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?

• THE MARTIAN
• by Andy Weir
• [rated by PBS readers as #61]
• 387 pages

50 PAGES IN.

I due need to confess that I have seen this book on screen and really enjoyed the film. So I do walk in knowing what happens. Or do I?

Two things strike me right off while starting into this book. The first is the high concept. High concept is a phrase used in Hollywood to describe a plot that you can tell in one sentence. You may not think that’s a great thing and you may be right. But it is revered beyond anything in LA. And this is the strongest high concept I’ve ever seen.

Describe it? An astronaut is left behind for dead on Mars. And he isn’t dead.

That’s it! That’s all you need! And it starts on PAGE ONE! I mean, c’mon. What more can you ask for? I’m in awe of the strength of the premise and the speed with which it starts up.

The other thing that is knocking me out is that this guy is writing in scientific terms about what he is doing to stay alive and I don’t understand any of it – but I’m fascinated. For a woman of a certain age with no patience, this fills me with amazement. Don’t know what he is doing, but I’m ready to hear more!

ABOUT HALFWAY – IN LESS THAN A WEEK!!

Can you begin to feel my giddyness at the chance to read something with this kind of speed under it? I am just plain old grateful to be carried like this!

Especially after months of reading Game of Thrones! As I mentioned in that review, I fully realize that to so many fans of his, Games was the alternate Universe in a book that they had been waiting for all their lives and I take nothing away from that. Nothing in that Universe is a thrill to me, which isn’t Martin’s fault.

And yet? The Martian pops up to be read and nothing in that world is in my fantasies or even interests! I am partially self-defined – at least on my radio show, where I have a husband and wife that are both scientists – by my utter lack of knowledge or curiosity about science.

But that doesn’t matter a wit because while I am reading this, I am at NASA and on Mars and I’m utterly swept up in it. Weir writes this thing like a roller coaster ride! So what am I saying there? Hm.

It is science come to life. I think every kid who is even remotely interested in science should read this. If I’m breathlessly interested, they are going to be breathlessly fascinated! And the ideas! Weir is pretty

endlessly gifted in writing this life.

Incidentally, it is very seldom that I would see a movie and then read the book. A friend asked me if I’m thinking about Matt Damon when I’m reading it.

I told her that I really like Matt Damon and he did a good job and was a logical and good pick for the role. But the interesting thing about how clearly Weir has written his main character is that he is different than Matt Damon. I love that, that his character is so strong that even after having seen a visual depiction of him, I am getting a different guy.

There are so many things to admire here.

LESS THAN A WEEK LATER – DONE!!

The Martian kicks some major ass!

You know, when you think about the title of this whole thing – the greatest reads – you conjure up the feelings of being involved in a whole secret advantage that is only a book away, that makes your heart beat a little happier and gives you those delicious feelings of – how fast can I get back there to read it some more?

When I have that, it feels old. Like the same feeling you had reading as a kid. It feels old and special. I had it while reading Ready Player One. And I had it reading The Martian. And now I’m hooked and I want it again!

This was superior story telling. I had seen the movie and besides, it’s a terrible story if he doesn’t survive so you know he will. But that actually didn’t matter. Weir, the author, had you so engrossed in the details that I almost had to stand up reading the last pages. I was that in suspense and that excited!

This is a great read and a masterful one. I repeat what I said from the beginning. The fact that I can’t possibly understand one scientific thing he’s doing but I’m completely engrossed and involved – is a hat trick that I couldn’t see him doing but he did it, over and over, and with the same velocity from the first page to the last! It never let down.

Readable, engrossing, a wild ride and a pleasure. Bravo!

It was, in fact, the sheer writing velocity of The Martian that inspired me to next try one of the three titles that scares me the most!

• GAME OF THRONES

• by George R. R. Martin
• [rated by PBS readers as #48]
• 704 pages

I have formulated a list within a list of the PBS reads for this. If you knew me, that list within a list thing wouldn’t surprise you a bit.

Anyway, it is a list of the real “bears” I have coming up on the remaining list – long slogs, hopefully fun but who the hell knows, if boring as all hell what will I do, etc. I will not list those now, because I’m hoping to mention them in hindsight after reading them, thrilled to have been proven wrong.

So I’m rambling. The upshot is that I need to read one of those long-winded bears every three books. I have no idea why I’m so sure of this but I know in my soul that if I’m left in the end with only bears, this project won’t happen. Well, it’ll happen, it’s happening as we speak, but it won’t finish. Is what it won’t do.

Fresh from two little teeny books, it was time for a bear. I picked four titles and Game of Thrones was the bear. I dove in.

The first thing I realized is that when you are over 50 years old, you lose your ability to remember a novel with 50 characters introduced in the first 50 pages. GONE!

Plus, these characters had names I couldn’t pronounce, which pretty much seals the deal for vaporizing characters in the mind of yours truly.

But the other post 50 thing you realize is that you just go on autopilot and say, I’ll ramble along and if the writing is good, they will become clearer to me.

There isn’t a doubt in the world that the writing is good. Martin has created an entire, cogent Universe, a place where geeks can mentally slide into and geek out beyond their wildest dreams.

Problem being that, while equal to any geek in weirdness, Thrones isn’t my particular geek fantasy direction, so the going got a bit hard. I eventually knew who was who but I kept forgetting who were in the same family. I mean, shit. I even forgot stuff like that when I was a therapist and I was paid to remember it!

But here, it isn’t just family members. It was who was married to who until he got killed by who and now owes his life or allegiance to who. Geez!

One irony here is that I had never been drawn to the TV show, but now I sort of am! The reason is that I am not entirely visual and so I’m imagining a small portion of this and it would be fun to see visually where it was taken.

And maybe if I watched it, I would finally know how to pronounce some of these names, for pity sakes!

I am about two thirds through it. For my blog book, I’ve been stuck on it for quite a long time.

But I realized the other day that there is a simple reason – simple but hard to overcome. It just isn’t a place that I long to return to. It is an amazing place, but it isn’t my thing.

But hey. 200 and some pages left. I’ll get there!

DONE! DAT DA DA DA DA DA DAT!!!

Being the Sherlocks that you are, I know you figured out that I’m done with it.

I have never, throughout a third of the project so far,  felt the sense of relief that I did finishing this one off.

That IS a little puzzling, now that I’m done, of course. I didn’t hate anything about it. To be brutally honest, I didn’t care anything about it either. The characters and their Universe are spectacularly captured in this tome.

As I believe I wrote earlier, this is the first and only thing I have read in this blog, or beyond that, that I want to see the TV equivalent for. The primary reason for this is to see how a crack design team takes my limited visual imagination and fills it all the way out.

Since I have no allegiance to anyone in this story (well, I did like one guy whose head is now on a spear on top of some bad guy’s castle somewhere), I couldn’t possibly experience some primal quibble over the casting.

But I must also add that one season will probably be enough. I’m basing that on all the open storylines after this first book and how I am not really anxious to know what happens to any of them.

One last time, I must say this. I COMPLETELY GET how this book went into millions of people’s hearts and lives.

It was what they were looking for and the author gave them a story and more than that. He gave them a whole world. Bless him for doing that. Truly.

We live in a world with people desperate for comradeship. Thank God whenever it presents itself.

The fact that I am not so into prehistoric battles and people wearing chains that don’t bathe very often doesn’t change the appeal. Because the appeal for this little reader wasn’t there. But I read it, and I’m proud of myself.

My hat is off to Martin, a writer of extraordinary creativity.

For my next book, I’ve labeled the really long books, approximately a quarter of the books I’ve got left. And though I didn’t want to go directly to one of those, I also didn’t want anything too easy.

So I picked something I’d already seen at the movies, but hadn’t read. I hope it will be surprising but, given my track record in this blog, how could it not?

THE ALCHEMIST

• by Paulo Coelho
• [rated by PBS readers as #70]
• 208 pages

I’m torn writing this right after putting the book down. But then again, I also fear that in a very short time, it will evaporate and swirl away, like all the sand contained in its pages.

I feel some twinges of guilt, as I packed two small fables for this trip to Maine that I’m on – Little Prince & Alchemist. There are at least 16 books coming up on the blog that come in around 1000 pages! What am I doing

reading two small sweet ones back to back?

But you know? I was searching for transcendence. And I got it!

While the Alchemist is all about pursuing your dreams, I was aware throughout the read that this was the first time I had lived with that theme that it didn’t bug me.

As the boy hero heads to the Pyramids to find his treasure, I headed to LA to find mine. I didn’t get it and got scarred up a whole lot. I don’t feel the satisfaction described here for having done it.

The boy meets a Muslim man who doesn’t travel to Mecca in his life because then he can always dream of its splendor and never be disappointed. This is treated as sad. But oddly enough, from my vantage point, it feels like a valid way to go!

Yet, The Alchemist is a lovely fable. It feels like an at least once in a lifetime read for every living soul. It is written with a beautiful multifaceted entrance point that would include any one and every one.

I do believe and depend on many things stated in here. I gain huge amounts in my life by basing things on signs, often spoken by a casual passer by. In many ways, my book series, Ruby, is based on signs.

The hero must be a young boy because of his openness and innocence. I believe that you lose the chance for any moment of greatness if you lose your openness and innocence. May we never lose that.

And if we do, a quick reread of The Alchemist will cure it!

• THE LITTLE PRINCE
• by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
• [rated by PBS readers as #36]
• 96 pages

Here’s a little funny great weird story for you guys. And I’m not even talking about the book!

When PBS announced the 100 greatest reads, in no particular order, the public was encouraged to vote for our favorites, over a matter of months. Our votes would then determine the final order of the 100.

I had about 10 of the titles that I routinely voted for. Among those ten, I routinely voted for The Little Prince.

It wasn’t until tonight, when I finished reading it, that I realize. I have never read it before.

Now, especially if you know me personally and care about me, you might become agitated at the thought of where my brain has gotten to. I assure you, there have been many a moment where I share that agitation. Man, have I ever shared it!

Or you could believe, as I do, that The Little Prince, like life, is a state of mind. And his royal highness is indeed a state of mind and a force of nature all rolled up in one!

You know, for all of its multitude of fans, accolades from critics, 8 gablillion translations, more books sold than McDonald’s filet of fish, His Tiny Majesty is really quite a quirky little fucker. Quirky and charming.

As for any little tale that reminds you of Prince, this one came before any of them. Tiny Highness was a fable of transcendence before that was even a thing. A genre…

To me, the core of what makes this wonderful and unbelievably lasting is what the author doesn’t say. It feels like he saw down the road and knew what he had to do.

Keep it light. So many themes go through this little tale – all touched upon with feather softness, giving them each to you to think over and then flying away, to not belabor

the point.

I feel like I know what this book is about and I have no idea what this book is about – at the same time. And I love that! I have a feeling the book loves that too. I’d love to discuss this with some friends and I almost never feel that way.

Not bad for a children’s book. Wait a minute, is it a children’s book?

It’s anything you want it to be. It transcends. It is a state of mind.

THE JOY LUCK CLUB

• by Amy Tan

• [rated by PBS readers as #42]

• 352 pages

What a nice, interesting read. Of course, I’m imagining that I have run out of descriptive terms about writing about 20 summaries ago! And if that is true, then please accept my apologies.

Dauntless, my run on sentences will continue to run on!

The first sensation I had starting this was how wonderful it was to have an interesting read again! But no, that’s not quite right. Before the interesting read, there was a preface by Amy Tan, tucked into this edition that celebrates the novel’s 30^th anniversary.

Amy’s note is delightful and newsy about parallels with her own mother and her surprise that this has resonated on this deep a level with the public. The intro is written well, her being a good writer and all, and really primes you for the book.

Then the book begins with the almost insanely inviting premise of four Chinese women who have played mah jong together for decades. There is a chart in the front to follow, with the four mothers and their four daughters.

Tan says in the beginning that many of the tales contained within are based on reality, but that doesn’t diminish her amazing storytelling. Both true and false stories can be interesting or boring. I’m sure we have all heard both kinds of them.

She then backs up from the initial real time story and moves to telling each woman’s story, separately. It feels as if she had pulled each one away from the game and put on the tape recorder.

About a third of the way in, it is these stories and the way she tells them that really have my admiration. Each woman’s story is immediately to the point and with the greatest bang for your buck, dealt out of the uniqueness of their experience, compared with white America of the time.

The telling of the stories is just magnificent! She constructs wonderful tales. Simple, elegant, unique.

Always feeling the need to represent for my demographic of “mature women who can’t remember shit,” I will point out that, though each character’s story is separate and wonderful, when it’s over, it’s over and the book moves on, leaving me to pretty much forget one story and one woman from the next. Then she goes into each daughter and the mother of that daughter figures in, obviously, but not with any throwback to the mother’s story! So I feel a little bit like I should be making a flow chart with each story on it. But I’m a third in and who knows how this whole thing could come together?

DONE.

Wow. What an amazing storyteller Amy Tan is. Every detail and image is hand picked to further her story in the richest, most dramatic way possible.

Last night, I was looking at a bunch of titles on Audible and came across Water For Elephants. And the message came through. The reason that book works so well is because it grabs you and puts you in a thorough, bright and unique life – the circus. You can forget everything about that book, but you’ll never forget that life.

Joy Luck Club is the same. There is a richness that will remain in every reader’s head long after putting the book away.

My prevailing thought in reading it was that I should never again complain that my mother didn’t understand me. It is scary the openly hostile way that these mothers are attempting to make sure their daughters get the trappings that they had wanted, often up to the expense of their souls.

The generational love is always present but with so much bleak history it is difficult to have or to hold. And that is what Tan wants – to understand the adversarial, passive / aggressive way that concern is shown and administered.

And yet, this is, in the end, not just a Chinese story.

When my parents divorced as I was growing up, I remember thinking that I was part of a new wave of kids who were the first to see that the pictures of success that our parents had thought were the things worth fighting for and getting, were no solution to their pain and estrangement at all.

And the younger generation of women here were just like me. The house, the family, the car, the picket fence – these things didn’t give our parents what they promised. So we were forced to live, looking for other things. This story highlights that divide and how it played onto the Chinese / American landscape.

I was still a bit confused by the jumps between families but I could tell that she was too good a writer to not end in a large, healing, Universal way. And she did, with a trip to China that healed.

A lovely book with amazing, gigantic yet tiny stories throughout. I’m so glad to have read it.

And I still want to learn how to play mah jong!