On Writing - Stephen King
What a splendid read! One of the things that keeps me coming back to King’s books is the down to earth, almost anecdotal way he narrates his stories. He doesn’t get too bogged down in themes and symbolism all that much, but rather just spins a good yarn. One thing that always grates on me about his writing is that the tale will invariably contain a main character who is a writer, or be set in Maine, or be about a writer living in Maine.
On Writing is no different.
I feel like this book is essential reading for any aspiring writers out there, but that’s not to say that it is only limited to budding wordsmiths. As usual, King tells it how it is. To paraphrase, “A bad writer will never be a mediocre writer and a good writer will never be a great writer, but with persistence a mediocre writer can become a good writer.” That right there is the best piece of advice I got from the book. To put it bluntly, some people suck and shouldn’t write while others have a natural talent. For the rest of us, it just takes some hard work. Good to hear from the master.
The book covered some pretty personal tales from King’s past as an alcoholic and a drug addict, even mentioning that he was totally coked out most of the time he was writing Tommyknockers (which might explain the sour taste that book left in my mouth). There’s some inspirational moments as he overcame first the addictions and then the infamous car accident that nearly left him dead in a ditch. In both cases, he claims that (along with the love of his family and such) writing saved him.
It’s easy to see why the guy turns out 800 page book after 800 page book year after year: he loves what he does. That’s pretty cool. This is definitely getting a reread.
The Best of Philip K. Dick
The ebook contains the following short stories:
Beyond the Door, Beyond Lies the Wub, The Crystal Crypt, The Defenders, The Gun, The Skull, The Eyes Have It, Second Variety, The Variable Man, Mr. Spaceship, Piper in the Woods
PKD is regarded as among the best science fiction writers of all time, so I thought ‘hey, why not read a collection of his short stories?’ And then, I did that.
Somehow, I don’t think the stories in here are generally regarded as his best work, but they are good nonetheless, though some more than others. Of the eleven stories, there are only two that I consider duds, and they were the shortest of the lot, so I’m not even bitter about them.
Something that stands out about many of the short stories in this collection is how much the Cold War influenced his writing. Most of his tales are about some sort of futuristic/ intergalactic war. Some have robots, some have aliens, but what they all have is the message that war is good. I mean bad.
My favorite of the bunch, The Variable Man, is about a man from the early twentieth century who is accidentally transported through time to a future where humanity is at war with the Centurians. In the future, the leaders watch as computers calculate the changing odds of humanity winning the war. Just when the odds tilt heavily in their favor, the machine goes bonkers and start spitting out all sorts of random numbers. The time traveller is a variable that the machine can not calculate and they set out to kill him, which is all fine and good except that the time traveller is a tinkerer of sorts and could prove to be quite useful in the war effort. In the future, everyone has become so specialized in what they do that there are no more jack-of-all-trades type fellows. It all plays out in an interesting fashion.
Another particularly good one is Second Variety, which was adapted into the movie Screamers. It’s got robots and stuff.
This whetted my appetite for more PKD, I think the next of his books I read will be VALIS, which is supposedly awesome. Check back in ??? months to find out!
The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
Here we’re presented with a tale of a man who is, you guessed it, British.
This was quite an entertaining read, though after the first third of the tale I was about ready to give up on it. The story starts off with the Invisible Man already unseeable to everyone except for the Predator. He wears bandages over his face and long pants and a coat and gloves and glasses and stuff so he can have normal interactions with the visible population. He checks in to a hotel of sorts and goes about his business, I presume, trying to find a way to de-invisible-ize himself. The beginning of the tale is told from the point of view of the nosy innkeeper who is very curious to learn about her most mysterious new tenant. Through her and some of the other simple townsfolk, we begin to learn that the Mano Invisiblo is actually quite a dick. It would seem that being unseen can change the way a person views the world. Plus, walking around with your dangler flopping about all day probably goes a long way towards making one feel superior to the rest of the world.
Basically the first third of the book establishes that there is a man who can’t be seen, who also happens to be a dick.
From there, things get a little more interesting. Captain Invisio finds someone who he used to attend university with and thinks he’s found himself an ally. Griffin (we find out his name about half way into the story--his name is Griffin) confides in his old chum, describing in detail how he came to be invisible. At the end of his reminisces, Griffin conspires to cause a stir in the town by killing off some fools to create a Reign of Terror (The First Year of the Invisible Man the First).
His chum, realizing that the invisibleness has made his friend a little bonkers, decides to alert the police. This is where things get bueno. Lots of tension as Griffin is turned from being a dick into being a villain. The action is suspenseful and the ending satisfying.
This was the first story from H.G. Wells that I ever read, and now I feel inclined to read some of his other works. Overall, good stuff.
The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka
I have to admit: there are two reasons for my reading of this novella and neither of them has much to do with my actual interest in the story. I chose to read this because: a) I am now the proud owner of a poster depicting a scene from this book wherein the words are used to make the picture [kind of like an emoticon, but less annoying ;0)] and b) I wanted to be able to add the word ‘Kafkaesque’ into my vernacular. With that in mind, the following is my review of the book.
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka was very Kafkaesque.
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