Stephen King's latest novel captures the zeitgeist of our immigration times

Stephen King's novels often take place in Maine, and could often happen in just about any timeframe.

Some of that could be said for his latest, The Outsider. But it still ends up feeling very much of this time and place. "The outsider" feels like code language for the country's ongoing struggle with what we think immigration means. We as Americans seem to have a very hard time trusting people who aren't quite like us. And King displays how that lack of trust often extends even to the people we think we know intimately well.

Also, the setting is in Oklahoma and Texas (with a little good-old Midwestern Ohio thrown in), places where the immigration debate rages especially strong. Like the epic tale's early protagonist, Terry Maitland, I too studied English and coach baseball. Perhaps that helps me relate especially well.

Maitland is one of Cap City's most loved personalities. But several eyewitnesses catch him kidnapping a young boy who is later found partially eaten and sexually attacked. The townsfolk turn violently against Maitland and his family.

Meanwhile, a second story unfolds through the book's second half, when investigator Holly Gibney comes to town to assist in finding whether Maitland or an imposter who can shape shift into others' faces and bodies is the perpetrator. A group of investigators go on the search to a scary mine shaft in Marysville, Texas, and it's not too much of a spoiler to say some of them won't return.

The Outsider may be the shortest 560-page book I've ever read. That's because it's such a page-turner. Like with many of King's books, this one has so many levels of suspense going on all the time that it becomes painful to have to put down. This is one of several of his books that left me sad that it had to end.

On my list of favorite King books, I put this at #7, right behind Pet Cemetery and in front of Under the Dome.

4.8 out of 5 stars.

It the movie(s) simply can’t compare to the classic book

As readers of this blog know, I’m a huge Stephen King fan. I keep wanting to deny that as I get older and supposedly more mature, but King just keeps being every bit as awesome as ever.

2017’s It has been high on my list of movies to see for many months, but it ends up being a letdown. At 2 hours and 15 minutes, it moves slowly in parts, doesn’t develop enough of the kids’ characters, and suffers from perhaps too many shocks and scares.

That said, it is indeed scary, but it would be scarier if it were less scary all the time.

Granted, pulling off a re-creation of one of the great horror books is not an easy task. It’s a long and detailed book. But with a slew of it neglected, the movie should have just gone ahead and been considerably shorter.

The 1999 TV miniseries suffered from different elements. It was long enough to capture better characterizations, but it was far less scary and fairly cheesy.

I’ll still look forward to the supposed sequel being planned for when the kids are adults and It comes back to the town of Derry, Maine on its usual schedule. But probably the best use of my time would be to simply read the book again.

3 out of 5 stars

Stephen King continues on with more stories from A Bazaar of Bad Dreams

I wrote up summaries for the first several tales from Stephen King's latest short-story collection a little while ago. Here, I read on.

"A Death" is about a man out west who goes to the gallows claiming he's innocent of killing a young girl. The sheriff even starts to believ him, but by then it's too late. After he's good and hung, they find out the man had swallowed the evidence and done so again and again while awaiting his trial and execution in his jail cell. This one is kind of slow, but it's short and clever and memorable.

4 out of 5 stars

"The Bone Church" is a 7-page short poem that I either read and can not remember at all or that I skipped because Stephen King and poetry just doesn't seem like my thing.

NA out of 5 stars

As a side note, I’m currently reading one of King’s early classics, Firestarter. It’s one of his few titles from that era that I haven’t read (and I haven’t even seen the movie based off of it, starring an E.T.-era Drew Barrymore in the title role).

I’m completely immersed. For my money, there has never been a more page-turn-inducing author than King.

Geek Love, a great premise, started the wave of Carny fiction

For a literature major, my book reading has taken a backseat recently due to all the magazines I'm currently subscribed to and, of course, all the time I spend tossing the football and baseball with Jackson and doing "play with me" time with Zoey.

That said, I recently made it through a relatively gargantuan modern fiction classic (from 1989) by Katherine Dunn, which took her many years to write while living in Portland.

Geek Love, a National Book Award finalist, was a trailblazer at the time and set the course for all kinds of freak-show entertainment that has followed, from Rob Zombie's filmography to the Jim Rose Circus to American Horror Story to Stephen King's It.

The premise is the best thing about the book: A man and woman (Al and Crystal Lil Binewski) run a circus that has fallen on hard times. In order to take them to the top, they agree that Lil will start taking drugs in order to deform a whole slate of babies they plan to produce. That way they'll have the best freak show (or call it "geek" show) in the land.

The plan works, and they have Arty the Aqua Boy, Siamese twins Elly and Iphy, telekinetic Chick, and the story's narrator Olympia, a hunchback albino dwarf. Arty is the leader and Oly assists him. She actually tells the story from two points in time, when they are all children and just getting started to bring in the crowds and much later in her life, when she reflects on all her family being gone and watches over her daughter Miranda, who has a tail and doesn't know who her mother is, and certainly doesn't know she is the product of incest.

The whole thing is fascinating, but it drags on far too long. There is way too much descriptive language and Geek Love is easily a quarter-too-long. But a great premise takes it far, and it luckily played a major role in starting a horrifying genre that is tough to get enough of, at least for me.

4 out of 5 stars

And check out this great feature from WIRED about the cult of Geek Love lovers.

Stephen King Offers a New "Bazaar of Bad Dreams"

I have a soft spot for Stephen King. Reading his books always take me back to my teen years, when I devoured almost everything he had written up to that point. (See my opinion of his best books.)

His short stories are some of my favorites, so it's exciting to dig into his new The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.

It begins with an old story he conceived at age 19. He wrote it but claims he lost it due to doing too much acid. While recently driving down I-95 in Maine, he remembered the story and rewrote it. "Mile 81" starts with a young kid named Pete who bikes to an abandoned rest area along the interstate. After looking at pictures of nude women hanging on the walls and drinking found vodka, he falls asleep.

What happens within shouting distance during his nap is a horrible chain of events starting with an abandoned, muddy station wagon that lures motorists from the road to the rest stop to help. Bad mistake.

5 out of 5 stars.

Next we have the Raymond Carver-inspired "Premium Harmony." About halfway through, I realized I had read this in, I believe, The New Yorker many months ago. It's a minor story about a middle-aged couple that argues all the time. She doesn't like him smoking and he doesn't like her eating Twinkies. Then everything changes when she goes into a convenience store to get a purple ball for her niece.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

In "Batman and Robin Have an Altercation," no superheroes are involved, Even better: an Alzheimer's patient and a big tattooed Texas roughneck are involved. When a road rage incident gets out-of-hand, the unexpected happens and the police are too late to help. This is a touching story, especially to any grown adults who have had to care for dying parents. And especially if they have done it by regularly taking them from the care facility to Applebee's for lunch.

4.5 out of 5 stars

I was lulled to sleep for a few pages of the short "The Dune," about an old man who paddles out to a small island in Florida frequently. He calls a fellow lawyer to revise his will after seeing disturbing things written in the sand, which he has actually seen in this same spot ever since he was a boy but never told anyone until now. The ending is positively wicked and abruptly makes the story one of Kings's best.

4.5 out of 5 stars

Rounding out the first third of the collection (I'll save the rest for later when my Stephen King withdrawals set in) is probably the best of the batch. Offering a Shawshank-like prison scene and a life-spanning story of one man's battle with a devil who appears in little-boy-with-a-beanie-propeller-hat form, "Bad Little Boy" will almost certainly be opted into a movie or TV show in the future. There are many points that offer spine-tingling chills. And, after all, what more do you want in a King story?

5 out of 5 stars

I'll be back with more about this book later.

More Stephen King Sequels Like Doctor Sleep Would be Welcome

When Stephen King is at his very best (The Stand, Night Shift, IT), there is arguably no better storyteller in the world.

Even when he is not quite at his best, like in his new sequel to The Shining, the storytelling keeps the reader on edge and turning King’s many, many pages rapidly.

Doctor Sleep is the tale of young Danny Torrance, now all grown up but still dealing with the grisly remains of his early life at the Overlook Hotel in Colorado, where dad Jack went bonkers and killed everything he could get his hands on.

Danny still has something called “the shining” in which he can do fantastical things in coordination with other people around the world who also have various degrees of the shining.

I really enjoyed the human-drama aspect of the novel’s first half as Danny tries to overcome the alcoholism that is leading him down a road of blackouts, unsafe sex, and general self-destruction. When he takes a bus to a random town in New England, he begins to better manage his troubles as he meets some friends and works in a hospice where he is given the nickname “Doctor Sleep” because of his powers to help people on their deathbeds cross over to the other side.

Then he starts getting shining visions of a girl named Abra Stone who is in trouble because of her own very-powerful shining powers. This half of the novel is not quite as convincing and the book tails off a bit at the end. However, the concept and some of the character development are interesting. The True Knot is a group of zombie/vampires that appear to others as shlumpy RV travelers, with a powerful and sexy leader named Rose the Hat. She needs to find certain children like Abra to torture in order to get the “steam” her cult needs to literally survive forever.

Doctor Sleep definitely adds luster to King’s long-ago solidified legacy. In fact, it would be great to see more sequels of several of his other early novels that I loved so much as a teenager.

**** out of ***** stars

Judy Blume a Must Read for Pre-Teen Girls (and Boys, For That Matter)

I was never a 12-year-old girl. I also grew up with two older brothers, so I really know nothing about girls. And something about reading Judy Blume's most famous book has always intrigued me.

When we had our baby girl three-and-a-half months ago, I figured I better finally get off the snide and learn a thing or two about what it's like to grow up as a girl. After all, it won't be too long before Zoey will be confronting these issues. I shouldn't be clueless.

Are You There God? It's Me Margaret is essential reading for any pre-teen girl. It should help them recognize that the way they will soon be acting is laughable but serious as well.

Blume explores the trials of young Margaret, who, upon moving from New York City to suburban Jersey, tries to fit in with a group of girls who call themselves the Pre-Teen Sensations. They focus on growing their breasts, the more-developed girl in their class, lists of boys, and getting their periods. Meanwhile, Margaret deals privately with what kind of religion to become, since her father is Jewish and her mother Christian.

This harmless and well-written novel contributes to Blume's status as the "second-most banned" author in American history behind Stephen King. She once said that the book was indeed seen as harmless throughout its first decade after being published in 1970, but that the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 began a wave of witch-hunt-like book bannings. (That, incidentally, was also the era of Tipper Gore and her band of mothers who attempted to limit access to some rock music.)

I can't imagine that some parents could actually not encourage their children to read this.

***** out of ***** stars

Great Beach Read?: Go With James Patterson's D.C. Crime Fiction

I'd never thought anything about author James Patterson. It's amazing to have never even considered reading one of his books. He's sold more copies of his nearly 100 novels than Stephen King, Dan Brown, and John Grisham combined, and holds the Guinness Book of World Records for most New York Times Bestsellers (76!).

But then I was thinking about needing some light reading for my annual North Carolina beach trip (last year's was The Hunger Games) and my mom suggested Patterson and his Washington D.C.-based stories about forensic psychologist Alex Cross. I started reading a sample from Amazon of Along Came a Spider, the first in the Cross series, from 1993, and I was hooked.

The book was made into a movie with Morgan Freeman as Cross, which I'm now looking forward to seeing. The novel itself is a page-turner about Cross becoming obsessed with tracking down an elusive serial killer who kidnaps two kids with prominent parents from a prominent school in D.C.

The story swerves from D.C. to the Caribbean to Florida and the Carolinas. It has dozens and dozens of short chapters that contain a little masterpiece in each. If there is any complaint, it's that there could be a slight bit more character building of Cross, Jezzie Flannagan, and Gary Soneji-Murphy.

That said, they are memorable characters, and I'm no doubt going to dig into the second Cross story, 1995's Kiss the Girls.

****1/2 out of ***** stars

Stephen King's Top 13 Books

Since I just reviewed Stephen King's 2009 tome Under the Dome, and today Vulture ranks all 62 of his novels, I figured I would take my own stab. Although I haven't read hardly any of his books over the past 20 years, I'm still pretty confident that these are some strong rankings.

I was a total King junkie as a teen and into my early 20s (in those days, I didn't fall asleep 5 pages into every book I tried to read).

13. Cujo
12. The Shining
11. Misery
10. The Green Mile
09. Skeleton Crew
08. The Dead Zone
07. Under the Dome
06. Pet Semetary
05. The Dark Tower series
04. Different Seasons
03. IT
02. Night Shift
01. The Stand

Other King books I've read:
Salem's Lot
Needful Things
The Tommyknockers
Rage
The Long Walk
Christine
Four Past Midnight (featuring The Longoliers)
Nightmares & Dreamscapes
The Running Man
Just After Sunset
The Dark Half

What do you think? I would imagine everyone's favorite is The Stand, but is there something I'm missing out on? Something else of his I should read? I'm going to definitely put Vulture's #2 pick, On Writing, into my queue.

Under the Dome Adds to Stephen King's Still-Growing Literary Cannon

Back in high school, I devoured Stephen King novels. I must have been feeling reminiscent for those days several months ago when I picked up his massive 2009 work called Under the Dome.

The only other King book I've read in the past 20 years was Just After Sunset, but the Dome intrigued me because it sounded like my favorite King book, The Stand, which still holds up as one of the very best novels I've ever read.

Sometime after 2012, Chester's Mill, Maine is cut off from the rest of the world by a giant clear and unbreakable dome. The lead character is former Army Captain Dale Barbara, who is on his way out of town for good after a run-in with some of the local toughs. He doesn't quite make it before the dome comes down.

Used-car salesman "Big Jim" Rennie is on the town council and sees the perfect opportunity to become the town's leader in its time of need. His son, Junior, has an as-yet-undiagnosed brain tumor that is leading him down a murderous path right at the same time his dad is appointing him as one of a thuggish team of beefed-up police-force officers.

Colonel James Cox works the situation from the outside, instructing the town that the president has appointed Barbara as the town's leader. Needless to say, this doesn't go over so well with Rennie, who is able to frame Barbara for a handful of murders and have him locked up and ostracized.

Eventually, a small band of renegades is able to see through Rennie and break Barbara out of jail. They head to a farmhouse outside of town, near where they have discovered the source of the dome. The sci-fi part of this story is not as well fleshed out as the fascinating good-versus-evil relationships between the town's characters under such dire circumstances, although the dome creators (whose identity I won't spoil here) is a pretty ingenious concept by King.

A massive explosion of the methane tanks and crystal meth materials at Rennie's illegal operation ushers in the dramatic close of the novel, which the world watches on TV through the news media's lenses covering the events from just outside the dome.

Lots of love, death, and fun. Highly recommended. Just plan to spend a while with these 1,500 or so pages.

****1/2 out of ***** stars.