “Twilight”, and I have to say that I really enjoyed it. It’s very entertaining. Now, I will say that I think this is way more of a junior sort of romance, rather than a supernatural or thriller book, and at times as a woman who is 35 years old, I do cringe and think of how unrealistic this all consuming love is, and how it set these poor young girls up for disappointment in real love with the main character Edward (the teen vampire) and his constant attentiveness. I mean, come on, as we get older, we know that men – and women for that matter – just aren’t like that. Heck, I doubt even a vampire could be so perfect!

But that’s also the sheer fun and escapist part of this book also. Of course, the story follows Isabella Swan, Bella for short, as she moves from dry, arid Arizona to live with her dad in a cold, damp town called Forks in the pacific northwest. The imagery is pretty cool that the author uses to describe the sheer green-ness fo the place, and the start contrasts between Forks and her hometown in AZ.  I love the descriptions of mossy tree trunks, and how the air is virtually green because of the lushness of the place.  I like how it transports you to Forks.   I think one of the best things about the story is the setting and how it’s sort of set apart from everything else.

She uses this as part of the story as to why the Cullens, Edward’s given vamp family, have settled in here.  Basically, this is really a romantic story about first love and it’s intensity, and intensify that by about a thousand times, the first touches, the first kiss, first feelings of bowled over love, and that’s what you have between Edward and Bella.  The rest is just back story and setting, it’s really more about these two exploring their love for eachother and trying to reconcile their two very different worlds – between the human and the supernatural world.

All the while, I can’t help wonder, is Bella going to eventually decide to turn vampire, so that she stop aging and live with her beloved Edward forever?  That’s the biggest question for me, and I don’t know how the second, third and fourth books go, so don’t tell me, I want to read them for myself!  I’m hoping to get around to the second book in the series, New Moon, when I have a few days off in a row again.

I usually don’t review books, but honestly I’ve been a lot more in to reading than I have been in to watching TV or movies.  So, I guess I have a lot more material to work with when it comes to the written word now.  I just finished reading the Stephen King book “The Long Walk”, which is one of the last ones he wrote with his alternate pen name Richard Bachman. It was written, as I understand, in the late sixties, early seventies, and it was not actually published until the late seventies.

This book is based on a really simple, but extremely terrifying plot.  It takes place in some sort of alternate reality where we are ruled by a fascist regime, but that is not really the point of the book and is never really fleshed out, however, what it is more based on is the story of the relationships between the young men who sign up for what is basically a suicidal reality show type game called the Long Walk, which is the biggest national event of the year. 

The  main character from whose point of view we hear the story is Ray Garraty “Maine’s Own”, who seems to be a disillusioned young man that signed up for the Long Walk not really comprehending that it was a one to one hundred odds suicide walk.  Basically, we hear conversations about relationships, musings on the mundane things in life, love, and a lot of talk about death, and onlly touchings on why they are doing this and what it’s all about, or the state of the country and why this sort of suicidal/murderous reality show type of walk is even allowed to happen.

The Long Walk is a walk that takes 100 boys in the month of May, gives them food in the form of concentrates and canteens whenever they need them, and sets them off on what becomes an excruciating walk where you are literally walking for your life. Because the only person who lives is the person who walks the longest. 

There are numerous characters that are interesting, some that are seemingly sociopaths or sickos who want to see people die, some that didn’t really understand what they were getting into and were naive that their lives would be lost when their legs just gave out on them, and some that genuinely believed they would be the last man standing. 

After you get over the horror of boys dying just because they can’t keep going any more, you start to realize that this is a commentary on the general state of society.  Even back then, King had an insight into the future, as he was commenting on the increasingly voyeuristic nature of people, and how we are really just a bunch of animals at heart, but that the human spirit is enduring, no matter how imperfect it may be.

This is one of the better books I’ve read by King, because it’s simple, and it’s horror is realistic. There is nothing supernatural about it, but it makes you really think about humanity.