my summer reading

I have finally finished Book VII of the Dark Tower series by Stephen King.  I’ve been reading this story all summer just about.  It’s not that I’m a slow reader so much as I don’t devote a lot of time to reading.  Not like Husband who devotes all his time to reading.  I like to read but I just seem to have lots of other things that I like to do or that need doing.  

Back to the Dark Tower story.  This is a long 7 book continued tale.  The next book takes up where the previous book left off without any back story to fill in readers who may have picked up a middle volume unknowingly.  I liked that about it.  Steven King wrote the first volume when he was 19 and it shows (and he never got over it apparently as the number 19 gains a mystical dimension in the books).  The later volumes are more mature.  I don’t generally read Stephen King anymore.  He is a very prolific writer but some of the stories I thought were not worth the paper they were printed on.  But that’s just me.  I loved his first 6 (actually, I didn’t read Carrie, but I loved the movie) and I think The Green Mile was incredible.  And I liked Pet Semetary.  So I had mixed feelings when I decided to read The Dark Tower.  There are some really good stories in these volumes that I think would have stood alone.  They are interspersed with long sections that I found tiresome.   (Spoiler alert:  if you are interested in reading these books and don’t want to know how it ends, don’t read the rest of this.)   I think he was finding it tiresome as well, as if he really didn’t know where to go with it.  And so he writes himself into the story.   I’ve read other books where the author includes himself as a minor character (Clive Cussler for example) and I don’t care for that literary device.  King, however, makes himself a major player, not just as a character, but also as the pivotal underlying manifestation of the other characters.  I thought it was a cop out.  Eventually the story moves past his part in it and the main character makes it to the Tower.  I absolutely did not care for the ending.  My thoughts that King didn’t really know where to go with this story or how to end it were completely reinforced.  It ends the way it begins.  It’s Ground Hog Day all over again and it did nothing to give meaning to the whole premise of the story.  Very disappointing.

I read another series of books this spring and early summer which were very entertaining...the Stephanie Plum, bounty hunter books by Janet Evanovich.  These books are light reading, very good and laugh out loud funny.  At least they made me laugh out loud.  There’s at least 14 with a few side volumes and every one has made me laugh.  If you decide to read these books, start at the beginning because the characters build as she goes along and there is a time line involved, though each book stands alone.

Another book I read this summer was Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez.  This book is a true story about an American hair stylist who ends up on a humanitarian mission to Kabul and her experiences there.  It is an excellent read.  There is a good review of it here, so I won’t repeat it.