The Talisman (Book Review)

It’s always interesting when you try and try to read a book, and you can’t get into it, and then either the time is right or you switch mediums and it just works. Sometimes a book needs to be listened to, or it must be read with physical pages to work for me. I can’t always explain it, but that’s what happened here with The Talisman. On my chronological Stephen King read-through, I just could not get into it, and I tried four or five times. So, a few years later, I decided to try it as an audiobook, and it just clicked, and I barreled through it in just a couple of weeks.

Jack Sawyer must travel across the country, sometimes in a parallel world and sometimes in our awful one, trying to read the west coast to retrieve an object of immense power that will heal his mother’s illness. This is engrossing, disturbing, heartbreaking, disgusting, and beautiful.

As for any Stephen King novel (and this is co-written with Peter Straub), I can’t really recommend it to anyone younger due to content issues—I discovered him in college—but this is a coming-of-age tale, one of brutality and loneliness, of a calling and responsibility, of purpose and growth, of friendship and loss and love. It’s at times poignant and beautiful and a page later filled with wretched people doing despicable things. It’s both fantastic and all too realistic. I enjoyed my journey with Jack and Wolf and Richard, and I’m curious how there could be a sequel.

My 2022 Reading Year

As always, my year is filled with reading, and as always, I both plan ahead for the year (particularly for the summer, when I’m not necessarily working as much) and ignore my plan, going with my reading feelings at the time. I’ve always got reading goals (for example, I’d like to complete a few unfinished series this year), but I also get in reading moods, as we all do, and go down a genre hole. I’m slowly reading through all of Stephen King’s novels–the good and the bad–and I reread a lot for some comfort, during the parts of year when life and my mind are full. Essentially, this means that my reading habits are rather eclectic and often unquenchable.

“Books are a uniquely portable magic”

Stephen King

Eventually, I’ll write my book-length treatise on why I read, the meaning of books to me and my life, but suffice it to say now, I turn to books and stories (of nearly all types) whenever I have down time not merely as a means of escape (for Professor Tolkien wouldn’t approve), but as a means of engaging with the human condition, asking the big questions we all do: why am I here? why do I do what I do? I find the Truth in Scripture, but I learn to apply that Truth through the hypotheticals of the stories I read and watch and listen to.

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.”

Diane Duane

I eat a lot of potato chips.

Here are my Top First-time Reads of 2022 (in no particular order):

• Artificial Condition and Rogue Protocol – novellas 2 & 3 of The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. I pick these books up when I just don’t know what to read next, because they’re just scathingly fun science fiction romps.
• The Ruins of Gorlan, The Burning Bridge, The Icebound Land, The Battle for Skandia – the first four novels of a series I’ve been meaning to read for years: the Ranger’s Apprentice books by John Flanagan. It’s a long series with a number of spinoffs. I’m just starting out, but I read the first four in quick succession during my Christmas break and could pick them back up at any time.
• Here There Be Gerblins, Murder on the Rockport Limited, Petals to the Metal – the graphic novel adaptations of The Adventure Zone podcast by Clint McElroy, Griffin McElroy, Justin McElroy, Travis McElroy, and Carey Pietsch. If you haven’t listened to this podcast, do yourself a favor and start now. It’s NSFW, but it’s wholesome, starting out as just a D&D podcast that turns into an emotionally poignant story as it progresses.
• Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn – the first four novels of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. I love good historical fiction, and there’s just about nothing more intricate and detailed than this series. Is it melodramatic? Absolutely. Are there scenes to skip through? Yes. But it’s just so darned readable and beautifully written and plotted that the skipping or reading through my fingers is worth it.
• Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark. So, it seems like I can read a novel that’s not part of a series, I suppose! That said, I read Clark’s Dead Djinn novellas (I meant to get the novel in the series this year, but alas…) and loved them, so I picked up Ring Shout which is about a KKK-hunting group in 1915 Georgia, because the KKK is really made up of demons, spreading their hate throughout the South. It’s funny, haunting, and beautifully cathartic.
• Open Season and Savage Run – the first two books in the Joe Pickett series by C.J. Box. I love good popcorn adventure-mystery thrillers, particularly in the western vein, and these are just that: simply enjoyable.
• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is on a lot of top books of 2022. I don’t generally get to new books–there are too many old ones out there on my to-read list! This is right up my alley in almost every way. It’s part Ready Player One and part Social Network, with beautiful prose and deeply-drawn characters. My only critique is that it’s a touch overlong, but it’s engrossing and filled with imagination.
• Rabbits by Terry Miles. Another 2022 book—a rarity for me. This is based on a podcast of the same name from the Public Radio Alliance—listen to all of their shows! This is also like Ready Player One meets The Da Vinci Code, with conspiracies and game-oriented geekdom abounding.
• The Waste Lands by Stephen King. Actually being three books into King’s Dark Tower series is a big deal for me. While I love King, the good or the bad, I have had the most difficult time getting into his landmark fantasy series. Finally, however, this worked for me. It took three books for the group to get together, but now Roland and his company are headed toward the Dark Tower and that man in black.
• From a Buick 8 by Stephen King. I read this in nearly one sitting. I expected Christine, because it’s a car novel, which this is not, but it’s a fun, dark read about a potentially alien, other-dimensional car.
• Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King. An excellent interwoven “short” fiction collection from King—the two novellas and the final story are phenomenal, while the 3rd and 4th stories are powerful and tragic. I couldn’t put it down!

Book Review: Misery by Stephen King

This is a flawless, phenomenal film.

This is one of the few Stephen King books I have not read, and I love the movie. Paul Sheldon (James Caan), a bestselling novelist has just finished the final book in his series about Misery Chastain. He wants to put the series behind him, and has killed her off. After finishing the novel in a small hotel room in the mountains, he packs up the manuscript and drives toward New York. Unfortunately, as fate and Stephen King would have it, he drives straight into a blizzard and off the road. He comes to in bed with Annie Wilkes (the brilliant Kathy Bates) hovering over him.

She is his number one fan.

And she’s not pleased about what has happened to Misery.

She keeps him locked up, nearly crippled, for weeks, forcing him to rewrite the novel the right way. She loves him. He is desperate to escape. She won’t let that happen.

Kathy Bates stars in an Academy and Golden Globe Award winning role. She is subtle, frightening, at once the devoted, loving fan and the terrifying manic depressive who would rather die than allow her beloved writer to escape. James Caan truly carries the film with his determination to outwit his constant oppressor. The suspense is palpable and persistent, and I love it.

This is another of Stephen King’s well deserved installments on the top 100 modern classic film list.

Film Review: The Shawshank Redemption

**Remember, spoilers abound!**

A few years ago, I read a great novella by Stephen King, called Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. I knew a movie had been made about it, and I knew that it was a really big deal, but I guess that all the hype made me think that that’s all it was–hype. False.

Banker Andy Dufresne, played by Tim Robbins, is sentenced to life in Shawshank Prison for the murder of his wife and her lover. His first two years on the inside are brutal and horrifying, as he finds himself subjected to visits from “the sisters.” Eventually, he puts his education to great use, rehabilitating the prison library and cooking the books for the warden’s money laundering operation. After nearly 20 years in prison, made tolerable by his friendship with Red (Morgan Freeman in a well deserved Academy Award nominated role), Andy breaks out, having dug a tunnel, hidden  by pinup posters. He goes free, then Red follows after a frank parole hearing, and the two men eventually meet up in Mexico.

Honestly, from the description, it doesn’t sound very unique. Then, you have to remember who wrote the source material. Say what you will about Stephen King, but the man is a literary genius. He’s not just the master of the macabre and horror king. Many of his tales are suspenseful and quite touching. This is no exception–in either form.

It’s a brilliant movie, well constructed, solidly acted, at once beautiful and terrible. It’s got a great message of hope in the midst of darkness, that even though circumstances are just about as bad as can be, there is always hope. It really is powerful. It’s a long con job by a man who works the system which destroyed his life.

This is one of my favorite quotes from this film, and it fully sums up the themes of this phenomenal film.

Andy Dufresne…crawled through a river of s— and came out clean.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Book Review: The Passage by Justin Cronin

Justin Cronin’s The Passage is hard to categorize. I finished it about two weeks ago, and this is really the first time I’ve been able to write about time. This is partially due to my own schedule, but also because the book is so enormous, truly vast in scale.

To make a long story short, and without any spoilers, Amy is the girl from nowhere, and she is going to save the world. She, at about age 6, finds herself swept up in a scheme beyond belief. Someone is searching the country, pardoning death row inmates in exchange for their cooperation in a medical experiment, something to do with a discovery made in South America. For some unknown reason, Amy is chosen to join the convicts, for she is the key to some great and terrible design.

Then, something goes terribly wrong. The world as we know it ends.

Most of humankind has banded together in colonies or live as Walkers, roaming the land in search of somewhere Viral-free, only able to travel by day, as the Virals cannot abide the light.

That’s all I’m prepared to say, plot-wise, and I haven’t even scratched the surface.

I enjoyed the book overall. More than merely enjoyed–I loved it for the most part. At the same time, I’m rather irked by the ending, though it was well executed. It potentially calls for answers in its sequel, but I suspect that we will not have satisfying resolution to everything, and I believe that all is not as it seems.

The scope of this novel was immense, sweeping, intricate, tragic, and brutal. It was terrible and heart-wrenching. It is Kingsian in style and content, though maybe a bit less with the sarcasm and snark. It drags a bit in the middle, and a few times later on, but in general the pacing worked.

Read it, be prepared to skim here and there, and be prepared for a The Stand-like commitment (with fewer truly awkward scenes).