Some people asked me why I haven’t been posting to the blog lately.  Did I mention…it’s Summer!

Taking our annual trip to the East Coast to see my folks.  This iteration incudes two days in Maine.  As of Day 5 of this 10 -day extravaganza, we have petted goats, sat for an hour in a Customs line lsitening to songs from the 60’s, ate way too much ice cream, played glow-in-the-dark put-put golf, turned around ten times trying to find the hidden entrance to a game preserve, petted a donkey, watched an antique car show while reliving our drunken youth, had a July 4 red-white-and-blue breakfast, rode the oldest carousel in Connecticut on its 94th birthday (complete with free birthday cake), and “bonded” as a family through innumerable jokes, arguments, and hissy fights.  And there’s still 5 days to go!

More pictures of this Americana experience by clicking here.

Now I’m not normally  prayin man, but prayer may be the way to go!

For reasons as yet unknown even to myself, I have been making a habit out of listening to Stephen King novels as audiobooks.  I can count the number of actual “book” books of SK I have read on one hand - CARRIE, when I was a teenager, and a recent short story in ESQUIRE.  So far I’ve “read” CELL, which was terrific, DUMA KEY, which had some terrific parts mixed in with some not so terrific parts, and I am almost finished listening to DESPERATION.

Now as much as I am sympathetic to SK’s claims of his books being “literature”, I’d have to say that I may have some issues with this.  If you interpret “literature” as being “writing that gives you a deeper understanding of the human condition and moves you to understand your greater place in the Universe”, then I’d have to say “No.”  However, if you were to define literature as “making you wonder how you would survive in a world full of zombies, demons and psychopaths and how you would protect your family from the undead as you shudder with disgust”, well, then, “Yes”, of course.

I prefer to think of SK as more like a three-chord rock and roll song.  Yes, you know the chords.  Yes, you know what is coming.  Yes, you’ve heard bit all before, many, many times.  On the other hand, you LIKE those chords, you LIKE what’s coming, and when it DOES come you kind of wish it would never end.  And what you listen for (because what else is there to listen for, since you’ve experienced in a gazillion-something times?) are the subtle touches that make it interesting and new again.

In the case of DESPERATION, the interesting parts are:

• A Norman Mailer-esque tough-guy writer who gets all the best lines and the most interesting backstory
• A lot of information about drug addiction and alcoholism, of which I recently learned SK himself has quite a lot of experience
• A young kid that talks to God and believes that the fight against the demon is a fight for God, stuff I don’t necessarily believe in but that makes the book very compelling  and emotional
• A totally creeped-out super-tall super cruel super clever bad guy inhabiting a tall town Sheriff, and
• Creepy spiders that work together to spell out words for the bad guy

Is it as good as CELL, my favorite so far?  Nope.  Is it scary?  It sure is!  Does it make me cry?  At one point, it certainly did.  Does it contain the meaning of life?  No, but it certainly is a page-turner!

Next up – THE STAND.  After some rock and roll.