Summer Reading Wrap-Up

While we were camping, I finished up two more books…

First was Lisey’s Story by Stephen King. 

Mike recommended this title to me when he heard that I was looking for something different.  I’m not normally a Stephen King fan – too much blood and gore for me – but Mike assured me that this was a different type of book for King – it was more of a love story.

I’m not sure about love story…but it certainly was different!  And LONG…the book was 528 pages.  I was in the middle of reading this book when I took my Alaska trip, but didn’t take it with me – not because I didn’t like it, but because it was so darned heavy! 

The book follows the story of Lisey, a woman married to a famous horror-fiction writer, Scott Landon.  The story takes place after Scott has been dead for about 2 years and as Lisey is cleaning out his office.  There are many people that want Scott’s old papers – and they are willing to stop at nothing in order to obtain them.

Lisey is lead through a series of clues leading her along a ‘bool’ – King’s word for a sort of scavenger hunt – by her dead husband to help her understand the past and deal with the present. 

By the way, there are lots of made-up words in this book – some of which are just so silly that I couldn’t take them seriously.  For example, ‘bad-gunky’ is the term King uses for a sort of mental-illness/demon possession.  And ‘gomer’ is for people who are in a sort of comatose trance. 

It seems that Scott had the ability to transport to another world – “Boo’ya Moon” (another of King’s silly invented words) – where everything is lush and tropical in the daytime but is evil at night.  Scott is haunted by his own personal demon from Boo’ya Moon, his ‘long boy’ – and the book details the demon’s affect on Scott and his family as he was growing up.

The imagery in the book is fantastic and King’s character development is wonderful (how could you not know everything possible about these characters after 528 pages?).  But I still think that it was WAY too long – the basic story could have been compressed into about half that length.  And the fantasy element is just not something that I normally relate to – the whole thing was like some sort of bizarre dream that I may have had.

Which I guess is exactly what makes King such a genius and keeps his devoted readers coming back for more.

I also finished another book by David Sedaris – Me Talk Pretty One Day.

This was another hilarious look inside the life of David Sedaris – I laughed out loud even more than his other book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames.  Again, not a book for children, but really, really funny – something light to contrast with Lisey’s Story!