The last Stephen King book I read was the one about the car, Christine, and it scared sixteen-year-old me enough that I haven’t picked him up since, with the exception of the collection of short stories that has The Body and Shawshank Redemption in it. What can I say? I’m a weenie when it comes to scary things, and since quite a lot of my reading is done at night, after the house is quiet, I don’t need the book I’m reading to add to […]
Lord of the Flies meets Survivor, but with less Jeff Probst
The Beach arrived in my inbox from JB, he of Shantaram and The Brothers K and Edgar. (I’ve decided that people who give you books are the best kind of people.) Our protagonist is Richard, a twenty-something British traveller, drifting about southeast Asia with no real discernible purpose. On his first night in Bangkok, he shares a wall and a joint with another traveller, Mr. Duck, and in the morning, discovers Mr. Duck’s bloody body as well as a meticulously drawn map to a hidden […]
Like no road I ever want to travel…
I’ve never read Cormac McCarthy, even though he’s on all the Must Read lists. And I’ve never seen No Country For Old Men, despite the fact that I would probably watch Javier Bardeem watch paint dry. It seemed very Western to me, and Westerns aren’t really my thing, The Road isn’t really my thing either – let’s not forget I’m the same girl who read Beautiful Bastard, not once, but twice – but sometimes you have to read smart books, and McCarthy is definitely on […]
This is not your father’s Lassie…
I embarked on reading Edgar, knowing only that it was a story about “a boy and his dog”. In fact, in the author’s own words: The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is a boy and his dog story for grownups. If I were looking for this book, the way I once did, that’s all I would want to know. Hide the dust jacket away. Don’t look at it again until you close the book for the last time. Read the blurbs afterward, like I do, when […]