First, Contact and Merrick are still pending. I'm 20 minutes into an audio version of The Hobbit.
I recently finished Black House by King and Straub. Powerfully boring beginning. Shockingly slow. Great middle. Nice enough end, but a little too Garp for me. I hate books where I don't fall in love alongside the characters and just have to take the person's word for it that the likes of Queen Sophie, Sophie the Barren, Sophie the let's-spell-it-out-and-not-show-it, are worth loving. I can't believe I just criticized Stephen King (and/or Peter Straub). That's way uncool. I apologize. I mean, I'm sorry for criticizing the masters, but I still believe what I said. Still, a thumbs up.
In fact, I should give it two thumbs up, and not just because after reading Our Lady of the Lost and Found you couldn't point me to a bigger letdown. Wow. Bad book. Bad. Not ordinary bad, but 'this could have been so great' bad, which is worse. A great idea, a likeable author, and a big, big pile of self-indulgence with a misdirected sense of the dramatic. And keeping in mind that you're reading these comments from a person maintaining a big, big pile of self-indulgence in her own right, that's bad.
I read the first Lemony Snicket book, The Bad Beginning and enjoyed it. Not sure if I will get the rest of the series but from the library, maybe, sure, some of the moments were pricelessly funny.
And then there were two Madeline L'Engle books which I didn't finish nor did I want to finish, and I don't want to talk about that because not liking stuff by ML'E starts throwing all of my comments into the suspect zone.
Maybe it is me, because I read Faustus and really enjoyed it, thought it was hilarious. The low expectations helped.
I really have to get The Fellowship of the Ring done by December so Mike and I can spew together over the movie.
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