The Stand by Stephen King (Standalong Wrap-up!)

Well, it's been a long summer.  Okay, that's not true.  This summer has flown by.  Really, I can't believe it's September already, nor can I believe it took me almost a full extra month beyond the official end of the Standalong to finish what is, arguably, Stephen King's most ambitious, most famous novel.  Since it's taken up so much of my time this summer, and book reviews have been at a premium around here, I'm going to attempt to write a legitimate review of it, but if you did the Standalong and you just want to check out my second half reactions, there's bullet points at the bottom of the post!

It's the early 1990s and something deadly and manmade has been unleashed upon the world.  A plague sweeps across the U.S. killing off a large portion of the population causing chaos among the living.  Soon only a seeming few far-flung survivors remain, and it becomes apparent that the killer flu isn't the only issue at hand.  Survivors find themselves haunted by dreams of a dark man who has no face but is inutterably terrifying.  Some survivors dream of an elderly black woman who seems to offer a refuge from the dark power lurking in the west.  Little do the unfortunate survivors of the plague know that there is a much larger battle yet to be fought, a battle that will determine the future of a world torn between good and evil. 

Stephen King's tour de force is a hulking novel with its extended version weighing in at over a thousand pages.  Thankfully, King's writing has such a pull and a flow to it, that despite its size, The Stand is a relatively quick read, and one that can be hard to put down.  King's depiction of the killer flu that originates in a military facility in California and sweeps the nation before anyone even has a sense of what's happening, is alternately terrifying and compelling.  Some of the best chapters in the book emanate from the spreading of the flu and the all-too-believable cover-up that follows what starts as a PR disaster and turns into an apocalyptic death march. 

However, the plague is just the tip of the iceberg, and as the relentless deaths from the flu finally slow to a trickle, King's narrative follows many of the survivors as they begin to dream and soon attempt to reassemble themselves into a society amid the wreckage.  Here, King is again at his best, following the lives of innumerable characters and managing to give each of them a distinctive personality and a fleshed out backstory.  Despite being introduced to far more characters than can be counted on two hands, readers will feel like they know each and every person that King chooses to focus on, and it will be impossible for readers not to relate to at least a few of them. 

The Stand is not without its flaws, for sure.  It's aged fairly well in general, but much of the slang gives away the fact that it is a 1970s book retooled for a 1990s audience.  Around the two-thirds mark, King's story flags and drags for a while.  The dialogue seems overdone and cheesy while the plot comes to a near standstill as all the characters arrive at a sort of planning stage.  Thankfully, it doesn't last too long, the story picks up and ends with a bang.  Numerous times in the last quarter of the book, King and his lovable, if terribly flawed cast of characters, nearly brought me to tears, and I could hardly put the book down in the race to the finish.  While I'm afraid it might not unseat my favorite Stephen King books of old, The Stand is really not to be missed.  It showcases a great American author at the top of his game, creating an epic tale of good and evil that fully probes the truth that there is no one that is truly one or the other.

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Just by way of wrapping up this whole readalong thing that I did a shoddy job of finishing on time...how about a few bullet points?  (These could be spoiler-y, so if you haven't read The Stand, look away!)

- In the end, I didn't hate Harold.  I just felt so bad for him, how even in a new world he couldn't let go of old slights long enough to embrace a new life and a new identity that hadn't been forced upon him by cruel high schoolers and his own unthinking parents.  Rather, he chose to believe that no one could ever change, that peoples' perceptions of him could never change, which leads him down a path of destruction, including his own.  I thought this was all incredibly depressing because it rang true, I mean, how hard is it to leave behind a past that has damaged you?  Too often, it's too hard.

- The whole establishment of the Boulder Free Zone and its ad hoc committe really dragged for me after the enthralling beginning to the novel with the plague unleashed and survivors regrouping.  The whole Boulder Free Zone seemed to be afflicted by a plague of a different sort - cheesy, lovey dovey dialogue on numerous occasions, mostly boring committee meetings.  It seemed like if we wanted to get from here to there a little faster, this could have been way pared down.  I read the huge version, so I wonder if it actually was in the shorter version...

- Glen Bateman is the King of the Infodump, and I actually didn't mind.  Turns out if you want to get away with infodumping in your postapocalyptic novel, all you need is a lovable, retired sociologist.  I actually felt like I learned real things from Glen Bateman's windbagging, and even though I recognized the societal information infodumping, I mostly appreciated it.

- Once Larry finally worked through all his issues, I really came to like him as a character.  I was pleased that Stu turned out to be as decent as we all hoped he was at the midpoint of the Standalong check-in.  At the end of the day, though, I think Tom Cullen and Kojak might just have been my favorite characters.

- The second half of the book definitely didn't do it for me the way the first half did, but ultimately I enjoyed reading The Stand.  I'm glad I finally did it, and it was good to revisit my love of Stephen King this summer!

Did you "Stand" this summer?  What did you think?

Top Ten Tuesday: Bookish Confessions

Everybody's got some bookish dirty laundry, right?  This week's Top Ten Tuesday topic is all about Bookish Confessions, so I get to open up my closet and take out all the bookish skeletons.  Here are all the (not so) super secrets about my reading life...

1. I don't own an e-reader... - I can't say I haven't been occasionally tempted, but I'd still rather hold a paper book in my hands than read yet more off of a screen.  I already spend far too much of my life staring at screens.  Also, see #3, I have no need of some other way to acquire more books.

2. ...or a library card.  - I haven't checked a book out of a library since I graduated from college 6 years ago.  I hate library bindings with their crinkly covers and having a deadline for reading.  I also just like owning books even if they're used, and really, a hefty part of my collection is used.  I support my local library by buying not borrowing. ;-)  I'm a library book sale hound!

3. My physical TBR pile is hovering around a thousand - Yes, really.  Will I read them all?  Will I even attempt to read them all?  I don't know.  Will I ever be able to successfully stop acquiring books I might not read for years?  All sources point to no. 

4. The shelves are double stacked, and I hate it. - But perish the thought of having to get rid of some of my babies!

5. I never read The Taming of the Shrew or A Tale of Two Cities. - Sorry, Mrs. Steiner, I did totally copy my summer reading journal off of my best friend, and badly, at that.  Thanks for not failing me out of 11th grade Honors' English.

6. I think I may be the slowest reader on the planet, if not the slowest, then at least the most distractable. - Most good book bloggers have read as many books as I've read this year by January, or February at the latest.  I work too much, have too many social occasions, and am a little bit too in love with my iPhone and my computer.  Plus, I just read really slow, much to my chagrin.

7. I'm a book monagamist. - I can't read two books at a time.  When I attempt it, I feel like I never actually finish any books, and I never seem to be able to get really absorbed in any of them.  I'm much more satisfied with my reading when I'm reading one book at a time and can be totally invested in it.

8. Blogging (and working, too!) killed the chunkster lover in me. - I used to really love a good chunkster, but you know what a slow reading book blogger reading a chunkster is?  A boring book blogger.  For example, see this summer's posts while I've been reading The Stand.  It's not exactly a pretty picture.  Plus, now that circumstances demand that I be a full-time working, functional adult, a good portion of my reading time takes place on lunch break.  Hauling a massive chunkster back and forth to work = major pain.  This is perhaps one argument that could persuade me to change #1. 

9. I'm an eater reader.  - I eat while I read.  We live in the age of multi-tasking, right?  I'm so, so careful not to make a mess, but er, every once in a great while, the fact that I eat while I read, um, shows in the pages. #shame

10. I stole my middle school library's copy of Bridge to Terabithia. - Okay, I didn't steal it.  I lost it, really couldn't find it anywhere, and paid for it.  Later I did find it, and read it again, and cried again.  If I was going to lose/steal a book from the library, this was a great "choice."

So, any bookish secrets you'd like to confess?

Loose Leafing: Good Stuff (In Pictures!)

Happy Sunday, all! 

Okay, let's be honest.  Sundays don't really make me all that happy.  By the time church is over it practically feels like it's time to go back to work, and I begin to regret all the things I didn't do or accomplish with my weekend time instead of being happy about all the things I did do, how the weather is beautiful, how the book I'm reading is the first one I've really been absorbed in in months, and how I got to spend some great time with my family.  With that in mind, I think it's time for a "good stuff" post that I so love when other people do but rarely do for myself!

 I had a nice long weekend this weekend.  I took off Friday to recover from a co-worker's vacation.  The weather was staggeringly beautiful and I spent a lot of time here...

 

 

...on our brand new porch.  This is not a great picture, but the porch is great. I've been heartily enjoying being all caught up in Glass Boys by Nicole Lundrigan while enjoying a warm (but not too warm) breeze on our sparkly new porch which still smells like freshly cut wood, which really has to be one of the best smells in the world if you try not to think about all the dead trees.  *shrugs*

 



Yesterday, I talked my parents into going with me to Knoebels, a small amusement park nearby that, despite it's somewhat modest size, is surprisingly famous because you don't have to pay to park your car or an admission fee.  We ate ice cream and french fries, played a game of mini-golf (I lost, like usual) as the sun was going down, and brought home a box of delicious fudge for a not ridiculous price.  This, a far cry from two weekends from now when I will be spending $8 (if I'm lucky) just to park my car at Hersheypark even before the hefty admission price, but Hersheypark has its perks, too, so it is what it is.  But it was a lovely evening at Knoebels.  It was a touch crowded, but it was a good-natured crowd which makes all the difference.  Do you know what I mean?

In other good stuff, I finally got to go to Baltimore a few weekends ago to see a baseball game at Camden Yards.  My dad's a longtime fan of the Oakland Athletics, so after years, actual years, of saying we were going to head down to Baltimore and take in a game, we did get to see the O's and the A's play, my dad's first time seeing his favorite baseball team play in person.  Lovely night, lovely seats...

...and a neat view from our hotel window when we woke up the next morning.

 

 

Before we headed out of the city, we took a walk over to the Baltimore Farmer's Market which lives under the I-83 overpass on Sunday mornings. There, you can get most any excellent food you can think of, plus books, plus some more or less valid life advice from some people who sell clothes out of a very funky decorated bus.  I guess they write up a new list of advice every week, so I had to capture that week's for posterity since it's limited edition life advice, after all. 

 

 



I think if you click on it, it'll get bigger and you'll be able to read it.  If not, then boy are we all going to look like idiots when we try to click on it....

Also good this week?  I'm learning to use Instagram on my phone, and trying to do part of Photo a Day August.  I'm loving it quite a lot, and it's making me look at things closer and pay attention to the world around me and so on and so on.  Plus, I just love looking at everybody's pretty pictures.  If you're on Instagram and would like to investigate my oh so very amateur attempts at photography, I'm toadacious1 on there. 

To whet your appetite (in more ways than one, perhaps), here's today's delicious dinner...Instagrammed!

 

 

So, what's good in your life lately?

Top Ten Tuesday: Best Books Since My Blogging Began

Today's Top Ten Tuesday at The Broke and the Bookish is an easy topic.  So easy, in fact, that I feel like I've made this same list several times over.  If you're a regular reader, you've probably heard me go on about these books at length, but just in case there's a person or two out there who I haven't regaled with my favorite books from the lifespan of my blog, here it goes (again).  ;-)


1. The Stolen Child by Keith Donohue - Literary fantasy about changelings and the boy they steal away to replace, but neither the changeling nor the boy can forget their pasts. It proves to be fascinating lens through which to examine memory itself.

2. City of Tranquil Light by Bo Caldwell - Caldwell writes the fictionalized story of her grandparents who were missionaries to China.  If only the "Christian Fiction" genre produced half as good Christian fiction as this book, I would be a fan!

3. After You'd Gone by Maggie O'Farrell - I love O'Farrell's style.  It's a unique unpeeling sort of style that pulls off the layers of the story one by one until suddenly you've arrived at the heart which is unexpectedly affecting.  AKA, this book made me cry like a baby.

4. How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff - What can I say?  If you can have a girl whose voice is so cleverly narrated fall in love with her cousin, and it ends with me thinking that's sweet and romantic...you must be doing something right, right?

5. The Well and the Mine by Gin Phillips - The characters in this book are so salt of the earth in such a genuine, uncheesy way that I couldn't get enough of them. 

6. The Many Deaths of the Firefly Brothers by Thomas Mullen - Depression, bank robbers, and magical realism?  It's to die for, many times, if necessary.  ;-)

7. Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer - Hasn't everybody heard the story about how I was confused after reading this on all my plane flights back from vacation and for the evening following because I read it in one big gulp and started to feel like it was actually happening?

8. The Call by Yannick Murphy - Murphy's main character in this one is a large animal vet in New England, and the story is told entirely through his journal of his daily calls to different farms until tragedy strikes and it becomes so much more.  I totally fell in love with the way he thinks out loud to himself in the entries, and couldn't help, oddly, being reminded of myself and the way I think about things. 

9. Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going - This is one of those books that I didn't mean to read when I read it.  I just started and I couldn't stop!  It's a great story of the journey of Troy who goes from suicidal to finding his place all with the help of a drug addicted young guitarist who might just need "the fat kid" more than Troy needs him.

10. Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger - Hilarious and heartbreaking, and I thought I didn't like books told in letters. 

What's the best book you've read during the lifespan of your blog?

The Bay of Foxes by Sheila Kohler

Is it so terrible, do you think, that I might have, just might have said yes to a review pitch for The Bay of Foxes simply because I fell in love with the cover that is just so right on several levels?  I mean, look at it, it cries out for reading!  Sure, the summary sounded decent, but it's the cover I really fell in love with.  Do you do such things?  Am I the only one?  Should I get serious now and write the review? ;-)

It's 1978, and Dawit has escaped prison and torture in his home country of Ethiopia only to become a destitute shadow hovering on the edges of Paris.  The well-educated son of an advisor to former Ethiopian royalty, Dawit is ill-equipped for life as a refugee in Europe where the best job he can hope for is the manual labor that he is not strong enough to do.  Haunted by memories of an idyllic childhood shattered when he grows to be a young man whose parents were killed with the falling of the monarchy, Dawit's life has declined into hunger and hopelessness, that is, until a chance encounter in a cafe with the famous author, M.

M., having heard Dawit's story and been reminded of the lost African lover of her youth, is determined to take Dawit in, and so she does.  She clothes him in her own expensive clothes, and allows him to work for her, answering her calls and her mail, until he finds that he can easily slip into her very identity.  She takes him from Paris to her summer home on the Italian Bay of Foxes, where he is reminded yet more of his homeland, and the two slip into an easy routine of writing, eating, and luxury.  But M.'s charity is not without its cost, and it's a cost Dawit finds himself unwilling to pay. However, going from poverty to luxury and back is not a journey Dawit is willing to take again, and his desperation to cling to his new life has disastrous consequences.

Kohler's writing is spare but creates just the right amount of surreality that seems to belong to Dawit and M.'s odd arrangement.  Readers can sense the rain outside the elegant apartment in Paris and feel the bright sunlight off the bay in Italy.  In Kohler's story, reality is turned slightly askew as Dawit's memories of prison and torture are held in contrast to his rather too good to be true rescue by M.  Kohler perfectly captures his twisted feelings about a life where the cost of a dinner for one could feed an apartment full of destitute refugees, gratefulness for this unexpected and unwarranted turn of good fortune, and desperation to cling to M.'s way of life without sacrificing himself to M.'s will. 

The Bay of Foxes is a story that seems impossible and possible at the same time, and it is unquestionably eerie watching as Dawit begins to transform himself into a better version of M.  There's a little of The Talented Mr. Ripley here and also a taste of Crime and Punishment.  Unfortunately, though, I wasn't blown away by this book. None of the characters are particularly likeable. Even Dawit, whose story is one of tragedy, fails to elicit the kind of sympathy one would expect.  It's a literary thriller, not fast-paced but with that slow-burning eeriness to it, and the whole situation upon which the novel is based hangs on the hairy edge of believability.  At the end of the day, though, it's Kohler's beautiful prose that seems to call paradise into existence at the same time as it plumbs the depths of the human psyche that will keep readers entranced and make The Bay of Foxes worth reading.

(Copy provided by the publisher in exchange for my honest review.  Thanks!)