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.

Horror Book # 34 - The Fog by James Herbert

Yeah I'm not sure if The Fog really belongs in this top 50 list... It wasn't bad but besides for a handful of scenes it wasn't very memorable. And the main character isn't that well drawn out. Basically the story is that a mysterious fog gets unleashed on London that causes people to go crazy. The more I think about it the less I can recommend it when there's so much better stuff out there. One positive note - I got the electronic version through the LAPL after I did the whole "suggest this book to your library" thing. So they actually do look at user suggestions... good for them. B-