Book # 93 - An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

Well I started out really enjoying An American Tragedy but man is it a long book... It is broken into three sections and the first two sections are great, but the third just drags. Two of the long chapters in that section basically just recap the previous events of the book. Anyway...

The book tells the story of Clyde Griffiths, a poor young man that was raised in a roving religious family. He decides to get a job, earns a bit of money for himself, falls in with the wrong crowd and becomes involved with the wrong woman. This leads to a tragic accident that causes Clyde to runaway. But that's just the lead up to the main story... eventually Clyde discovers that he has a rich uncle with a factory and by chance ends up meeting him. The uncle offers him a job and Clyde (still poor) finds that he isn't liked by the rich crowd or the working class (since they seem to think him rich because of his relation to his uncle). So of course Clyde does the one thing he's specifically told not to do... date a woman, Roberta, that he supervises at the factory. But then a woman in the rich crowd takes a shine to him and Clyde is thrilled because all he can think of is how much prettier and richer this second girl is. Well the complication comes in that he has now gotten the first woman pregnant and this being set in the 20's would be scandalous if anyone finds out. Now let me point out this is about half way through the book... so it is long but a lot happens. Clyde reacts to this news by ***SPOILERS FROM HERE ON OUT*** trying to find someway for the woman to have an abortion. At this he fails and convinces Roberta to leave town for a bit while he gets some money together and maybe he'll marry her but really he's pretty passive aggressive about it and just keeps hinting that it would be better if they just never saw each other again. At the very least Roberta agrees to give him a quick divorce after the child is born if they get married. But this won't work for Clyde because it'll ruin his chances with the rich girl and everyone will realize that he dated someone at the factory and he'll get fired. So yeah, Clyde is never a likable character. He's selfish and stupid. You just know that he'll do the wrong thing. He can't NOT do it. So he happens upon an article about a boat accident in which a couple died but the man's body was never recovered. See he can't even think of his own plan for murder either... So he figures he'll get Roberta out on a deserted lake, knock her out of the boat and fake his own death under an alias. Are there logical problems with this? Of course and Clyde sees none of them. So he gets her out there and has second thoughts mostly because he's a coward but he does then kind of accidentally/sort of on purpose (maybe) creates the very scenario he had planned on. And because Clyde is a dummy he pretty much gets caught right away. Now at this point we're maybe 70% through... which means maybe only 300 pages left...  So then the rest of the book follows his trial and subsequent time on death row. So yeah... lots of recap at the trial and Clyde convincing himself that he's really innocent. 

Overall I liked it... just the ending kept dragging on and on... A-

Authority (Southern Reach #2) by Jeff VanderMeer

You know what this book reminded me of... one of those episodes of Lost that take place off the island. At first you're excited to get some answers... and you do but they kind of take the thrill out of the initial mystery. And of course off the island things are also kind of weird for some reason and you get other mysteries that are slightly less interesting. This also ends on a cliff hanger so the feeling of it being incomplete lingers. Let's say I enjoyed it but not as much as the first one. B

The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

Since I'm slowly making my way through the whole Dark Tower series I figured I should probably read The Eyes of the Dragon too. And I started out really enjoying the book... the whole set up is fun - A king's evil magician conspires to kill the king and place the youngest prince in power as his puppet. But somehow I was led to believe that there would be a bit more fantasy quest type action that never really materializes. Like I kept expecting a dragon to show up and one never does. And even though it isn't really a long book it could have used a little bit of condensing. I'll go with a B+.

Past Crimes by Glen Erik Hamilton

Meh... C.  

Annihilation (Southern Reach #1) by Jeff VanderMeer

Well now I'll have to read the entire series... I enjoyed Annihilation but by the end there aren't really any answers to the tons of questions presented. So I'm giving the book an A- but almost want to give it an "incomplete". Hopefully the next book will shed some light on what's really going on in Area X.

Horror Book # 42 - The Bachman Books by Stephen King - Book 2: The Long Walk by Richard Bachman

To my great surprise, The Long Walk is one of the better Stephen King books I've read...  It is a bit hard to believe that he wrote most of it while in college. How has this book not been made into a movie yet? The premise is simple... sometime in the near future there is a competition where 100 teenage boys see who can walk the furthest. The catch... the competition is to the death. So that motivates them to walk pretty far. Maybe there aren't any specifically scary scenes but there is a growing sense of dread as the walkers all realize they've made a huge mistake. I'll give it an A. Also it mentions Alice in Wonderland.

Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier by Mark Frost

Well Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier is quite the turnaround from The Secret History of Twin Peaks. Whereas that first book was kind of a slog and provided almost no concrete answers to pretty much anything, The Final Dossier is a fast read that fills in some the narrative gaps from the television show (both the original and The Return). It is presented as a final report compiled by Agent Preston about Twin Peaks in the wake of the series finale. Some of the questions we gets answers to... How's Annie? Who was the young girl from New Mexico? Who was funding the glass box experiment? Whatever happened to Donna? To Audrey? The book also provides a convincing reason for the inconsistencies in the previous book concerning Norma's family. So it was fun to get these answers but in a sense part of the fun of Twin Peaks is not about getting answers but over-examining small details in a fruitless attempt at making sense of the mysterious and unanswerable. B+

Also it mentions One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.