Book #218: 'Salem's Lot

Book #218: 'Salem's Lot by Stephen King

April 18, 2016

I've been meaning to get to this book since reading The Dark Tower series, since Father Callahan is a prominent character in this text as well. The scene that he recalls to the ka-tet, where he faced down Barlow and had his faith shaken, is part of this book, of course, and is pretty much how I remembered it. I can't remember if Callahan talks about it in Wolves of the Calla or Song of Susannah, but I think the scene may have been excerpted directly from 'Salem's Lot.

The idea of vampires taking over a sleepy little town seems to be, a little bit, a metaphor about the decline of rural areas. Some scenes definitely made me think of my time living in Southwest Iowa. The area I lived in was comprised of nothing but sleepy little towns. While I don't think a vampire could come in and wipe out a town like the one where I taught for my first two years out of college (it had a population of less than 900 people) without anyone noticing, it wasn't too hard to imagine.

I'm also familiar with 'salem's Lot from a short story in King's Night Shift collection. This story seems to show that vampires haven't been completely wiped out of the Lot, though I don't know if the dates and stuff hold up to the novel; I'd have to check, but I was under the impression that Night Shift came along before this one. Still, the novel is at least based on the setting in the short story.

Of course, one of the central characters is a writer. Ben has been through some shit recently, losing his wife in a motorcycle accident. He returns to 'salem's Lot, a town where he spent some time with relatives as a kid. He has fond memories of it, except for one thing: the Marsten House, a creepy old mansion that overlooks the town and has been unoccupied for decades. Until around the time that Ben comes to town, of course.

I found the plot to be fairly predicable; of course, that could be because I already knew Father Callahan's perspective on the thing, so I already knew about Barlow, already knew about the vampires. And of course, vampire shit is even more engrained in our popular culture now than when this book came out a few decades ago, so the signs are pretty obvious. Of course, I always say that what makes King's stories worth reading are the details about the characters. I didn't really like any of them all that much...I didn't dislike Ben, or Matt, or Dr. Cody, though I didn't really connect with them. I didn't like Susan, Ben's girlfriend who, of course, meets an awful end, but that could just be the time difference. The fact that she's 25 and still living at home and taking orders from her mother irked me to no end, but I had to remind myself that it's a different time and place. I'll leave it at this: Susan Norton is no Susannah Dean.

Of course, Mark Petrie is the exception to this. He's portrayed as a rare sort of kid: methodical and intelligent, yet still a kid, so still willing to believe in things that go bump in the night. He gets involved with the small band of amateur vampire hunters, and is one of only two survivors in the end. In fact, his and Ben's fate is left kind of ambiguous. They're burning down the Lot, and plan to do a sweep and kill the remaining vampires...or die trying, I guess. Maybe the short story about the Lot has some details about this...I'm not sure. Now I really do feel like I need to reread that, like as soon as I'm done with this post.

This isn't my favorite King novel, but it's still a solid work. The best parts, I think, are the descriptions of the people and places of this small community. The book jumps third person perspectives a lot; some of the minor characters were hard to keep track of, but mostly they were interesting people, some sad and pathetic in a very normal way, everybody with their own shit. Some of the older people would consider how times seemed to have changed, how kids today were worse, or things like that. But the narrative would counter back, were they really? Were things really all that different in the past? Nostalgia is blinding, as we all know. Look at the recent resurgence of interest in 1990s shit. I grew up in that time, and I have to admit that it's fun to read about and reminisce about the stupid shit I loved as a kid. I don't remember loving it as much at the time as I do looking back on it, so I'm fully away of the effect that nostalgia is having on me. Some of King's characters were a bit clueless about it.

I know I need to get on top of reading more, if I'm ever going to accomplish this somewhat lofty goal I've set for myself. But I figure that, as long as I'm reading a little bit, even when I'm busy with all kinds of other life shit, I'm still doing okay.

Book #217: October Sky

Book #217: October Sky by Homer Hickam

April 12, 2016

I started this book way back at the beginning of the school year. That's how little reading time I've been able to fit in the classroom, though it is a fairly long memoir. I saw the movie when I was in high school, and I remember liking it. Hickam's mother stood out to me most in the film, and she's the dominant force in her family in the book as well. I would consider this text yet another example of an autobiographical work worth reading.

I was impressed with how dedicated teenage Hickam and his friends were to figuring out how to make their rockets fly. They took fucking calculus in order to get down their calculations; Hickam wasn't even allowed to be in the course, and he studied it independently! When I first got to that part of the book, I started thinking about how much I used to slack off in math. When I was in the fifth grade, I was picked out amongst my peers to take pre-algebra the following year...which was a pretty big deal for me at the time. But I couldn't quite get my head around it from the get-go, and I lagged behind my peers, the dumbest kid in the smart class, I guess.

So while I had an aptitude for math, I grew to hate it pretty early on. I even flunked trigonometry in high school; I never really learned much after geometry, cheating and faking my way through the previous year before it finally caught up to me as a sophomore. I retook the year, got a decent grade, and said adios to math before my senior year. Looking back on it, I have a lot of regrets about that. I'm still more of a literary person than a mathematical one, but I could have been both, maybe. Oh, well.

Anyway, Hickam and his friends start to dream big when they see how high they can make their rockets fly. And that's not a normal thing where they're from. They grew up in a mining town in West Virginia. Hickam's father was a dedicated manager at the mine, so he had some advantages over his poorer peers, but nobody ever expected much from him, least of all his old man.

The most compelling thing about this story is the setting. The late 1950s and early 1960s were a time of great change in the U.S., and this was even true in little tucked away towns like the aptly-named Coalwood. Young Hickam learns that the town is bound for ruin; before too long, the coal's either gonna run out, or the demand for it will, and the coal mine is the only point of their town. So during a time when everyone there had a lot to be fearful about, Hickam and his friends brought them a glimmer of hope and excitement with their frequent rocket launches.

This particular book is part of the curriculum for the district I work for, and I'm glad. Unfortunately, I can't really use it in my own classroom, as it describes unhooking a girl's bra, and Hickam loses his virginity to a girl in the backseat of her boyfriend's car (naughty!). Obviously these are normal details of adolescent sexuality, nothing distasteful about it; it's not unusual for a teenage boy to ogle a girl's chest in the auditorium. But, as I've described in previous posts, I work in a rather delicate, sheltered environment. I'd recommend it to some of my students, when they're in a more normal environment. I think it'd be a great book for any American to read, to give them an interesting perspective on a turbulent time in our history.

Book #216: Treasure Island

Book #216: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

February 6, 2016

This isn't the first Stevenson work that I've read. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was a story with a good premise, if it wasn't told very well. I felt that Stevenson told us all the good parts rather than showing them to us. I kind of felt that way about this book, too, but I also felt like it was really predictable.

No, not because I was terribly familiar with the premise. All I knew is that it was about pirates, and a kid was somehow involved. There have been many adaptations of this story, but none that I've seen. Anyway, there are two possible reasons for why this story lacked suspense for me. 

One could be the same issue I've had with other "classics," that they were written for an audience that didn't know the tropes that readers today are so familiar with. The things that surprised people in the late 19th century don't faze people today.

The other could be that the story was written for a younger audience, and so events are more heavily foreshadowed than in books written for adults. Either way, I didn't totally get into this book, and the lack of suspense had a lot to do with it. 

I don't have much to say about Treasure Island. As the pirates would sing the "Yo Ho Ho" song, or whatever, I thought of "Somalian Pirates, We" (from an episode of South Park, of course). The episode "Fatbeard" compares the romanticized image of pirates (as started, in part, by Stevenson's work, though the pirates be the antagonists, ar!) to the realities of piracy in the 21st century. Cartman's song is really damn catchy. 

Anyway, in my view this book was only all right. Also, I don't know that Hawkins' crew was any "better" than the pirates. Did they return the treasure to the nations from which it'd been stolen? I don't think so. They spent the money on themselves, as the pirates would have done. So really, I didn't much care about any of the characters. I usually say that a "classic" is sometimes worth reading because it is, but with this one, I'd perhaps think twice.

Book #215: Andrew's Brain

Book #215: Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow

January 16, 2016

This is an example of the kind of unconventional, challenging books that I've been trying to read more of. Andrew's Brain is told in a sort of stream of consciousness style, as Andrew talks about his life (as he remembers it in his own mind, at least) to a psychiatrist (maybe). It's not totally clear where he is, but my theory is that he suffered a nervous breakdown sometime after 9/11 (his young baby momma was killed). He's a scientist who has studied the brain for much of his life, and now his brain is cracked and he's not aware of it.

It's difficult to tell where Andrew is being truthful and where his memory has been warped. The stuff about him being George W. Bush's college roommate and working briefly at the White House seems far fetched. The stuff about his ex-wife and dead girlfriend seem more down to Earth, but again, with his mind so damaged from trauma, who knows what the "truth" is?

Many of the young men I work with have suffered trauma in their lives. We typically have at least one habitual liar on our campus at a time, the kind of kids who claim they've lived through Hurricane Katrina and plane crashes, having a convenient story to match any topic that happens to come up. I've often wondered why these kids feel the need to tell such outlandish lies. Getting inside fictional Andrew's head, so to speak, reminds me how the brain can be damaged even if a person has never suffered physical trauma, like a blow to the head. 

Andrew is convinced that he's cursed. He accidentally caused a fatal car accident when he rode into a street in his sled as a kid. He accidentally killed his first born child when he administered the wrong medicine, a mistake of the pharmacy (though this is a detail that the psychiatrist, whether he's real or only exists in Andrew's mind, questions). He's clumsy at best, a walking catastrophe at his worst. But, unless he intentionally killed his child and his mind isn't allowing him to remember it, he isn't evil or bad. He's a rather unfortunate person.

This book seems to have mixed reviews on Goodreads. While there's a part of me that wants the "truth" about Andrew, I think that's beside the point. We know what Andrew thinks is true, what he thinks he remembers. If he were aware of how damaged he was, what would he say to that? He describes how, in his studies, he's looked at how various stimuli can affect the brain, all its complex signals and functions that translate into thoughts and feelings. For someone like me, who works with teenagers who are more damaged than the average kid, a book like this helps me to remember that each person's experiences affect how his or her mind functions, which stimuli we react to most, that sort of thing. A joke that some of my coworkers have is that, for some of our most damaged kids, it'd be fascinating to get inside their minds and see how it works. Obviously, this is not possible, but Doctorow attempted to do something like that with Andrew here.

Book #214: Dark Places

Book #214: Dark Places by Gillian Flynn

January 13, 2015

This is the second book I've read by Flynn. Unlike her wildly successful Gone Girl, this one (an earlier work, I think) is a bit more conventional as far as how the main character, Libby, goes about solving the mystery. But like Gone Girl, the characters are complex and often despicable. It wasn't quite as satisfying as Flynn's biggest success to date, but it still held my interest all the way through.

I have issues with the development of Libby Day. When she was seven, her mother and two older sisters were murdered, and her older brother was put away in prison for it. Since then, she was angry, fearful, and disconnected. As a grown woman, not much older than myself, she's never held a job and can't even remember to change her bedsheets. She feels entitled to pity and money, because that's all people have ever really given her. But at 31, the pity and the money are running out. When she's offered a few hundred bucks to appear at a convention for murder investigation enthusiasts, she jumps at it...and it changes her whole life.

Her outrage and disbelief about the alternative theories to her family's murders is understandable. She testified against her brother, although she didn't actually see what happened, only heard snatches of shouting and the shotgun blast from her hiding place. Libby was basically made to believe that her brother did it. That belief was, supposedly, deeply ingrained in her. So of course she's upset when people try to say otherwise, and call her a liar.

But her about-face regarding her brother's guilt seemed too swift. After just one interview with Ben, her incarcerated brother, she's more or less determined to know the truth. I feel like this wasn't entirely realistic. At first she only visits Ben and other figures in the mystery for the money from the "Kill Club" and Ben's supporters. But she throws herself into their investigation.

More interesting than Libby's search are the chapters between them. They follow Ben and Patty, their mother, during the hours leading up to the murders. Shit's hitting the fan for the Day family. Patty is so deep in debt that she's about to lose the family farm, and Ben is being accused of molesting little girls at school. He had a friendly relationship with a fifth grader, and one day after school, she kissed him. He got a boner, freaked out, and ran away. I work with legitimate teenage sex offenders; Ben was no sex offender. 

So the day of the murders is tense, presenting several scenarios for who the real killer might be. In the end, the situation is quite a mess, but it all fits. Besides the unrealistic development of Libby's character, I was satisfied with this book. Obviously, it never received even close to the amount of attention as that one other book. It wasn't even on my radar before I read Gone Girl. But Flynn is an exciting author, and being pretty new to the scene and just recently becoming famous, I hope she'll publish more. 

Book #213: The Boys in the Boat

Book #213: The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown

January 3, 2016

I first started to hear about this book in the summer of 2014. Someone was talking about it on the radio; I don't think it was Brown himself, but just a book reviewer or something. This person described the scene in New York, when the soon-to-be 1936 U.S. Olympic eight-man with coxswain rowing crew made an impromptu visit to Hyde Park. Having just read Mrs. Roosevelt's autobiography, this caught my interest. They didn't have the honor of meeting my hero or her husband FDR, but they did have drinks with one of their sons. Anyway, the guy on the radio went on about how good this book is, so when I saw it in the elibrary, I added it to my wish list. But it wasn't available until just recently.

I have always felt that the U.S. and its allies should have boycotted the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Brown describes how the games gave Nazi Germany a great opportunity to hoodwink the world, and to further their propaganda on the supposed superiority of the "Aryan race." But it doesn't diminish the success of the boys from the University of Washington, who individually and as a group overcame many obstacles to gain Olympic glory. 

Brown mostly tells the story of one rower, Joe Rantz, who had it especially rough during his formative years. Depression-era troubles and family drama found him living in his own as a teenager. Working for his own survival, he became tough and strong. By the time he takes home his gold medal, his antagonistic stepmother is dead, he's reunited with his family, and his fiancée is thrilled for him. Rantz was one of the only surviving members of the boat left when Brown started his research, so it makes sense that we'd get so much of his story, but it really is very compelling.

Most of the boys in the boat had their own struggles, and if Brown was able to procure any of their personal documents, they were frequently quoted. Brown also describes George Pocock, the British shell maker set up at Washington, a master of the craft and a crew expert since his earliest years. Pocock is quoted at the beginning of each chapter. I've never known a whole lot about crew, but I get the feeling that Pocock is amongst the legends of the sport.

Albert Ulbrickson, the Washington crew coach, is obviously a central figure as well, but the book doesn't delve much into his life beyond his impact on the sport and the young men he coached. He's kind of a stereotypical stoical type, not even getting overexcited or emotional at the most triumphant of moments. His notes on his strategies are quoted frequently as well, and that's where you see how methodical and driven he was. 

From the descriptions of the races (something I tend not to enjoy in sports literature ir nonfiction, but kept my interest here), that's what it takes to be successful in rowing, methodical and driven. The Washington/U.S. team used their strength intelligently, outsmarting their opponents before outrowing them. And in the final moments of the Olympic medal race, they were driven enough to push themselves beyond their limits, and do it in perfect sync. Fuck you, Hitler. USA! USA!

Prior to reading this book, one of the few things I knew about crew was its upper class British origins. Brown focuses on the fact that Washington, and the West Coast in general, was still considered pretty rustic at this time, though Seattle was a pretty well developed city. The Washington/U.S. gold medal crew were not boys from the upper classes. There's something so American about it. So while giving the middle finger to Hitler, they were also continuing what the previous winning crews from the University of California had started, and claiming something that was once so elitist. Pocock did the same thing in his youth, showing up (but also helping) the Eaton boys on the Thames. 

I clearly was swept up in the story, because I cried when they won (even though I already knew they had). The only thing I didn't totally enjoy about this book was all the technical information about how Pocock constructed his shells. I see why it was necessary to include, it just bored me a little. Otherwise, I found this to be a solid, well-written work. I always like when I learn something new from non-fiction, and while I don't see myself putting my newfound knowledge of crew to much use, the personal stories of the winning boat and the key figures kept my interest.