My latest book review column is now online at InterGalactic Medicine Show. In this month’s column, I review John Scalzi‘s wonderful new novel, The Human Division. I also review a new piece of nonfiction about a science fiction pioneer. The Man from Mars by Fred Nadis is a fascinating biography of Ray Palmer.
You can read both reviews over at the InterGalactic Medicine Show website.
I forgot to record the fact that I received Mending the Moon by Susan Palwick (TOR) last Thursday or Friday. According to the accompanying press release, the book comes out on May 14.
If someone asked me today what my absolute favorite book, regardless of category, author or any other discriminator, I would say without hesitation that my favorite book is It by Stephen King. On my morning walk, I finished reading it for the third time. I remember really liking it the first time I read it, loving it even more the second time. I didn’t think it was possible to read a book for a third time and enjoy it even more, but that is the case.
This time around, I listened to the audio book. The book was read (performed?) by Steven Weber and he was absolutely fantastic. His performance certainly went some way toward pushing It to the very top of my favorites list, but more than anything else, it was the overall feel of the book. I have grown to love the Losers in a way that I have grown to love very few characters in books that I have read. Reading the book, I’d find myself thinking, I wish I could hang out with these guys, both when they were kids and when they’d all grown up.
It seems to me that part of the success of the book–and part of what makes it work so well for me–is that it is a close examination of the magic of childhood, without the look back through rose-colored glasses. The story is not tinged by nostalgia, the way a Ray Bradbury story might be. And yet there is a kind of nostalgia in it that is transferred to the reader, no matter what era you grew up in. Another reason I love it is that it is a hero book in horror book clothing. The Losers, each of them, are superheroes in their own right. They overcome things that would stop a grownup in their tracks. It is not the wish fulfillment superhero of the comic books. The Losers don’t fly and bullets don’t bounce off their chest. But they are superheroes.
The completely epic rock fight scene perhaps captures this best of all. In reading that scene the third time around, I decided that, for me anyway, it is the single best fight scene I’ve come across in any book I’ve ever read. And I’ve read quite a few. There is something so utterly believable about that scene. I’ve been there as a kid, tossing rocks and clumps of dirt (we called them “dirt bombs”) back and forth with friends and enemies alike.
I found myself reacting to the story in a much more personal and interactive way than in any previous reading. This was certainly aided by Steven Weber’s performance. At the point in which Bev Marsh and Ben Hanscomb are hiding in the clubhouse and trying desperately to stay quiet, I found myself raising a finger to my lips and whispering “Shhh” as I took my afternoon walk. Later, as Bill fought with It and shouted out his mantra, “He thrusts his fists against the post and still insists he sees the ghost!” tears welled up in my eyes in the same sort of fierce pride and rush I get when I see a clip of Superman rescuing someone from danger.
I also like that It winds itself deeply into King’s other work. The more I read of his other stuff, the more connections I see to It.
The mailman arrived today with this book, Tunnel out of Death by Jamil Nasir (TOR Books). Looks like the book is scheduled for release in early May:
I haven’t posted a list of books I’ve received for review consideration since before my Internet vacation. In order to bring things up-to-date, here is the list of books I’ve received since the last post.
Kitty Rocks the House by Carrie Vaughn (TOR)
Virus Thirteen by Josuah Alan Parry (TOR)
The Man From Mars: Ray Palmer’s Amazing Pulp Journey by Fred Nadis (Tarcher/Penguin)
I am on the record here, and in various other places I imagine1, as saying that I did not like my first experiences reading Stephen King. Before I ever read anything by King, I considered him a horror writer who wrote about crazy wild dogs and evil cars and clowns and you could pretty much guess what that kind of thing would be. But in the late summer of 2001, I decided to set my judgement aside and, you know, actually read a Stephen King novel. I was returning to Los Angeles after a vacation in Hawaii and for the plane ride home, I picked up ‘Salem’s Lot. I later reported that I enjoyed the first two-thirds or so, but when the monsters really started showing up, I lost interest. I finished the book, but the last third seemed silly to me2.
I didn’t read another Stephen King book for three years, at which point I picked up Needful Things. I don’t remember why I chose to try King again, or why that book. But in the last days of September 2004, I read it. My reaction was almost identical to what I experienced with ‘Salem’s Lot: I enjoyed the first two-thirds of the book, but when the town started going crazy, I found the story growing silly.
Eventually, I did come back to Stephen King and was surprised to discover I enjoyed his other books, and he has become one of my favorite writers. But until recently, I avoided rereading those two books I’d read early on. In March, however, I reread both of them and was surprised and delighted to discover that I enjoyed both of them. Indeed, I remembered very little of them from my first readings and my rereads showed me things that I had either missed the first time around, or hadn’t the experience to understand.
One thing I discovered about ‘Salem’s Lot was that its small-town life seemed like Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. I’m not saying that the vampires in the story were like the Martian’s in Bradbury’s stories because that isn’t true. But the small town feel evoked in some of those Bradbury stories came through in the town of Jerusalem’s Lot.
Nor did the last third of the book seem silly this time around. It made a lot more sense. We were watching a town by drained of its life the way the people in the town were drained of their blood.
It’s not one of my favorite King novels, but I like it far better than I remember liking it more than a decade ago.
While I liked my reread of Needful Things more the second time around than the first time, I didn’t like it quite as much as ‘Salem’s Lot. That said, I once again felt like I saw King trying to do things in this novel that were beneath the skin of the page and I liked that very much. And once again, a Bradbury comparison came to mind while reading this novel. This seemed to be a kind of more horrific retelling of Something Wicked This Way Comes, with Leland Gaunt taking the place of Cougar & Dark, and Alan and Polly taking the place of Jim Nightshade and Will Holloway. Instead of a carnival coming to town, it is a shopkeeper.
These rereads really brought home the fact that not only my appreciation for a book can change over time, but my understanding of it grows with experience. I suspect the latter has a large part to do with my impatience with the books the first time around. Then, too, I have read much more of King’s work in the intervening years and have a much better idea of the big picture, of how the various pieces of the stories and novels relate together in the intricate way that they do. But I think this lesson carries to rereading pretty much anything.
Of course, there is a risk in rereading something. I got lucky in my rereading of ‘Salem’s Lot and Needful Things. I sometimes worry about going back and rereading some of my favorite books that I haven’t read for some years now (Isaac Asimov’s Forward the Foundation, for instance). There is always a chance that I’ll discover I don’t like them as well as I used to–and I’m not sure that’s something I want to find out.
Recently, I reported on how I read 9 books in March, more than any previous month for the last 17 years. 7 of those 9 books were audio books. And I’ve continued that into the month of April. But I doubt that I’ll read 9 books in April for reasons I will explain shortly.
Not since I tasted bacon as a youngster have I had such a dramatic turnaround in opinion. When I was a small boy, I distinctly recall disliking the smell of bacon. Then, one day, I tried bacon and I never looked back. I’ll eat bacon at every chance I get. The same has been true for audio books. I’m probably on record here on the blog somewhere (I’m not going to go digging through 5,100+ posts as the moment) saying how I don’t think audio books are for me. My objection (it seems so silly now) was that I didn’t like being read to. That I worried that another reader’s voice would interfere with the way I imagined the story. That has proven to be a completely groundless worry.
I am Audible-obsessed.
The best thing about audio books is that they allow me to read when I wouldn’t otherwise be able to read–when I go for my twice-daily walks; when I am doing chores around the house, etc. I can multitask and this allows me to read a lot more in any given day. In March I averaged more than 3.5 hours of Audible reading per day. It’s wonderful!
But I doubt I’ll read quite as many books in April, mostly because, over the next couple of months, I’ll be reading several longer books. I’m about to finish Stephen King’s The Tommyknockers later today. Next up is George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, which I have not yet read (and still managed to avoid all of the spoilers). One of the things that I can do with Audible is attempt to read books that I’ve always wanted to read but never wanted to carve out the time to read. So, also on my list are: David Copperfield by Charles Dickens; and The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (I managed to make it about halfway through on 2 occasions, and really enjoyed it, but never finished because I moved onto other things). Also on the list is Stephen King’s It, which I’ve read twice before. It’s my favorite Stephen King book, but I’ve been told the audio version is excellent so I’m more than willing to read it again.
Not all of the books on the upcoming list are long. There are some average ones and some short ones. The list includes:
Some of those are long, some are not, but they are all now on my Audible to-read list. I imagine that list will grow and it is possible that I will finally break the record number of books that I’ve read in one year (set back in 2001).
