The Dark Tower Series (audio) - Stephen King
There are some who decry the audio book revolution. I am not one of those people. I have an account at audible.com through which I am allowed to download two audio books a month. Before that I bought a few through iTunes, even with the high cost that entailed. And, although I officially admit to nothing, there is a possibility I might have downloaded some audio books from Audiogalaxy, the Gnutella networks, and from USENET before that.

Some books are uniquely unsuited to the audio book format and some are perfect for it. For example, I loved reading Angela's Ashes, the first part of Frank McCourt's memoirs. But, when I tried listening to 'Tis, the follow up to Angela's Ashes, I was much less enamored with Mr. McCourt, due, I feel, to his reading of the story. As a result, I bought Teacher Man, the follow up to 'Tis, in paperback rather than downloading it.

Stephen King's The Dark Tower series is, for this reader, nearly perfectly suited for the audio book form. The Dark Tower books were originally conceived of by King as his Lord of the Rings, his epic mythological tale. In terms of length, King exceeds Tolkien; the seventh and final book in the series, The Dark Tower, is nearly as long as the entire Lord of the Rings saga. Wolves of the Calla and Wizard and Glass, books five and four respectively, are nearly as long as book seven. This is one of the reasons for it's suitability for audio, given the amount of time and effort it would take to read the books.

The Dark Tower series takes place in some sort of alternate world, related and connected to our own. The protagonist of the story is Roland Deschain, Roland of Gilead, a mix of Jedi Knight and Old West Gunslinger. The world Roland lives in is a amalgam of the Old West, Camelot, sci-fi-influenced post-apocalyptic wasteland, and fantasy landscape. Roland, like many great figures from the history of literature, has an overarching obsession which drives the entirety of the story and provides most of his character's foundation. That obsession is The Dark Tower, which lies at the center point of all the worlds which are. Roland's journey, which he has been on for much longer than we are led to believe at the beginning of the series, is to reach the Dark Tower and climb to it's top level and perhaps in doing so stop the accelerated entropy which threatens his world and ours. Throughout the journey Roland collects several companions from a world which appears to be the one in which we live, battles robots, lobstrosities, and his arch nemesis The Man In Black, spends about 80% of one novel in flashback mode, and faces great peril, of course.

Taken as a whole, The Dark Tower series is arguably King's best work (depending on what it is about his writing that the individual reader enjoys). There is a quality here to his writing that is missing from much of his other fiction, a dark and deep fascination with character and language and place that pervades the entire series. This is not to say that there are not weak moments. In fact, one of most common criticisms of King's work, his apparent love of the sound of his own voice, his wordiness, is in full effect here. Another writer would doubtless have been able to tell the same story in a fraction of the space, but in this context King's wordiness takes on a dreamy quality and is, in my opinion, one of the great joys of the books. Also, as the books were written over the course of thirty-some-odd years, the original feel of the stories as well as the nature of the world Roland inhabits changes, sometimes in better and deeper ways, sometimes not. And the series has been criticized for the "metafiction" nature of it's last three books, all three of which were written at a gasp following King's nearly deadly encounter with a blue van in 1999 in an attempt to finally finish the series after decades of occasional work. But, in my reflection upon listening to the series for the second time, I don't think any of those failings steal the overall greatness of the entire series.

Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
All great horror fiction is, at its heart, about relationships. The relationship between Danny and his mother in The Shining, the contrasted relationships of Cole Sear and his mother and his psychiatrist in The Sixth Sense, the uncomfortable intimacy between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs; each of these relationships are the things we care about in these stories, the things the horror, whatever it may be, threatens to destroy. In Something Wicked there are two relationships that drive the story. The friendship of two pubescent boys, William Holloway and his dark souled friend Jim Nightshade, and the strained familial relations of William and his aged father.

Something Wicked is my first exposure to Bradbury. The only knowledge I entered into the book with was the memory of the movie trailer being on TV when I was a kid, and my utter terror watching it. I was not allowed to watch scary movies of any sort as a child (even The Empire Strikes Back was kept from me for some reason), so this one, with it's witchcraft title and child-terrifying concept of a carnival gone hellishly evil, was completely verboten. In fact, I doubt I would have even thought on it ever again had I not run across a review of it in the book, Danse Macabre.

There is a scene in the book which takes place after the boys are caught by William's father after sneaking out of the house and getting into some potentially deadly mischief. On the porch, as they are about the reenter the house, William asks his father, who up until this point has been somewhat emotionally distant from the reader, "Dad? Am I a good person?". The long conversation which follows is the sort of thing that most of us rarely have with our parents, but I think one most of us wish we could have. The conversation is so open and honest and loving that at times I felt like I was eavesdropping and should probably turn my ear to something else.

Ultimately, the book surprised me with its darkness, it's effective and simple horror (who would have thought that the idea of a carousel that runs backwards would be a scary as it is), and, at the end, it's heart swelling hopefulness and joy. That last is the thing that most who attack the genre as satanic and evil miss. Horror is a hopeful genre; no matter what Dust Witch stalks you, no matter how The Illustrated Man, with those terrifying animal tattoos coiling and flexing upon his skin, stomps after you, no matter if your own best friend might be losing a battle with his dark fascination with the carnival and it's soul eating mirror maze, there is hope, hope, always hope. Even in the darkness, with no roadsigns or landmarks to guide you to safety, there is hope. And that is horror's greatest strength.

Currently Reading...

High Fidelity - Nick Hornby

I just started High Fidelity after finishing James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia, thus reading two books in a row that I said I had to read before I would watch the respective movies which are based upon them. That is an odd predilection that I have, whenever I see a trailer for a movie that even remotely interests me and which I find out is based upon a book, most especially if it is by an author I have heard good things about, I feel the need to read the book before I see the movie. Somewhere the idea got into my head (this in spite of the numerous times I have read a book and enjoyed it even after seeing the movie) that this was the most only enjoyable order. Most of the time what happens is I miss the movie in the theater, and end up waiting a long time before finally getting around to the book.

I was looking through the opening pages for quotes to put here, and then realized that I would just end up quoting the first thirty pages or so. To save time summarizing what I love about the book so far, I will present a review blurb printed on the back which says most all I think I could say: "Keep this book away from your girlfriend--it contains too many of your secrets to let it fall into the wrong hands."

One rather random observation I have made in the first sixty pages or so of the book, an observation I have only made once before while reading Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club, is that Nick Hornby strikes me as a person who is a great listener. This may seem like an odd observation to make since writers by nature would seem to have to be good listeners in order to be good writers, constantly listening to rhythms of speech, the stories told around them, and how people relate to places and things so that they can describe them better and more efficiently in their prose. But, for whatever reason, I have only had that thought occur to me spontaneously while reading those two authors above.