WHAT'S ON MY NIGHTSTAND?
This is the kind of winter I grew up with. Early December, and lots of snow on the ground. I love it. The past few years, things have been pretty bare for Christmas, but this year, there should be snow. Awesome.
Even more awesome is that after I finish the school’s holiday program this weekend, I should have enough time to relax and finally start my new book. You see, I have a book that I have been waiting and hoping for snow to come so I can read it.
The book is called The Terror, by Dan Simmons. It’s about—well, I think this blurb from the Washington post sums it up well:
The fate of Sir John Franklin's last expedition remains one of the great mysteries of Arctic exploration. What we know, more or less, is this: In the balmy days of May 1845, 129 officers and men aboard two ships -- Erebus and Terror -- departed from England for the Canadian Arctic in search of a Northwest Passage to the Pacific. They were never heard from again. Between 1847 and 1859, Franklin's wife pushed for and funded various relief missions, even as the expectation of finding survivors was replaced by the slim hope for answers. It's a story perfectly suited for fiction, if only because we have so little else to go on. Dan Simmons's new novel, The Terror, dives headlong into the frozen waters of the Franklin mystery, mixing historical adventure with gothic horror -- a sort of Patrick O'Brian meets Edgar Allan Poe against the backdrop of a J.M.W. Turner icescape. Meticulously researched and brilliantly imagined, The Terror won't satisfy historians or even Franklin buffs, but as a literary hybrid, the novel presents a dramatic and mythic argument for how and why Franklin and his men met their demise.I have been waiting for a good snowfall, that sense of being snow bound and abandoned, deep in winter twilight, before I cracked open this book. That time is at hand.
Until then I had been keeping myself entertained with some other fun reads. I just finished Stephen Colbert’s I am America (and so can you). A fun, light read, if you are a fan of Mr. Colbert’s work. The best part was the inclusion of his speech from the Whitehouse Correspondents’ Dinner. The speech is amusing in and of itself, but when you combine it with the knowledge that this man had the balls to actually say these things in front of the President and his cronies, it is hilarious.
I’ve also been [picking at the carcass of 20th Century Ghosts, By Joe Hill. I discovered Hill’s work with his first release novel last year, Heart Shaped Box. Ghosts is a collection of his short fiction. I like Hill A LOT. I expect to see good things from him as time goes on. He is a story teller, just like his father (Stephen King.) I mean that with the utmost respect. These men don’t write novels, of build fiction. They tell us stories. There are no literary devices, plots and metaphor and symbolism. Oh those things are there, if you care to look, but they aren’t crafted that way. They tell stories. Stories that aren’t written but evolve, naturally, from beginning to end, and are good because they feel true. They feel right. I’m afraid I can’t explain it better than that. But I can say that Joe has one advantage over his old man. King built his career on nitty-gritty hand-reaching-out-of-the-grave gross out big scare horror. That isn’t what SK is all about, but it is where he built his foundation. And as his career went on, he had other tales to tell. Stories that weren’t so much phantasm as fantastic. But the people didn’t like it. They wanted their King full of monsters and haunted cars. Joe Hill seems to be much more at ease telling the tales that are supernatural, but not quite scary. The kind of things that make you go “hmmmm,” but in a good way—in a Rhold Dahl way. And he has the freedom to that now, and make it a part of him, before his public gets too demanding.
Interesting info on Joe Hill. Wasn't sure if he was just a clone of his
dad.