Dark Matter by Blake Crouch

It seems like whenever I read a new book with lots of great reviews that I always end up disappointed. Did I read the same book as all those people on goodreads that gave this five starts? Dark Matter does have a pretty good plot. It isn't the most intricate story but I'm sure some day it will make a passable movie. It passed the time and I didn't not enjoy reading it. But there isn't much that sticks out as being especially memorable. The writing is flat and style-less and most of the characters are one dimensional.

The plot follows this guy with a happy family life that gets kidnapped and wakes up in a reality that isn't what he knows. He quickly figures out that an alternate universe version of himself has created a box that allows one to travel to alternate realities. This alternate reality version of the guy isn't happy that he followed his career and didn't start a family so he basically switches places with another happier version of himself. It is a nice plot but there's too many plot holes and dead ends to make it a classic. It was enjoyable but forgettable. B

Horror Book # 13 - Misery by Stephen King

So only twenty six years after purchasing a paperback copy of Misery I finally got around to reading it. Progress has been made on my stack of King novels that I purchased as a teenager for the first time in decades! Since I've seen the movie the book didn't have too many surprises except that I think the whole foot hobbling thing is more gruesome in the novel. By reading it well after its release I was able to read about some of the influences on King while writing it (his increasing drug dependence and feelings that his fans only wanted horror novels) and that made the story a bit deeper. As in most books about a writer this one mentioned a lot of list book : The Count of Monte Cristo, The Lord of the Flies, The Lord of the Rings, Alice in Wonderland, Tess of the D'Urbervilles and The Sound and the Fury. This is one of his better works... A-.

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

The first book in The Dark Tower series is kind of weird and has a bit of a dreamlike quality to it. The world the gunslinger finds himself is similar to our own in a few ways but is also completely different. The second book, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three picks up right after the end of the first book and has Roland the gunslinger finding different portals in his world that open up into our reality (and to the usual Stephen King type characters). I enjoyed it because there's really no way to predict what is coming and I had no clue what would happen. I just hope that the future volumes explain the how/why those magic doors just appear... Also I find it kinda funny that this book does nothing to answer the huge questions of why Roland is going to the Dark Tower in the first place and what exactly the Dark Tower is. By the end he pretty much makes no progress at all. Anyway, I guess I'll say it is an A-. Also, somewhat unexpectedly, the book mentions Gone with the Wind.

Horror Book # 10 - I Am Legend Richard Matheson

Stephen King is quoted somewhere as being highly influenced by Richard Matheson. After reading the short stories that are included in this collection with I Am Legend I can see that there is some similarity in their styles. The main story in the collection, I Am Legend, tells the story of the seemingly last man on Earth after everyone else has been turned into vampires. It has been turned into at least three movies I've seen and none of them are even close to being as good as the book. There's a nice twist at the end and I enjoyed rereading it.  As for the short stories, most of them are pretty good too... I think at least one of them was filmed as a Twilight Zone episode. A.-

Horror Book # 17 - Psycho by Robert Bloch

You can't really read Psycho without constantly comparing it to the film version. For the most part the movie didn't really change too much. Except for the physical description of some characters (Hitchcock changed the female characters to blondes of course and Norman is described as a chubby forty year old), some expansion of Mary/Marion's theft and flight and the delayed introduction of Norman Bates, the film sticks pretty closely to what Bloch created. The film is of course a masterpiece and full of suspenseful sequences... while the book isn't quite as thrilling. It just lacks the tension Hitchcock gave the film... but still I enjoyed it. Let's say a B+. 

Mystery Book # 38 - The Hot Rock by Donald E. Westlake

So I was at the big central library downtown and I really wanted to check out a specific horror book. But when I found it I discovered that for some reason it was listed as a "reference" book and wasn't available for checkout. At this point I wanted to find something to checkout to have something to show for the effort of going downtown... but they didn't have any of the other horror books I was looking for either... and then time started running out because if I was in the parking garage for more than an hour I'd have to pay an extra four bucks parking! So I took a quick look at my mystery reading list and tried to find something that I figured would be a good short read... Why short? Because a) I have a few other books on hold and want to be able to get to them as soon as they are available and b) for some reason I gave myself a Goodreads reading challenge and even though I know no one else cares, I feel like I have to meet that goal. And I figured I'd read enough long books this year to justify reading something really short... So having checked it out I figured I'd have to read that copy otherwise why did I check it out... but then I wanted to read the book in bed late at night and my daughter is still sleeping in the room with us and I don't want to be the one to wake up a baby with my reading light so I checked if the LAPL had a copy available for the Kindle and they did. So I didn't even read the copy I got from the downtown library. Anyway... So that's how I got around to reading The Hot Rock by Donald Westlake.

About the book... I enjoyed it but I'm sure I'll totally forget about it quickly. Fun in a disposable way. The book is the first in Westlake's Dortmunder series and follows him as he and his crew try and steal a valuable gem. However due to unforeseen circumstances something always goes wrong and they end up having to pull six different heists to steal the gem. Light and fun, B.

The Gunslinger - The Dark Tower I - by Stephen King

Maybe five or six years ago I read the original version of The Gunslinger. When thinking about re-reading it (with the intention that I'd read the whole series), I realized that I barely remembered anything about it. This time I read the revised and expanded version and I enjoyed it as if I had never read it before. The whole book has a very dreamlike quality to it which maybe explains why it had evaporated from my memory. Plus it doesn't help that basically the gunslinger makes very little progress in his quest or that it is never really explained why he's trying to get to the dark tower in the first place.

The book follows Roland Deschain as he pursues "the man in black" across the desert in a weird fantasy world that is sort of like something out of an old Western. Roland meets different people along the way and falls into different types of traps that "the man in black" has left in his way. I enjoyed the individual scenarios that Roland encounters but they don't really add up to much as a whole. Basically it seems like the whole thing is just a build up for the next book. I'll give it a B+.