I was planning on continuing writing and upping these in 13 review chunks, and I probably should push myself to do that given I was 60+ reviews behind before today, but because writing that many reviews that fast takes a toll on you after a while, I’ll dial it back to 7 review chunks. As a result, that sole 4 star book I asked you guys to try and guess won’t show up until the next chunk
#66: Thank You for Smoking by Christopher Buckley: 3 stars.
#67: The Goon, Vol. 2: My Murderous Childhood by Eric Powell: 1 star.
#68: Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Schappell: 1 star.
#69: Hellboy, Vol. 2: Wake the Devil by Mike Mignola: 1 star.
#70: Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? by Neil Gaiman: 2 stars.
#71: The Goon, Vol. 0: Rough Stuff by Eric Powell: 3 stars.
#72: Time Travelers Strictly Cash by Spider Robinson: 2 stars.
#73: Quick Service by P.G. Wodehouse: 2 stars.
P.S. In case you’re curious, my read total’s up to 123 as of today. And, just so you know I’m not ignoring your recommendations, here are some of the books I’ve tried to read recently but couldn’t manage to finish that other Cannonballers helped point me in the direction of: The Rosie Project, Jeeves and the Wedding Bells, The Stand, The Passage, and Swan Song. I have, however, read the following: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?, Chew (Volumes 1-3), Sweet Tooth (Volume 1), Saga (Volume 1), Sacre Bleu, Invincible (Volume 1), Lexicon, The Crane Wife, Wonder, and Heartburn. Unfortunately, not many of them hit the spot for me.
I’m kind of curious about your reaction to Sacre Bleu since you are such a Moore fan. I don’t know if it was me, but I couldn’t get into that one at all. I generally enjoy Moore’s work, but he isn’t in my list of top authors. I can only take so much gross out humor.
Since I know you’re a huge King fan, what didn’t work for you about The Stand? I’d just like to hear your thoughts since there won’t be a full review (or will there?).
I’ve found that one of King’s weaknesses is, the longer the stories and the casts of characters become, the more likely the story is to fail. Under the Dome, The Stand, Doctor Sleep. It’s no coincidence that my favorite books of his happen to be more intimate, so to speak (ex. Lisey’s Story, Duma Key, The Shining, 11/22/63). The last one I listed is a bit of a door-stopper itself, is somewhat epic in scope, and it has a decent number of characters, but he manages to keep the focus on the two lovebirds and so the story doesn’t become too unwieldy and meandering, unlike in Doctor Sleep, a book that could’ve easily been half as long.
In the case of The Stand, I just lost interest 100+ pages in. He kept introducing characters, setting things up, etc., and I didn’t have the patience for it, especially since I didn’t care for the vast majority of those characters and since I felt nothing particularly noteworthy was happening. It felt like your average outbreak situation, slowly escalating at first before it goes on a war path. And I just couldn’t get past that slow escalation. Partly because, the longer a book is, the more motivated I need to see it through to the end. “I’m not even a quarter of the way through!? Sorry, Stephen King, but this book and I are done.”
Though I feel I should mention The Dark Tower series as a whole is one of my all-time favorites. But, again, despite being epic in scope, and having tons of characters, it centers around a small group of those characters and so it never gets too out of control.
Oh, and I had essentially the same reaction to Sacre Bleu as you did. I’ll delve more into what I thought about it whenever I get around to that review, which will probably be a while in the future based off of how fast I’ve been getting these reviews up. I seem to be destined to always be 50+ reviews behind this year…
I think our different reactions are kind of interesting, because I tend to like the long ones but didn’t really think 11/22/63 was that great while you (and just about everyone else) really liked it. I thought Sadie was a nice enough character and her marriage is one of the examples of King reminding himself and the reader that shit wasn’t necessarily all good in the past, but I thought the whole super klutz thing was a bit weak. She just didn’t feel like much of a character to me. And I think the novel definitely suffered a bit from “remember the good old days” though King would every once in a while remember that they weren’t that great. Mostly I just think Jake went into that whole “save the president” idea half assed and so wasn’t taking all the proper things into consideration.
Didn’t you say you’d seen The Stand mini-series? Do you think knowing what came next kept you interested longer than you would have been to begin with, or the opposite?
It’s not all about the length; I like It, for example. Though, yes, length does play a part, and that certainly is an odd coincidence. And I know how that feels; I differ with almost everyone on Doctor Sleep.
I think that his idea was “half assed” is pretty true to life. You know if your average person were given a time machine, it’d probably take them just a single trip to wipe out the entire human race or rip a hole in the space time continuum or something along those lines through their actions. Also, that he was a little “half assed” about it was, I think, a central part of the story. He let himself get caught up in his relationships (namely the one with Sadie), as well as doing other little things, such as teaching and attempting to save that one kid, and forgot his main mission as a result. Again, all very believable, I think.
I have seen it… but it was a while back. I remembered the basics of the plot, and was honestly telling myself “I’ll read at least until the ‘M-O-O-N spells’ guy and the magical black lady show up.” Heh. Yet I couldn’t even get that far. Still, were it not for remembering I saw and liked the story in another format, my love for Stephen King, and the adoration the book receives, I don’t know that I would’ve even made it 100 pages.