File this one under, “Be grateful for what you have”. Anna Lyndsey’s memoir about her sensitivity to light, which has resulted in her near-constant need to remain in the dark, is beautifully written, and alternates between darkly humorous, and downright tragic. “Most of the time, I do not want to die. But I would like to have the means of death within my grasp. I want to feel the luxury of choice, to know the answer to “How do I bear this?” need not always […]
Who wants to go for a ride?
Another Stephen King novella, Stationary Bike has a great premise, but gets a little too nutty even for me… Richard Sifkitz’s doctor tells him that it’s time to lose some weight, weight that Sifkitz — a commercial artist — has been packing on since his wife died. Sifkitz buys a stationary bike, and instead of installing it in front of a TV, he puts it in his apartment’s basement, facing a blank wall (artists are weird, I guess). He paints the wall with a mural depicting a […]
The camping trip of nightmares
Oh, this was good. It was creepy and did a lot of hinting around at certain things before whacking you on the face with the facts at the very end. Excellent! “Dates only make us aware of how numbered our days are, how much closer to death we are for each one we cross off. From now on, Punzel, we’re going to live by the sun and the seasons.’ He picked me up and spun me around, laughing.’Our days will be endless.” Peggy (known as Punzel […]
How well can you ever really know someone?
I recently discovered that my library has a pile of Stephen King novellas on audiobook — ones that I never read because he released them all as e-books and I really don’t like e-books — I’ll read them in my browser if they’re free, but overall I’d prefer a paperback (or a book on tape — I’m not a total Luddite). So I rented 3 of these novellas, and listened to A Good Marriage first (which was narrated by Jessica Hecht — a.k.a. Susan from Friends, a.k.a. Gretchen […]