What book are you reading tonight?

I just finished second book of Dune. I wasn’t too fond of the first book but second one was great, really got me hooked.

Interesting. I skipped Dune after the first book, which was not that good.

Could even finish the first volume, never tried the second. I haven’t seen the Lynch movie either.


You’re reading the good stuff, Mickey. I don’t care too much about Camus, but Dostoïevski is my favorite author, along with Nabokov, Gogol, Stendhal, Flannery O’Connor, Italo Svevo, Natalia Ginzburg and (Dutch author) Gerard Reve.

Btw: only talking about fiction now.

Always loved Camus though, but I agree with you Sherp re: Dostoyevsky, Stendhal, Gogol etc. (SPOILER) Yet I’ve always been disappointed by the religious redemption at the end of Crime and Punishment of Raskolnikov - it rings hollow for me, even if it fits into Dostoyevsky’s strong Christian views that influenced his work.

You’re right about that, John: he asks the right questions, but often his answers are wrong

Love the show, and now that the shows have apparently largely caught up with the books, I figured I’d be okay to start on at least the first two or three of them without ruining the show for myself.

I’m actually reading short stories by Poe right now and on account of their being stylistically quite dense (it takes some time to get through them), I chose to read something easier for a change, hence I picked my first Camus - The Outsider. I love it. I’d say it’s quite amusing, refreshing, almost frivolous and somewhat reminiscent of Sartre’s Nausea which I still find slightly superior to The Outsider (I’ve yet to read about 40 pages of The Outsider at the moment). I overlooked The Plague by Camus, which was one of my course books in high school, as I was reading The Ruined Map by Abe at that time. However, upon reading The Outsider, I’m bound to read the opus sooner or later.

Dostoyevsky is excellent as long as he doesn’t start rambling on about his utopian vision of Christian Russia where there is no social disparity, everyone is jubilant and so on. The Brothers Karamazov was an exquisite read though - it has some truly enthralling passages pertaining to the nature of beauty and justice and one might discern that it exerted a smashingly conspicuous formative impact on Kafka who greatly venerated the Dostoyevsky’s work. I prefer The Karamazov Brothers to Crime and Punishment - far more multifaceted and enjoyable in my view.

I’m genuinely joyous at the prospect of upcoming summer holidays - I’ll be finally able to read some stuff by Mishima, Endo, Gide, Sartre, Greene and Joyce. I may read something by Dostoyevsky too.

I finally finished Stephen King’s 11/22/63. It only took me three years! What stopped the momentum for me was the long middle section dealing with the surveillance of Lee Harvey Oswald. It seemed excruciatingly long, to the point I put the book down, and over the years would occasionally read a page or two, then forget about it again. It’s not uncommon for King to become bogged down and be more wordy on a subject than seems necessary. I finally decided to force myself through that part out of determination to find out how the book ends up. Luckily, I have a good memory, so I was able to pick up where I left off without needing to refamiliarize myself with the characters, places, sequence of events, etc. As it turns out, once the story began moving again, I began to feel that 11/22/63 is one of King’s best efforts.

I will say that , IMO, Stephen King excels at his human villains much better than his monsters and other supernatural antagonists. I feel that, although many of King’s monsters/supernatural villains start off with a seemingly overwhelming advantage over the protagonists, they often seem to fizzle out and show glaring weaknesses at the end. By contrast, King’s human villains seem far more durable, tenacious and dangerous. Surprisingly, I would also include his version of Lee Harvey Oswald in that latter category as well.

In contrast to 11/22/63, I also got From a Buick 8 when it was first published, what, 12 years ago? I have never been able to finish that one, and haven’t any real plans to. I have read most of King’s books, except for the Dark Tower series, and From a Buick 8 is the only one that stopped me cold, without even any curiosity for how it ends up.

Started Henry Thoreau’s Walden: Life in the Woods yesterday. It’s amazing how a book written over 150 years ago can be so current this day, actually maybe even more now.

I just finished Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. I must say, I enjoyed it quite a bit. About a psycho who used a Mercedes to run down people at a job fair, who begins taunting the retired detective who never solved the case. The story moves fairly briskly, which is a bit unusual for most Stephen King novels, and the characters are interesting. Some good twists and turns, too. It’s a straight-up crime story, with no (or mostly no) supernatural angles.

I’m going to guess that the Mr. Mercedes story occurs apart from ‘The Stephen King Universe’ that most of his other characters populate, because near the beginning, two Stephen King-adapted movies are referenced; It, and Christine. Obviously, in King’s ‘Universe’, they would have been actual occurrences, not popular movies.

I haven’t read Walden yet, but I’ve found Civil Disobedience a great read.

Revival, by Stephen King

A Stephen King horror novel that takes a long time to get to the horror. Lately, King has been especially prolific. I would rate this as pretty good. Although it may leave you feeling a bit depressed.

[quote=“Filmlovr1, post:597, topic:1204”]Revival, by Stephen King

A Stephen King horror novel that takes a long time to get to the horror… I would rate this as pretty good.[/quote]

I read this over the weekend. I too thought it was pretty good, not one of his greats by any means. TBH I was a little disappointed since I’d read that it was Stephen King operating in Lovecraft territory and I naively just assumed that it would be much more Lovecraftian than it was in the end, and it was that aspect of Revival that had really piqued my interest beyond my usual (considerable) interest in any of Mr. King’s releases.

I finished “A Dollar to Die For” last weekend and wrote a review on my blog.