• CHARLOTTE’S WEB
• by E. B. White
• drawings by Garth Williams
• [rated by pbs readers as #7 !]
• 184 pages

I have a confession to make. I was scared to read Charlotte’s Web again.

It basically slaughtered me as a kid. But since life has recently given me a reason to contemplate life and death, it seemed like the perfect time to read it.

Picking it up tonight, I read a third of it (even a third grader would have read a third of it). I was totally charmed.

The thing about writing for younger readers is that every darned word counts. How I love that! I found myself skimming, unintentionally, and then going back and picking up every word. After just reading a book that was the pinnacle of extra detail, I found myself in love with how much was said with so few words.

Because 60 pages in, you are in that barn with Wilbur and Fern and Charlotte and the geese and sheep and smells and sweetness.

Reviewers in the front fold correctly suggest that White finds a way to tell a sweet story that at its heart contains darkness and complication. And that is a hat trick. This is a story about life and death and sure enough, life and death exist on every page.

But – and this is a big but, if you’ll pardon that expression – there is beautiful innocence here. Life desperately needs more innocence. Aw hell, I need more innocence. And this is a perfect stomping ground for it. I’m in love.

What I didn’t remotely remember from childhood were the drawings by Garth Williams. I don’t know if his drawings are in every edition, but for this reader, they make up a healthy half of what you are getting here. They are achingly innocent and beautiful. I don’t know how many times I’ll return to this book, but I would love to have one of the drawings on my wall. They grab my whole heart.

DONE.

Oh my gosh. What can you say about this gentle treatise on love, death, friendship, the changing of seasons…

I loved it.

But my last word on this, if you haven’t for awhile is, read it again. This is a beautiful thought-provoking book for kids, but it lulled this adult like the world’s greatest fairy tale. And maybe it is just that.

Charlotte’s Web was picked in the top ten of this survey, along with heavyweights like To Kill A Mockingbird. And it belongs there. And thank you to E.B. White. As Wilbur says on the last page, it is hard to find a good friend and a great writer. You created a masterpiece that has held the world in its sway for decades. And because of your great writing, I feel like you are my friend. I’m sending you a hug through the seasons to wherever you have ballooned off to.

• A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY
• by John Irving
• [rated by pbs readers as #26]
• 627 pages

I just dropped off my copy of Da Vinci Code to a friend and I already miss it! What a gloriously fun read.

Owen Meany has been a book that I have almost read a couple of times in this project and then something else captured my attention.

It is also one of my big 13 left! Mind you, I have 56 books left, having read 44 so far. But of the 56, there are 13 of them that are either 1)long or 2)complicated or 3) far from my normal reading or 4)War & Peace, which is all those things.

At any rate, I realized a while back that I needed to fold these 13 into the list at a regular pace, like every four books at most, so that I wouldn’t get all the way through this list except for three of them and then want to shoot myself trying to finish.

So Da Vinci Code was so fun and quick that I knew it was time for a big one and here’s come Owen Meany.

Check out Irving’s first words in this book.

“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice—not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother’s death, but because he is the reason I believe in God: I am a Christian because of Owen

Meany.”

Whew! First paragraph! His best friend accidentally kills his mother and that starts the story. It isn’t even the point of the story! I don’t know about you guys, but there is no way I’m that deep!

At 100 pages or so in, the other amazing thing about this read is that Irving writes the way teachers want you to write. He writes properly, with a scroll of images that take you to the story and gently pull you along.

The characters are anything but stereotypical. In fact, there are very few characters and I feel that I don’t even know them that well yet! So it is that he unfolds his characters to the reader, on his terms and with his images.

There is a slight hitch for me. Though this was always the way you were supposed to write (I’m sure a writing class in college would be well served by using this book as a manual on the correct way), it feels like it belongs to a time in the past. It is from a time when we didn’t have the choices in life that we have now, when a read was celebrated by using ten images to make a point over just one. And while that is all well and good, it feels belabored to me. Tens of thousands of words to tell a story is an art form, but possibly an antiquated one.

I know there are still people who love this kind of eloquent drawing out of a beautiful story. I don’t love it, but I respect Irving’s artistry.

It should also be said that Irving could easily have made this list with Cider House Rules or Garp. That alone makes me curious as to how this rises above those two amazing books. We’ll see!

A LITTLE OVER HALF WAY DONE…

This is a hugely difficult read for me to get through, but possibly for a different reason than usual.

John Irving is a superlative writer – of the kinds of books that don’t really exist anymore. And I accept that I am one reader’s responsibility for that.

I know I’ve talked earlier about reading huge books when I was a kid. I loved having an 800-page epic to take to the oceanside, or to crawl up my grampa’s tree and read for hours. Michener, Uris, all those guys.

Now granted, I remember those books being filled to the brim with adventure. But books like this, written by writers like this, were part of that wave.

Unlike my most loyal and responsive reader of this blog, Laurie, I haven’t read his books in the past. I imagine that I would have enjoyed Cider House or Garp, maybe more than this one.

But the funny thing is – it feels too late. We are now a society where you can read and you can also be presented with the most awe-inspiring tales on film and tv that twist out into any direction you fancy. What I mean is that we have a ridiculous amount of choice in the tales we attach to. And the level of these enticements is first rate.

I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t have twenty TV series that they would still like to see and at least that many movies they haven’t gotten to yet.

To that new deep diving pool, we throw in Owen Meany. This is essentially a story of two friends coming of age over about five years. That’s it. Okay, I haven’t finished it yet and I’m prepared to be stunned. But for almost 400 of its 600+ pages, that has been it.

Is it written well? It is written beautifully. The deep dive, in this case, is the detail. Imagine that you saw something painted – maybe a wall, maybe a piece of furniture, maybe a fountain – and painted exquisitely. Every detail has been caressed to perfection. You admire

it and look at every detail of it.

Now imagine doing that for the amount of hours it takes to read this.

You wouldn’t. Life is too short to sustain an opus, beautifully written, that could be told in 400 fewer pages. I mean, as a writer in this style, Irving has sustained it. As an older reader with too many quick and pleasurable choices, it is I, as a reader, who can’t sustain it.

I will finish it. And I will be able to say I enjoyed it, for the most part. But on a spectrum where it enjoys the far sided position of detail after detail, page after page, this book could really stand to swing at least a bit towards get to the point!

DONE.

Well, what can I say? It is a masterpiece. Irving is a spectacular writer. As I first mentioned, he is the kind of writer that every writer teacher loves. He writes by the book, incorporating what you have to have to be good and then adding layers and layers on top of that.

I’m grateful for this project and having the chance to read this lovely book. Do I still feel that it is longer than people will sit and read? Absolutely. In fact, my gratitude stems from that fact that I would have put it down somewhere in my house several times and not have had the driving force to pick it back up, if it weren’t for this project.

A Prayer for Owen Meany is a long experience. In the end, I will remember my admiration for a great writer’s skills. I will remember the characters. The feeling I often have of wanting to return to a book isn’t there minutes after finishing and I know it won’t be there.

But I will always be grateful to be exposed to a lovely book with a depth and detail that I may not read again – except in another one from this project!

• THE DA VINCI CODE
• by Dan Brown
• [rated by pbs readers as #33]
• 597 pages

I did myself a little favor here. Going through a tough time in my live, personally, I finished a delightful read with Pride & Prejudice and am following it up with another

fun opus, The Da Vinci Code. I know it is delightful because I have already read it before and liked it very much. Yet, it isn’t one of the magical rereads in here that scares me, like Lonesome Dove, which I loved beyond words and didn’t want to suddenly love less.

I roundly liked this before and have every expectation that I will enjoy it again. Given my love for pacing, I picked it up and read 50 pages already. LOVE THAT!

Strangely, the only difference now that I really wish I didn’t have is having seen the movie, which was fine, but I’m now forced to think of this lead guy as Tom Hanks, since he played him. And while I love Hanks and always enjoy watching him work, he was wrong for this part, I felt at the time. And now, picking up the book again, he is this part in my head, right or wrong. Actually though, when Audrey Tautou shows up as the girl, I will love that association, as I love her and thought she made the character richer than in the read.

But who knows what surprises I will receive? I don’t know what they will be yet, but I’ll let you know!

A THIRD OF THE WAY IN…

Now we’re talking!

This is nothing but a wildly fun read! I can’t remember how long it has been since I couldn’t stop myself from jumping into the next chapter. Or looking and realizing I had been reading for an hour. I’m having the greatest time reading this and a few observations have already gelled for me.

The first is that Dan Brown is a diehard researcher. There are an extraordinary amount of researched facts on every single page. This is easy for me to notice since I hate researching anything and he so obviously loves it!

But that’s not even the point. The point is that he is truly equal parts research and thrilling pacing. I honestly can’t remember a time that I have experienced that to this extent. If someone does both, you sense their strain caused by bouncing back and forth from research to pacing, pacing to research. That doesn’t exist in this book and I think the marriage of both is the prime reason that one feels such exhilaration here.

The second thing, which is really fun to experience since I have read this before and remember it fairly well, is the reveal on every page. The way he moves his characters is revealed to them and to us at the same time. That isn’t unusual; it’s just unusual for it to be done this well.

And my last point is the sheer faith Brown has in his information and story. There are thousands of books that incorporate history and historical contexts and then build their plot from there. With Da Vince Code, Brown dares and succeeds in making the history the plot! Each ancient specific factoid matters in what happens on the next page. And if it doesn’t, you know it will! In ten or a hundred pages, you are going to need that factoid! So the result is that each fact and the whole story is more of a jigsaw puzzle than a linear lined plot.

This is nothing but fun. I’m not close to finished with it and I’m really happy about that, due to my pure enjoyment of it, but I can already state emphatically that if you liked it before, read it again!

DONE.

I just finished Da Vinci Code and I feel tremendous gratitude. It held me spellbound till the very last page. And for a second read! How often can that claim be made? Right now, I can’t remember a time.

I already mentioned what a superb balanced mix this book is of intrigue, twists and turns while covertly completely upending Christian definitions. It is a subversive read, an educational read and dang nam it, a blazing fun read.

And that’s where the gratitude comes in. I realize that life is overwhelmingly hard. Though we have distractions of food, wine, and natural beauty coming at us from all angles, we have so few opportunities to turn off our insistent minds and let them roam.

The most consistent and sustained of those opportunities is a good story. A story told well, that allows your mind to be carried. I know this book was all about religion, but in the end, it is the supreme good story that is the holiest thing.

Thank you to Dan Brown for allowing my monkey mind to swing in your reality for a sustained 600 pages.

Isn’t that indeed what this whole project is about? The world’s greatest reads. Nothing more than that.

But much more importantly, in this world of fleeting and inferior distractions, it is nothing less!!

• PRIDE & PREJUDICE

• by Jane Austen

• [rated by pbs readers as #4 !]
• 368 pages

Well, slap my face and call me Sally.

What?

Perhaps the most delightful surprise yet.

When I read this in high school, I thought it was dippy and like some kind of prehistoric soap opera. And as such, I submit my objection to this and my previous read, Invisible Man, as wholly inappropriate for readers of that age. Nothing in common, but high school readers are still too new to have any basis for either of these directions.

One additional importance to be stressed in having a class read this book is the explanation of just how very few options were open to women of that time, other than marrying well and helping provide for their larger families. If this isn’t properly emphasized, then this would come off as dippy and a prehistoric soap opera.

But you gotta get the scene for me. I had just finished Invisible Man, the last third of which had about a hundred images or phrases per page, describing anguish, indifference, utter futility and ultimately hopelessness. I was ready – I was righteously ready – for a change.

When I drew a group of titles, Pride felt like the biggest change, I could do. And it was certainly that! Probably my best juxtaposition of two books yet!

But much more than that, I found it utterly delightful. I was engrossed in every page, the characters bounced out and grabbed me and the dialogue was timeless. Of particular interest to me throughout the book was her choice in conversations expressed vs unexpressed.

Practically the whole book is conversations. But Austen chooses which ones are going to take place in front of you and which ones are going to be described. And it isn’t a choice of important ones said and unimportant ones implied. Such is her grasp and her joy at writing discourse between two people that she plays with funny and unimportant talks with as much relish as the implied, more important ones.

There was only one time I truly missed a beat and that was her leaving out of Elizabeth’s telling Darcy the truth of her feelings for him. She just implied that one and I was rather itching to hear how she would say it. It was the one time when Austen was personally caught up in Elizabeth’s skin and their combined shyness got the better of them. This is very small in the overall deliciousness of this read. I loved it. I will return to it.

Pride & Prejudice was a cosmic gift to me.

• INVISIBLE MAN
• by Ralph Ellison
• [rated by pbs readers as #72]
• 581 pages

Well. I am initially slapping myself on the back by choosing this book after the last one, making my wildest blog fantasies come true by the sheer width of the writing involved. From The Hunger Games, where I never went back for a word or even felt I had to, due to its sheer velocity, to a book where I instantly went back over and over, a sentence or a paragraph, to make sure I got every word.

But that feeling was gotten over quickly as I got out of Ellison’s foreward (glad I had that, though) and into the book.

A man living off the grid by living in a basement that no one knows about, lighting the ceiling and walls with bright light that he bootlegs, reflects on what got him here and to the truth that, as a black man, he was essentially invisible. So far, in the first third, Ellison gives us amazing and horrifying stories and asks us to experience them with him, understanding the transition to having no hope.

Yet, for that, it is an amazing read so far, with amazing layering; telling a simple story with ramifications that carry out into infinity.

In the “black man not seeming human to those out of reality” genre, I prefer James Baldwin, due to his ability to employ such rich language at every turn. But this is already delivering the devastating blow that it is aiming for. And, like so many of these great reads, I have no idea where it is headed. Could that be the hallmark of many a classic? I don’t know, but this is amazing writing.

One last point before I leave off. I was supposed to read this in high school. I did. I remember not really getting it. But the thing is – I barely think I’m old enough to read it now! This book is way too mature, in about five senses of the word to be taught in high school. A most ambitious choice and one I doubt is made too much these days.

I’m completely in favor of introducing complex ideas, though, and I’m so glad the young adult market has blown up in success and offers so many fine choices. Because this isn’t a young adult book in any way, shape or form.

Now, college? Have at it!

ABOUT HALFWAY THROUGH.

In the literary playground, there is a room, I fancy, that very few people play in. Admittance to it is sorta like someone at an art gallery asking someone in a uniform why the three splashes of blue on a huge canvas add up to art. The person asked just sighs, as if to say you either get it or you don’t.

The Invisible Man belongs in that room; the room that I don’t have admittance to. Why? Because I’m sure that the way he writes is genius to the ones that get it. But to me on the outside looking in, without that awareness of the high art people, it just seems wildly uneven.

So, in this book, we are observing why a black man who started off wanting to succeed in white people’s world with the most dignity and striving possible eventually gets that it is all bullshit and turns away from it, seeing it for the fallacy that it is.

I get that! Good storyline! But from there, he veers wildly through the story, taking time for a speech, for instance, that goes for hours and he has us read it for hours! Every single world. Does it pertain to the story? Well, yeah. But not every word of it!

Here is where the people in that room shake their heads sadly at people like me. What can you do? they think. She just doesn’t get it.

At one point, he goes into this Toni Morrison-like soliloquy of ten pages or so of swirling images, not linked together, going nowhere. And I’m slogging through it, going, wait a minute, what?

Oh now see? the people say, suppressing a smile. She doesn’t get Morrison either. That explains a lot.

I will continue, realizing that the literary landscape of this type of writing is going to be hidden to me.

Yet I can’t sign off without reiterating my feeling that this isn’t for high schoolers. I have earned the right to say it just doesn’t make sense to me, after reading literally thousands of books in my life. But if even one high schooler would read this and say, I guess reading just isn’t for me, that would be an unforgivable crime.

DONE.

And so, over a month since the last entry, I am done.

Let me be clear. Nothing that is hard for me about this book is the slightest encumbrance to it being a masterpiece. It is that.

Ellison’s ability to create the most pungent and poignant images and scenes to make his point are unparalleled. Upon an amazing dark and pungent scene, he adds layers and layers and layers of images in every line. It is the reader’s challenge to stop and take them in. Though amazingly rendered, the urge to drop the gauntlet and skim is constant and almost impossible to ignore.

Having said that, this was one of my hardest reads, by far. The last hundred pages or so, I asked myself why. You gotta think of something when you are paused between all the images….

And I think that, maybe, it gets real simple. I’m just not this kind of reader. I don’t know if this it true, but in my imagination, there might be two purest camps involved in writing fiction. One is description and the other is pacing.

Of course, no one has both feet in either, but I’m pretty darned sold on pacing. I read about 10 extra Jack Reacher books more than were any good because the pacing made me feel so good. When Hemingway describes the sky in war time, after bombs have just gone off, as “yellow” that is pretty much all I need! The perfect amount of description! I yearn for simplicity and pace.

None of which takes a mite out of this opus. It is brilliant, it hatched all the Toni Morrisons that will come after it and it deserves to be read by the minds and hearts that find a home and a light in it.

I hope that Invisible Man continues to find its audience for years and decades to come. To question the plight of people of color in this weird nation we live in, it is all in there.

And now, I am deeply hoping for a book with some plain talking in it. Adios.

PS One additional kudo. Love that it’s called Invisible Man. I sort of hate titles that start with The.

THE HUNGER GAMES

• by Suzanne Collins
• [rated by PBS readers as #40]
• 374 pages

I know nothing about this book, other than its success the movie’s success. I like Jennifer Lawrence, who played the lead in the movie (which I haven’t seen, but I’m sure she is good in. She’s always good!). The print is bigger than some of the other books I was looking at and my eyes are tired these days. And it promised great pacing. I’d give up a lot of other stuff to have great pacing.

So, for these less stellar reasons, here we go!

ABOUT A THIRD OF THE WAY IN…

I find opening premises in books sometimes quite interesting. The Hunger Games uses this tried and true method. It goes like this: just state the preposterous premise up front, as fact, and then no one can refute it.

So. A post apocalyptic world where the bad guys reign. Why? How? We don’t know. And to make matters worse – the people are already starving and have nothing to count on in their lives – there is a ceremony every year where they take two kids from all 12 districts and they fight to the end. Last one still standing is a big winner. All the other 23 are dead, dead, dead.

Why does everyone accept this? Why is there no more horror involved? Beats me. It starts that way, so we have to accept it.

I’m less sure all the time what constitutes entertainment these days. But whatever. It’s not for me to say. The books and the movies have been wild successes. It seems sad that when we have continued to evolve and try to make life better for our offspring, that they find it entertaining and fun to go back to times where their choices are more limited and death lurks around every corner. Go figure.

Back anyway. The pacing is quick and I appreciate that a lot. And I do want to find out what happens. Suppose you can’t ask for a lot more than that to go on.

OVER HALFWAY THROUGH. THE NEXT DAY!

OK, here we just go! Fun, fun, fun!

One of the things that has to happen, when you start a book with such an absurd premise, is that you have to hit the ground running. And this sucker starts in a nationwide sprint and never lets up.

I got to a point tonight that I couldn’t put the book down. This girl can pace! The only thing that stopped me from reading the whole thing tonight is that I didn’t think I could quite get through it. And after I saw that, it became a case of when to hop off this train. The pacing is such that the feeling of hopping off was quite literal.

There is a nagging feeling in me that we are the worse off for enjoying a human sized video game, but hey. It isn’t as strong a feeling as wanting to know what happens next.

The lack of context keeps it from being high level literature. For instance, why do people put themselves through this? They are already starving with no will to live, so… And the emotions of the characters are almost blithe, when death could be around the corner. They all seem game, which translates to suicidal, which they aren’t. So none of that gives the story enough terra firma to be classic structure.

But this blog and this PBS contest aren’t about high literature. Thank God for that! They are about the greatest reads. And let me tell you, The Hunger Games unflinchingly qualifies to be in that bunch.

Whew! As I’ve said before, great pacing is a gift and I always feel so lucky to be in the throes of it.

DONE.

Wow. The pacing was amazing! I am especially amazed at how this bat-out-of-hell pacing doesn’t stop! And I mean does. not. stop!

At first, I thought the romance part was a little dippy. And then Collins uses it to practically force you to read the next one!

Will I? Not right away, but I just might.

Ms. Collins, all I can say is thanks for the ride!

• SIDDHARTHA
• by Hermann Hesse
• [rated by PBS readers as #63]
• 152 pages – whew! feels good!

Wow. I’m in a little culture shock, I am! Moving from The Stand to Siddhartha! But Siddhartha it is. I was led to it. As I think I mentioned before, this list has very little comedy in it, so I opted for soul instead. And I got it.

I remember reading it in high school but I vaguely remember that I wasn’t really taking it in that much. That was probably because it was forced on me and it followed Beowulf or something. I was always a voracious summer reader throughout my life, but I balked through having to read stuff I didn’t pick.

Well, I’m picking it now.

I also remember it having a rebirth in the 60s (originally written in 1951, the cover says). The reason was that people needed texts that said what this text is the most famous for – that one cannot learn from other people’s wisdom. One can only learn from direct experience of life’s lessons. Whoopee, said the new followers of the text. Time to hit the road.

I’m just starting it and reading almost every page twice. I’m wanting to get all of it. I’m also not sure I agree with the basis of this, but man, do I need a soul journey right now. So game on.

DONE….

…in something like three days! Wow. What a wonderful small book about the biggest themes of all.

Siddhartha is a fable of a man who had all the gifts to be successful and loved in his life, but he also had a restless heart. The tale follows his life as he tries every way to find the answers he is seeking. Are you closer to God by losing yourself? Are you closer by indulging?

Eventually he finds answers by a river. The answers that eventually all lead to Om, away from judgment, accepting all, not seeking out thoughts or simple answers.

It is a clever and deeply difficult story for an author – to write down words and thoughts that lead to the conclusion that thoughts and words mean nothing!

This insurmountable goal is beautifully wrought by Hermann Hesse, who has fashioned a masterpiece. Like Siddhartha’s river with all the answers, I will return to this book. after reading it now as an adult, again and again, I suspect. It seems of inestimable value to sit in the solutions that have no words and no plan.

Reading this, I found a new definition of a classic. From the first word, timelessness, a goal in this book, exists. This could be written at any point and be as good. The purity, the depth and the solace are there, between its covers – humming a tune that we can sing along with at any time.

• THE STAND
• by Stephen King
• rated by PBS readers as #24]
• 1153 pages – I kid you not.

I sort of remember when the idea of reading The Stand next came to me. I was talking with my hairdresser. Not so many stories start that way anymore, but they should!

By my calculations, I was due to go for another of the huge books. But which one? Veronica, my hairdresser, is younger than me, bless her heart. She is also into a lot of these books that I’ve never even thought of reading. She likes Stephen King, Wheel of Time, Narnia, Game of Thrones, bless her heart.

But I have got to read them, so I was bringing up some of the titles. When I mentioned The Stand, she said it was a really good read and one of King’s best.

Which brings me to a strange demographic. I believe I am in a very small group of people who read voraciously and have never read a Stephen King book. His legions of followers read his every opus, making every single book he has written into a bestseller. I’ve seen movies of his books and they have been good. But I sort of associate the tales he tells to always be like “Children of the Corn.”

I didn’t even pick this title but I felt pretty led to try it. Especially since the dog dying children’s book had taken me way too long. And Dean Koontz helped.

Koontz’s book, Watchers, was the first of his I had ever read and yet, reading it for this project, it strangely turned into one of the best books I’ve ever read. So it seemed to be time for me to meet his brother in the macabre, Stephen King, properly, on his field of play.

It may have been a mistake, I thought, when I realized I had the newly released uncut version of this thing, weighing in at 1153 pages. Even if I read 20 pages a day, it would take me almost 3 months to get through it!

But forty pages in, I’m starting to get it. He is already hooking me. Master storytellers don’t get called that for nothing.

If I’m drooling out of the side of my mouth involuntarily after another 1100 pages, you can remind me that I thought this was a good idea!

200 PAGES IN –

This is amazingly great storytelling. King does an astonishing thing here. The first part of the book – I mean, who knows where we’ll end up in a thousand or so pages! – is about a plague. Strangely, it is a rather fun thing to read about during Covid, since it is an almost immediate death sentence in this book. At least we don’t have that! But I’m rambling. This is beside the point.

The point is that King proves his mastery by introducing characters to you in rapid succession. In 200 pages, we have already met easily 60 recognizable characters. And with only one exception, you meet them, you like them, they cough once and then they die.

This is true horror. Who cares if someone dies if you aren’t connected to them? And King connects us to each of them, giving life details in a few pages equal to what another writer would give in discussing their lead character. And here is the miracle.

You like and feel connected to all of them.

Who does that? Who can do that? I have read countless books where I didn’t feel close to even the lead character! His ability to carve out complicated, distinct and likeable characters, only to off them in a couple of pages is master level dazzling.

This will take me a couple of months to write. But again, I am again being tugged by my young self, who used to LOVE reading a huge book. This blog experience is about many things but a simple one shows up over and over again. A book’s length is completely not the point. The point is – does it keep you interested? If it does, then bring it on.

I look forward to the adventure. Gone with the Wind, eat your heart out! I’m in Stephen King territory now!

A few side notes… This is the second largest book on my list, second only to the dreaded War & Peace and hundreds of pages longer than all but three books. He and Koontz are about 2/3 of all the books offered for sale at the airports. I of course realize that there’s a reason why they are that big.

His resume is great. He has written over 50 books and every one of them is a best seller. Mike drop! Can you even fucking imagine that?

About here, I’m thinking that King must have been in danger of being wrongly diagnosed as a special needs kid. as he naturally thinks so outside the box! The sheer imagination he has is startling! I’m at 200 of 1100 pages and the world is about to end. Where the hell we’re going from there, I have no idea!

ABOUT 500 PAGES IN…

I don’t care what anyone says, it is disheartening, to say the least, to be 500 pages into a book and not be halfway through it!

I said it was going to take me a few months to read almost 1200 pages, all the while secretly hoping that I’d beat that by a mile. Well, joke’s on me. It’s been over a month and I’m not even half done.

As to the meat of the book – perhaps a rather ghoulish metaphor to be uttered while reading a Stephen King book! – I’d have to say I’m no longer in love but I’m in.

The thing is – he invents this plague that kills, like 99% of the country. Probably the world, but we’re not really concerned with that. And that part, for several hundred pages, as I mentioned earlier is bravura storytelling. He runs through all these vignettes so quickly and specifically…

And now, we have gone through hundreds of pages of these smaller groups of people finding each other. He has left a lot of space between them, as would be accurate, but after the boffo beginning, a little dull.

The only book I have to compare it to is the Dean Koontz book, Watchers. But the brilliance of that is that as you are getting to know this sweet man, woman and dog, they don’t know what you know – that there is a monster that wants to kill them heading for them! So every second of quietude has impending menace to it. Like the people talking quietly in a room in Jurassic Park just minutes before a dinosaur swipes off the roof and has them for lunch. That kind of impending menace!

With this book, a few people are roaming around the country. FOR. BLOODY. EVER. And it’s not that there isn’t impending menace, but it isn’t ratcheted up to a Jaws kind of menace.

I mean, we are talking about the King of Horror here. So we know that people will get dismembered and heads will roll. But we may indeed have many more truck stops to read through before we get there. King has roughly another month of my life, with the length of this thing, before he has to get busy.

But, last word. He is considered by millions to be the best of the best and this is the one they chose as his best work. So I’m sure that my next installment will no doubt include a huge turnaround! God willing….

OVER HALF WAY…

I am around 660 pages in now. Over half way. Only 500 pages to go! I know. Not too exciting to any of you but it is progress of a sort.

I am oddly buoyed by the fact that I am going on a vacation in about three weeks. When I do that, I promise myself that I can let go of blog books on the trip if I want to. In Maine, I read those two little ones but that felt different.

The thing I know for damned sure is that I want to be rid of this thing by the time I go. It is too big a book, for one thing. I don’t want to take it. Plus, I’m going to Hawaii and this is a horror story. The idea of reading horror in Hawaii is roughly the equivalent of spitting in the wind.

So all of that is making me push to get through it. Just to show you how slowly I read, pushing it, in this case, is making sure I read 20 pages a day. 100 pages a day is easily possible if the going is good and I love it. But this isn’t that.

I think I’m feeling a little disappointed right now. The opening plague was electrifyingly fast and King’s ability to speed through that and make you care was a master class on amazing writing. Now I’m in the middle 500-page wasteland.

The people left in the country are all dreaming the same dreams as they wander and try to unite with the other survivors. There is a dark man who is clearly the devil incarnate that everyone dreams of. No one can see his face but they know that his eyes are red and he is evil. There is also an old black woman – 108 years old – that they dream of and she is the force of good.

So now we know that we are waiting around for the big confrontation between good and evil. Good is in Boulder; Bad is in Vegas. They are close.

There is nothing inherently wrong in this being a good versus evil story. But that doesn’t feel particularly new. The beginning felt revelatory and new. This doesn’t. And it is hard, stuck in there around 600 pages, to not want to scream – let’s get on with it!

But on I go. King surprised me up front and there is every chance that this will unfold in a surprising and fabulous way.  So I’m ready. And it isn’t dull. He is way too good for that.

One thing I want to add here – there is no writer alive that deserves more, based on his sheer success, to write books in whatever way he wants. If he wants this story to be 1200 pages, that is obviously his choice and something he deserves to do. But I really question the need for this length. Okay! That’s all for now!

800 PAGES IN.

Okay, I’m bored. Not a lot but officially. I know good has to fight evil. I get it. But why must it take over 500 pages to build up to it? And he isn’t really building up to it. He likes to shock. So it isn’t really building. The good guys are building their little city.

No doubt that they are going to get shocked. No doubt about it. But doesn’t shock work better if it comes a little quicker? For pity sakes! Kill them all and get it over with!

That isn’t exactly right. I do care about some of them. But I do actually have a real life as well! A life that can continue more fully once we have the official death count and this little gigantic opus is done.

920 PAGES IN.

You know, it’s interesting. As an interloper in this medium – horror, that is – I sometimes feel like this experience of reading The Stand raises as many questions as it solves.

Probably the most basic one is this. For a couple hundred pages, we witness two of the main characters’ descent into darkness and madness – for my money, a lovely combination.

And I question who is drawn to this backdrop? And I am suddenly sure that every interview, or at least every other interview with Stephen King addresses this. He is undoubtedly asked if he worries that he is making darkness more valid to all of the whack jobs out there?

I’m equally sure that King says something to the effect that he is an entertainer and a storyteller and he isn’t forcing anyone to read his dark landscapes; that whack jobs would be whack jobs with or without him.

But again, as this interloper, I have a hard time not convinced that a whack job, with a veritable lifetime’s

worth of Stephen King novels to move between, would not be emboldened by this.

At no point has this become unreadable and I will finish it, with respect for his skills. But why anyone is drawn to and luxuriates in this landscape is, truthfully, beyond me.

DONE.

I read the last hundred pages over an evening. It was the evening of my health scare – March 29^th. I have no idea when, in the midst of my fears, I chose to finish this.

No, that’s not true. I do know. This opus was the standing insurmountable thing for the last weeks, till today. So I felt like, in finishing it, I could feel like I had surmounted at least this.

I’ve said it all in the previous pages. I was more than engaged for almost 1200 pages. That makes King an amazing storyteller.

I’ll never forget this book.

But, for want of lightness and beauty in the world, I will try to forget it.

Does this list have any funny books on it? I kind of doubt it. If Vonnegut was the funniest, well, maybe I’ll read some other stuff for a while. This is a book to be gotten over. That is both its legacy and its curse.

Will I ever reach for another Stephen King book?

No. I already gave at the office.

PS I wrote this long enough back that we are out of Covid and my hairdresser has since become a real estate agent!

PPSS Since it’s been awhile, I will say that the story has stuck with me. That’s a lot.

WHERE THE RED FERN GROWS

• by Wilson Rawls
• [rated by PBS readers as #31]
• 282 pages

Here we go again with the surprises. Not huge, but still surprising.

This is an absolute classic book for young adults. They are obviously younger adults than when I was a young adult! There is a true dividing line. When I mention it to friends without kids, they have never heard of it and when I mention it to friends with kids, they all know it.

Here’s my question. And half way through, I haven’t answered it yet. Why is a book that is always mentioned with a warning to bring your hankie, that it is clearly a story of a boy with a dog and the dog dies, a book that is this beloved?

It is taking me years longer (and by years, I am of course greatly exaggerating!) to slog through this than it did to read Crime & Punishment.

Though it is a young adult book and those have been a truly happy surprise for me throughout this project, I am just not in any hurry to get to the dead dog! Now I know that the dog isn’t real and doesn’t really die! But who wants to get there?

Plus, I must admit that a little kid who dreams of nothing but getting two hounds and going coon hunting is not the universal theme of my dreams. I am trying to love it, but coon pelts just don’t do it for me.

I will say, however, that the scene of this little boy who lives in the country and comes into a town for the first time to pick up his dogs is one that I will always remember. Things like him looking into a store shop window and seeing his reflection for the first time. Wow. I will remember that.

Ah well. I must keep reading until the dog dies and then I can move into the next challenge!

DONE.

I can’t believe how much I put this book off. It took me longer to read a young adult book with under 300 pages than it took me to read Crime & Punishment!

It was a combination of two things. The first was the people who said bring your hanky when you read that one. Then that was echoed with a phrase early in the book where the boy, the main character and narrator, basically as much as says that one of his dogs dies to save him.

Then we have the heartwarming Atticus Finch-like family that is too Hallmark for Hallmark. Which is okay – that’s the book it is, no judgment – but the subject is dogs who kill raccoons for Billy, the little boy. Somehow the family values and the bloodlust make strange bedfellows for this girl.

But it got comical the way I put it off. I had a lot of appointments on zoom the last week and I only read it when I was at my desk and knew I had five minutes or less to read!

In the end, the dogs die and I can see how people remember the book for those images and that elemental story. The last part, after the death, the messages of God needed and wanted this and little kid just has to get it plus the little boy being scolded by his mom for crying on the second day. It was time for him to be a little man, that kind of thing. Hm.

But ultimately, this still fits in my “every book is a surprise” category. One of the most delightful discoveries for me in all this is the young adult books. I have loved them hugely. And now this one? Not so much.

I expect that I will soon forget a bunch of this book. The piles of skinned coon hides will drift back into my memory. That will be a good day!

Well-written and in my view, still not a huge recommend.

• CRIME and PUNISHMENT
• by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
• [rated by PBS readers as #64]
• 518 pages

Yep! You heard me! When I started this, the three books that made my head spin even thinking about reading were Crime & Punishment, War & Peace and Great Expectations. Fresh from the speedy and invigorating Martian, it seemed a good time to take this on.

First and foremost, I got really lucky by procuring the book with the latest translation by Oliver Ready. From the first, it was clear that Dostoyevsky was so specific in his descriptions that it would be a book needing updates. And I might be wrong in giving Ready too much credit. But I couldn’t help but feel like it read so effortlessly that he is deserving of some of that credit.

I count myself happily surprised by this great read. I resolved to read at least 20 pages of this a day so that I would stay on the train. But that wasn’t hard to do!

The writing is deeply mentally evocative. The descriptions feel current and easily grasped. Even the Russian names that scare the crap out of me didn’t come into play here, for the sole reason that there aren’t too many characters. Now War & Peace…uh oh…

The hardest thing reading it was looking at a page that was all one paragraph. Most of the pages were like that. Or, at least, way more than anything else I’ve ever read. I’m a paragraph babe. I like a lot of them. Life seems better when there are a lot of paragraphs. But once again, the writing carried me through.

It should be noted at this juncture that my grasp of Russian history, literature and how this story placed into both of them are non-existent.

For instance, I don’t really know, after all of these hours reading it, what the author was trying to say. A student in college flips out and starts to go mad. He doesn’t want to work, he doesn’t even want to eat. He ends up committing a double murder and spends the rest of the time trying to kill himself.

There’s some fun, huh? But it’s Russian so there you go. That’s the bugaboo with Russian literature…very little of it falls in the feel good section of the library.

The easy way to go along with this story is to imagine that his conscience wants him out of here from the sheer guilt alone. But that’s not accurate. He never mourns the killings; he just skips around in massive self-loathing.

Here’s where the guy’s worth as a discontented man, walking around waiting to be punished, is perhaps something that would make more sense to me if I knew Russian themes, etc. But I don’t and this is as far as I really want to go.

But I have to tell you. From writing the above paragraphs, I haven’t captured the fact that it is indeed searing writing and a book that I won’t soon forget. And I do care about these people. I don’t want to be anywhere near them, but I care!

And one more thing? I’m proud as punch of myself, that I actually read that bad boy!

What could possibly come after that?