Book # 67 - Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

It seemed like it took me forever to get through Vanity Fair. I started out really enjoying it. The first third was funny and charming... and all of the plot lines were satisfactorily resolved in the last third... but the middle was a bit of a slog. Just a few too many characters.  Still overall I enjoyed it.

The story follows two friends, Rebecca Sharp and Amelia Sedley, as they leave school and begin to make their way into society. Rebecca doesn't have any family or money and isn't the most scrupulous person in getting ahead. Amelia however is the total opposite and is probably way too nice to everyone. Both find husbands and have a child but the circumstances of each are complete opposite. At the mid-point of the story we find one of them at the height of society and the other barely managing to survive... and of course by the end their roles are reversed. It was a nice read but could have just been a tad shorter. A-

Horror Book # 50 - The Bachman Books by Stephen King - Book 1: Rage by Richard Bachman

Way back in the early 90's I went through a bit of a Stephen King phase... or so I thought. Looking back on it now I realize that I only completely finished two of his books at that time. Somehow though I owned maybe ten King books. I think it was maybe 200 pages into The Stand that I just got too busy with other stuff and wouldn't return to King for awhile. Anyway... a couple weeks ago I was reading an article about King that made me want to start in on his Dark Tower series. Plus I watched a new movie based on one of his books, Cell, that got me into looking at his entire bibliography. So then I found a good bunch of my old high school copies that I never read, dusted them off, and added them to my to-be-read shelf. But then I read that one of this books, Rage, was actually out of print. Of course this was one that I didn't own and it being the one book of his that is out of print because of the "sensitive nature" of what it is about only made me want to read it even more. So then I tracked down a used copy of The Bachman Books which contains Rage. So once again I was adding Stephen King books to my to-be-read shelf. Plus I put a library hold on a Kindle copy of the first Dark Tower. So maybe I'll be reading a bunch of Stephen King in the future.... But I also discovered over the last two months that being a parent of a newborn is pretty much all consuming and that finding time to sit down and read for more than two minutes at a time doesn't happen very often.

I think I read somewhere that King wrote the first draft of Rage as a teenager and it is one of his earliest publications. And that's what it reads like... but I mean that in a good way. It feels like a young King channeling his teenage angst into a pretty intense story with a good deal of emotion. Unlike some of his later work this feels like he's really writing from the heart. The story is pretty simple... one day a high school kid snaps, kills a couple of teachers, and takes his class hostage. Apparently there have been a few kids that have read this book and did exactly that... so that's why it is no longer available. I can understand why King would remove the book, it probably weighs on him the influence the book has had on some kids. Still, I enjoyed the book and I'll give it an A-.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff

After seeing Lovecraft Country mentioned a few times in magazines and blogs I figured it sounded interesting and that I should give it a chance. Basically it was advertised as Lovecraftian type horror against the backdrop of 1950's Jim Crow laws... so the characters here have to deal with both weird horror and racism. The book is constructed as several connected episodes of weird events that happen to an African-American family. It starts off promisingly with a story that is a nod to The Shadow over Innsmouth. The rest of the stories were pretty good but nowhere near as weird as something Lovecraft would come up with. Also I'm not sure if it was best that all the stories connected. They could have worked individually and the connecting story line about a wizard trying to gain power over other wizarding lodges was probably the least interesting aspect of the book. And no mentions of Cthulhu either. I guess I'll say it is a B.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, Jack Thorne

I'm not sure yet what to make of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child...  Sure I enjoyed it but it doesn't compare well versus the novels. First off Harry Potter takes a back seat for most of the story... and it turns out that he's a relatively boring adult. A bit of a let down. The story is okay but seems to be in service of finding ways to use characters that have already died (Snape, Cedric Diggory, Voldemort) instead of creating new ones. Just too much of it depends on revisiting scenes from the books. I'll say it gets a B.

Mystery Book # 45 - I, the Jury by Mickey Spillane

I didn't know much about the Mike Hammer series of books by Mickey Spillane beyond having seen the film Kiss Me Deadly (which I'd highly recommend).  The first book in the series, I, the Jury, introduces us to super macho private detective Mike Hammer. Pretty much everything you need to know about him is right there in his name. He literally has the perfect name for his personality. It is so on the nose that it is kind of funny... and that also sums up the book. Basically it takes a Chandler type Marlowe story and makes it even pulpier with more violence and sex. By no means great literature but still kind of fun in a silly non-thinking way. A-

Sci-Fi Book # 6 - The Time Machine by H.G. Wells

Looking at H.G. Wells' bibliography he really started out with a bang... The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, War of the Worlds, Island of Dr. Moreau ... all within four years! The guy was on fire... but then the list continues with like fifty more books I've never heard of and no one ever discusses. I'm kinda curious about those other books... are they any good? Are they even available? Anyway...

The Time Machine is a fun short read. The story is pretty simple... a guy builds a time machine and travels to the distant future and finds that humans have evolved into two separate species - the Eloi and the Morlocks. He makes friends with the Eloi, the Morlocks hide his machine, he eventually gets it back and returns home only to find that most of his friends don't really believe his story.  Total classic: A

End of Watch by Stephen King

What a disappointment... The first two books in this series were pretty good. End of Watch not so much. Grade C . Also it mentions Frankenstein.