books...hmm...what are those?

Well, I realized that the roots of this blog--the books that I'm reading--has largely been ignored lately, and this post is an attempt to rectify that glaring transgression. (It's also an excuse to use big words.)

I finished a new book by Steven King a couple of days ago, entitled "Cell". It's about a frequency transmitted by cell phones that creates a new national terror: Zombie-like creatures. (Anyone who has stood in line at a grocery store lately knows that this isn't too far a cry from what cell phones actually do!)

The book was interesting...I found that it recalled King's greatest work (in my opinion) The Stand. A small group of survivors attempt to place some level of normalcy into their lives after some horrible tragedy (The Stand: A plague; Cell: Zombies) knocks out seeminly all of the much relied on infrastructure of our country. There is also a "bad" guy (Stand: The Trashcan Man; Cell: The Raggedy Man--also called The President of Harvard--I prefer the second name.) The similarities between the two books were striking, and I thought a little distracting. It was, in all honesty, a bit disappointing. I used to love King's work, and this just seemed to lack originality. All in all, I would suggest reading the Stand, and skipping Cell.

(One note, King did make use of the post 9/11 terrorist fear that has America in it's grip, and that was interesting.)

I just finished another book today, one entitled Amish Confidential, by Chris Burkholder. I found that my expectations for this book FAR out weighed the actual quality of the book. It was VERY poorly written, again, in my opinion. I was really interested in finding out about the Amish culture, especially from someone who has experienced it first hand, and found that it was very boring. The writing was very immature...it felt like it was being written by a fifth grader. He was redundant, and the book lacked any semblence of organizational structure. It was confusing and the lack of a logical flow made what should have been shocking revelations (beastiality, incest, sex, drugs, abuse) dull and lackluster.

Wow...I don't think I've ever written such negative reviews of books before, have I? Hey, Hadler, apparently I don't love EVERYTHING I read, do I? (c;

Just started another book, entitled "Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About" by Mil Millington. Only about 10 pages into it, but already I've laughed out loud enough times to frighten Buddy the dog. (Poor Buddy...he doesn't understand good literature.)

All right...that's all.

Thanks for reading...
Tommy