Reading

The Rubber Band by Rex Stout

/ Reading, Spy-Detective

★★★☆☆ | Spy-Detective | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

The third installment of the Nero Wolfe mystery series.  A muscle man who’s quite a thinker himself is the protagonist in these books.  Wolfe is the enigma that we collectively marvel at for his brilliance and idiosyncrasies.  Reading this book after just finishing Storycraft by Jack Hart forced me to look at the joinery work and finishing of the plot and how it moved along.  One of the downsides of studying the craft of writing is that some of the enthralling magic of the story fades away as you better understand what the author is doing.

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Lisey’s Story by Stephen King

/ Horror, Reading

★★★★☆ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

This is my sixth Stephen King book I’ve finished over the past month.

Lisey’s Story started slowly and was confusing at times with so many flashbacks (including flashbacks within flashbacks, which can’t be easy to pull off as a writer).  While there is a supernatural element, the book centers on rebounding from grief, in this case, the death of Lisey’s husband.

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The Colorado Kid by Stephen King

/ Mystery-Suspense, Reading

★★★☆☆ | Mystery-Suspense | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I listened to this on audiobook and was put off by the strong Maine accent of the narrator — too heavy to be understood at first — but it slowly grew on me.

This is one of Stephen King‘s Hard Case Crime books (Joyland and Later were the other two and I’ve read them both).  I’ve wanted to buy a slew of books of this mystery/crime series just to have on the shelf for when I need a quick read.  I still might.

Spoiler follows …

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Night Shift by Stephen King

/ ★★★★★, Horror, Reading

★★★★★ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

An amazing collection of early short stories.  My favorite — because of the utter difficulty I had in reading it — was The Ledge. The story involves the protagonist having to climb over a balcony railing on the 43rd floor of a luxury apartment building onto a 5″ ledge that he must use (without handholds) to climb around the entire building.  Gusting winds and pecking pigeons make him stagger and sway, along with his antagonist who is there watching and taunting him.  Mr. King tapped directly into my singular fear. I had to stop reading at different times and remind myself that it was fiction. I am sure my blood pressure was spiking. I tried to close my eyes a few times, but it’s awful hard to read with your eyes closed.  What a storyteller!

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The Odyssey by Homer

/ ★★★★★, Epics and Poetry, Reading

★★★★★ | Ancient | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads

It was high time I reread this classic.  I found the story much more engaging that The Iliad — crafty Odysseus and his wily ways.  There are so many stories in this epic that are embedded in our literary subconscious — Circe, Calypso, the Sirens, the Cyclops, revenge against the suitors, etc. Because of its legacy, I can’t rate this any lower than a five.  And yet, I didn’t find myself rooting for Odysseus after all his hubris and, in particular, thinking of all the grieving fathers who lost sons during his exploits.  And what for?

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Elevation by Stephen King

/ Horror, Reading

★★★☆☆ | Horror | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads

I’m not sure what to make of this Stephen King book.  Mr. King narrated the audiobook, and he did a fine job. The premise was interesting: the main protagonist mysteriously began to lose touch with Earth’s gravity.  Besides this supernatural twist, the book dealt with the poor treatment of a LGBTQ couple in a small Maine town.   There were some fine moments of paradigm-shifting moments among the characters in the novel as they embraced inclusion. I can’t quite figure out the meaning of the main character’s elevation in the end. 

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