Books

I just finished reading The Black House, by Stephen King and Peter Straub. I've had it for awhile, and it just sat in the little cardboard package from the SFBC after I set it aside one afternoon until I realized there was still something IN there and pulled it out. It's the sequel to The Talisman, a personal fave as far as King goes [I've only read Straub's Ghost Story, which IIRC freaked me out up one side and down the other].

I don't keep up with King anymore, and I'm not sure why, but as far as horror or terror goes, he's pretty much the ONLY author I've read much of at all. No Lovecraft, and precious little Poe. So, I've got Firestarter and The Dead Zone and books from that era, and nothing recent. Anyway, The Talisman is a great book, and The Black House is almost not a sequel. I personally think you need to have read it to get everything out of House, but, one takes place 20 years after the other -- and thus, though the main character is still Jack Sawyer -- he's a different person now, and they're completely different books set in very different venues, with different casts. There's some tie-in with The Gunslinger stories of King's as well, which I haven't read but I do believe I will, now.

So, I would say, if you read Talisman, whether you liked it or not, try The Black House. There are times when it is lyrical and beautiful, and there are sections that kept me up late at night reading, terrified, having to know what was going to happen next, and there's the section that had me in tears -- more than one, honestly.

Give 'em a try.

Barchester

Now, try not to blow a mental gasket or anything, but I'm also reading Barchester Towers, by Anthony Trollope. Already read The Warden, the first of Trollope's 'Barchester' novels. I've been on a kick, recently, reading stuff like Agnes Grey, Tess of the d'Ubervilles, Orlando. Stuff like that, what I generically refer to as "Victorian novels", which is probably a misnomer. I got in the habit actually during a particularly hellish software project, and then wound up LOSING MY COPY of Middlemarch at an airport, about 2 chapters in. Anyways. I love 'period' movies, and figured once I'd gotten used to the more verbose writing style, that I'd love 'period' novels, too. I feel like The Black House might be the start of a run of more contemporary work, along with all the SF and Fantasy mags I've been getting subscriptions to [the better to submit stories to, my dear], but reading Austen and the Brontes, Thomas Hardy and Thackeray, and now Trollope, has been just great, and I still have the rest of Trollope's Barchester books, and George Eliot, and much much more ground to cover. Books books books! Gotta love 'em.