- What I’m listening to:
- Stephen King‘s Revival: A Novel
- When I started:
- Monday
- How Much I’ve Listened:
- 5 of the 14 hours
- What I’m liking:
- I’ve been a Stephen King fan for years, so when I wanted to get something which would make me “want to know what happens next and keep me engaged, so that I might spend more time running,” I went to the old stand-by. The main character in this novel is a musician1, and King absolutely nails the adrenaline rush that is performing in front of a crowd. Chrome Roses is a great name for a band. There is plenty of sex (the beginning of the book cover’s the main character’s formative years as a teenage boy in a rock band) without sex actually becoming the story. His descriptions of relationships between suitor and suitee’s parents took me back to my own wooing days.
- What I’m not liking:
- Addiction is a common theme in King’s work. Right now, it’s obvious that the main, likable character is about to have some sort of supernatural run-in which is going to be made worse because of his reliance on heroin. It seems that we’re going into a “character gets clean and that allows the character to overcome the big bad” he managed to eloquently in Doctor Sleep – obviously, I don’t know, for sure, that it’s going to happen, but it certainly feels like I’m being driven down that same road. Additionally, I’m really liking the main character – but this is Stephen King, so I’m waiting for some kind of gut punch where he’s chased by some paranormal baddie & I’ll want to put my phone in the freezer.
- What’s Up Next?
- Something from this list:
- JD Barker’s The Fourth Monkey
- Ashley Posten’s Geekerella
- Mark Manson’s The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck
- Neil Degrasse Tyson’s Astrophysics for People in a Hurry
1 Many don’t know this, but Stephen King is actually an accomplished musician – I saw him, live, in Washington DC about… geez, maybe 20 years ago. He was in a band named the Rock Bottom Remainders with a bunch of other author/musicians, headlined by Dave Barry. I thought I had written about buying him a beer, but my google-fu isn’t up to the task, or I’m inventing the memory.
I have only read one King book (the Green Mike), but I stopped reading Dean Koontz after a few years because I started to catch the pattern. It started to feel formulaic. But maybe it has to be to produce that volume of work.
I am reading The Adventures of Awkward Black Girl by Issa Rae. Not as funny as advertised. Not bad, just not laugh out loud funny. Next up: Mating in Captivity (a marriage/relationship book)
Obv I meant green mile.
I really liked the Green Mile – started it at the beginning of the last NYC Marathon (on Audiobook, obviously). For my fear of formulaic plots . . . well, yeah, maybe you’re right & the formula just works on me. There is something about King which makes me keep coming back.
I’ve heard of Mating in Captivity — let me know what you think.