Book Review: You Like it Darker

   By Stephen King

• Pub Date: 2024

• Genre: Short Stories

• Where I bought this book: Barnes & Nobel, Florence, Ky. 

• Why I bought this book: If you have to ask ...  

 *****

  

   Random thoughts that arose while reading King's latest collection. (May contain spoilers, but I tried to make them non-specific.)

    It's a collection of stories by Stephen King, so tropes will abound. But aliens? Aliens who save us? 

    Indeed, some of King's worst flaws -- overwriting, repetition, and echoes of and references to  previous tales -- abound and get a little tiresome after a while. An editor could fix that. Perhaps listen to her?

    Geography nitpick. If you live in Upper Manhattan, you cannot walk nine blocks to Central Park. 

    Too many of the stories centered around the fears and meanderings of an old white guy. (OK, some were about middle-aged white guys.)  Rattlesnakes, the sequel to Cujo, highlighted this trend. It went on and on and on and on -- and on and on -- sort of like the original. 

    The bizarre "I had a dream" alibi in the midst of a police procedural led by a bizarre police detective was, well, quite bizarre.

   Starting a story about a man named Finn (should have been Fionn) with a nod to the Pogues is brilliant.

     Laurie -- an oddly overly detailed story about an old man getting a dog -- may be the worst King story ever written. And yes, I believe I have read them all.  

     The final two stories, Dreamers and The Answer Man, are easily the best of the lot. They bumped the number of stars to the midpoint. 

    The title made little sense for this collection. I didn't find any of the stories particularly dark. King has written quite a few, but these don't measure up.

Book Review: Unfamiliar Fishes

 By Sarah Vowell

• Pub Date: 2011

• Where I bought this book: Last Exit Books, Kent, Ohio 

• Why I bought this book: I read a previous book by the same author and liked her writing style

*****

    It's the final decade of the 19th Century, and the United States is feeling mighty smug about itself.

    That whole Manifest Destiny thing is working out pretty well. The country covers the area between Canada and Mexico, from sea to shining sea, with just a few areas yet to be consolidated into several states. So it's time to look further out, build up its sea power with a big ole navy and widespread naval bases, and start becoming a world power.

    Look to the west. There's lots of oceans and countries to  acquire, starting with the Sandwich Islands. Indeed, it even has a foothold in those lands, called Hawaii by the natives, and it's sure the monarchy will enjoy being part of the Greatest Country on Earth. (r) If the islanders kick up a fuss, it can always remind Queen Liliuokalani what happened to King George III's forces back in 1781 at the Battle of Yorktown.

    And the United States had been muddling around in Hawaii since 1820, when a couple of New Englanders set out to Christianize the population and stuck around, so they and their descendants could change the natives' culture and overthrow their queen.

    It's quite an agenda, and when you read the history books, you realize that before the dawn of the 20th Century, the United States had invaded the Philippines in a war with Spain that started with a bombing (or maybe just an explosion?) in Cuba. It had taken colonies in the Caribbean, Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines. It was well on its way to becoming a world power.

    Vowell sees 1898 as the pivot-point of that domination, when all of the United States' meddling and wannabe imperialism came together. Looking back at the islands' history and culture, its geography and politics, she gives a broad oversight about what happened in the 70-odd years the United States nosed around and took control.

    With her trademark caustic wit and satirical asides, she tells about how the Pilgrims and Puritans bring what they see as their superior culture -- particularly their religion -- to a land of lost souls. It's timely reading now, and you can learn how the recent firestorms and deaths are tied to the changes they brought to Hawaii's traditional culture.

Just as the sugar plantations changed the islands' ethnic makeup, they also profoundly altered the physical landscape. We were talking about Maui's central plain before the advent of commercial agriculture. (Gaylord Kubota, director of the Sugar Museum on Maui) says, "Isabella Bird, a traveler in the 1870s, described central Maui as a veritable Sahara in miniature. There were these clouds of sand and dust. That's what central Maui looked like before. . . . (Kubota shows Vowell a photo and points out) a visible line where the irrigated land stops. There the greenery ends, and the desert, complete with cactus, begins.

    The dry climate of the island was covered over. It helped feed the fire of the past month.

Book Review: Full Dark, No Stars

 By Stephen King

• Pub Date: 2010 

• Where I bought this book: I really do not remember 

• Why I bought this book: I buy every King book as it comes out.

********

    So. I was browsing in my local Barnes & Noble store this past week, and stopped by the horror section to see if they had a copy of A Face in the Crowd, a digital book he wrote a while back with Stewart O'Nan. 

    Instead, I came across a copy of 1922, a thin volume about a farmer who conspired to kill his wife in that year. I looked through it and did not recognize the synopsis. Looking further, I noticed it was originally published in 2010 with three other tales in the Full Dark, No Stars collection. I knew I had that copy at home.

    So I grabbed it and started reading the first story, 1922. Still did not recognize it. But I liked it, though it was a bit creepy. The second story, Big Driver, about a serial rapist, I also did not find familiar.

    Still, I was sure I had read this collection before, even if it was more than 15 years ago.

    But apparently, I had not. The next two stories, Fair Extension and A Good Marriage, also seemed new to me.

    I could have forgotten all of them, although I have often caught glimpses of King's past writing in his new works, But in these, nothing. So maybe I had bought the book and put it aside, then on the shelf, without even reading it. But my Goodreads page shows I read it from Nov. 25, 2010 -- Thanksgiving Day! -- to Nov. 27, 2010, about three weeks after it came out. So maybe I lied, or maybe I've read so much King my hippocampus cannot keep them all sorted out.

    *Shrug* I suppose I'll never knew.

    But I'm glad I have now read it (or read it again). The stories were good, if a bit unsettling, even for King.