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When I started reading Stephen King's The Dark Half, it felt like an early Stephen King—back when, IMHO, he could really tell a story and hadn't started on that silly, again IMHO, Dark Tower series. So I checked the publication date and, sure enough, it was 1989. Now back in the 70s and 80s I was reading every Steven King book when it came out ,in hardback. Finally though I reached the point where I decided he wrote books faster than I could read them. I guess that's when The Dark Half fell through the cracks.

Bottom line is that I like Stephen King's writing. I like his wit, and even though he can be a bit long-winded at times, I like his style. Specifics:

1) The premise behind The Dark Half is a good one. The protagonist is a writer whose most successful books were written under a pseudonym. The writer, being threatened with exposure decides to kill off his alter-ego and for the benefit of a national magazine publicizes his funeral. The alter-ego, however, is having none of this. He wants to keep on writing his bestsellers and, in an effort to do so, starts killing off people who participated in his death and funeral. And there the book begins. (BTW, King expresses his indebtedness to "the late Richard Bachman for his help and inspiration. This novel could not have been written without him." Nice touch, IMHO.

2) Often Steven King can sum up a truism about human beings and express it quite well. "Your head, Pangborn [the local policeman who covers the first murder committed by George Stark, the alter ego] had discovered, was always giving your nerves good advice they couldn't take. They said Yessir, now that you mention it, that's just as true as it can be. And then they went right on jumping and sizzling." (page 53)

3) Although Stephen King usually describes each character down to the most minute detail, he is able to sum up a character in a single sentence. "Dodie was a whore with the heart of a bank teller and the soul of an acquisitive cockroach." (page 71)

4) "He (Thad Beaumont, protagonist) sometimes believed that the compulsion to make fiction was no more than a bulwark against confusion, maybe even insanity . It was a desperate imposition of order by people able to find a precious stuff only in their minds… never in their hearts." (Pages 128-129) I'm pretty sure I agree with that.

5) One of the things I enjoy about Stephen King is his references to literature and pop culture. Most of the time I know what he's referring to, and that makes me feel smart. So, of course I like them. But there are times when I don't catch the reference. At one point in The Dark Half, King lists pseudonyms. "Mark Twain, or Lewis Carroll, or Tucker Coe, or Edgar Box." (page 165) The first two I got. The next two? No idea. Anyone know who they are?

6) Sometimes King even combines statements about the human condition and pop-culture references. Pangborn: "Not every lie springs from a conscious decision. If a man has persuaded himself is telling the truth, he can even pass a lie-detector test with flying colors. Ted Bundy did it." (page 205) I like his theory and his example.

7) "'All the times I've talked about writing,' he said. 'Hundreds of lectures, thousands of classes, and I don't believe I ever said a single word about a fiction writer's grasp of the twin realities that exist for him—the one in the real world and the one in the manuscript world.'" (Page 206) Yes! Here I am, only an infrequently published writer who can attest to the fact that when fiction writing goes well, the characters do the work. All the writer has to do is write down what they say. Also, when I'm working on two pieces at the same time, it's not infrequent the character from one story shows up in the other.

8) More references. Thad Beaumont: "if he was not to blame for George Stark, who was? Bobcat Goldthwaite? Alexander Haig?" (page 214) Anyone know of a Bobcat Goldthwaite?

9) "Together again for the first time, as the old vaudeville announcers used to say." (Page 237) I didn't know that came from vaudeville. Did you?

10) Oops! I think Mr. King got one reference wrong. "… George were to disappear again, like the crazy old man who wove straw into gold for Rapunzel." (page 259) No. Rapunzel had the long and climbable hair. Rumpelstiltskin wove straw into gold for a miller's daughter.


Words:

1) Trepanning. "… or the practice of trepanning to relieve headaches." (page 264) Dictionary.com: " to cut circular disks from (plate stock) using a rotating cutter." Or, I guess, for a headache one would cut circular discs from one's head. Don't think I've ever run into that one before. And definitely don't think I'll try it for a headache cure.

2) Pellagra. "It was the sort of blemish he associated with pellagra, which had been endemic in the deep South even into the 1960s." I've heard it before; I know it's some sort of disease, but specifically? I'll find out. "Pathology, a disease caused by a deficiency of niacin in the diet, characterized by skin changes, severe nerve dysfunction, mental symptoms, and diarrhea." Okay. I was right. At least generally.

3) Bolloxed. "The guy must have gotten the numbers bolloxed." (Page 309) Word is underlining it in red. Let's check. Dictionary.com: "to do (something) badly; bungle (often followed by up ): His interference bollixed up the whole deal." "OX" is a secondary spelling. Dictionary.com gives the primary spelling as BOLLIX.

4) Fastnesses. "… but they may have been there all the same, deep in the fastnesses of her unconscious mind…" (page 336) dictionary.com: "a secure or fortified place; stronghold." Dang! Another word I have no memory of ever running into before.

5) Insectile. "It sounds f''ing insectile." (Page 375) Insectile is another word Word doesn't recognize. Dictionary.com: "pertaining to or like an insect." Not surprising, considering what the characters were discussing.

6) Ructions. "… See if whoever got the car was off to any other ructions in there." (Page 391) Dictionary.com: "a disturbance, quarrel, or row." King's vocabulary is bigger than mine. I didn't think I'd be finding this many words to check out in a Stephen King novel.

7) Puckies. "Then drop your gun in the puckies and let's go." (page 409) Short for pockets? That's the sort of cutesy thing a King villain might say when trying to be cute and scary at the same time. Dictionary.com has no puckies but does have pockies meaning woolen gloves in a dialect in Scotland. Neither that nor my guess makes the sentence any clearer.

Bottom line: I like Stephen King's writing, particularly the older novels, and The Dark Half falls in that category. I also like King's apparent memory of him and pop-culture and of every word he's ever heard or read.

Greatest Mysteries of the Unexplained by Lucy Dongcaster and Andrew Holland was, like another book rapidly approaching the number one spot on the unread bookshelf, a birthday present. It's certainly not a book I would have picked for myself, but I read it and was occasionally interested.

Specifically:

1) At times the book found warnings in unexplained events. It presents the theory that dinosaurs may have died out because of something they themselves did that affected the climate. The book goes on to say, "The fact that the dinosaurs were most likely killed by such climate change should give us food for thought and send a shiver down our spines." (page 31) God forbid the fate of the dinosaurs should befall us. (Really?) Somewhat related, some of you may remember one of Jim Henson's last projects, a TV series entitled Dinosaur. It lasted only a season or two and when canceled had a final episode where the main character scoffs at the growing concern over the demise of a little-known bug. "What!" he wonders, "Do they think dinosaurs will become extinct?" It's always nice to be reminded of a Jim Henson project.

2) I have yet another problem related to the color system in ancient Greece and information p resented in Through the Language Glass. The author of that book debated what colors existed in ancient Greece, as well as what names had been given to those colors. His theory was that only white, black and red were in existence when The Iliad and were written. I mentioned in the review of Language Class that a professor I had in graduate school claimed the ancient Greeks thought the color yellow was funny, a theory which goes against what is presented in Language Glass. This Mysteries/Unexplained book talks about the Yellow River in China and dates it as existing somewhere between 1766 and 1121 BC. (page 94) Expedia.com dates The Iliad and The Odyssey as being written during the eighth century BC. So, what gives? The author of Language Glass was extremely scholarly. Mysteries/Unexplained is anything but. While my grad school professor was. "Curiouser and curiouser" as Alice said. during her visit Through the Looking Glass.


Problems:

1) I was disappointed that the book mentioned neither Stonehenge nor Easter Island. To me, these places exemplify things unexplained. But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they've been explained to everyone else's satisfaction. Maybe there's no longer a need to include them in books like this. Still, I wish they had been covered.

2) Stylistically the closings of each section bothered me by being horribly similar if not identical to each other. Typical ending: this is how the mysterious event or place is now; we will have to wait for the future to find out more. Sounds like a cop out to me.

3) My biggest I-can't-believe-I'm-reading-this-crap moment came when I hit the whole section on how and why the moon landing in 1969 was faked. To me, those who believe this nonsense are right up there with the birthers. (Hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes.)


Word:
1) aubergines. "In 1997, in England, several messages were discovered within the seed patterns of aubergines." (Page 131) From context, I assume it's some sort of fruit or vegetable. Let's see. Ah. It's what the British call eggplants. And, yes, I can see the seeds in an eggplant spelling out some sort of message—at least to someone who goes around looking for messages in produce.

Bottom line on the whole book: don't bother.

PS: In my review of Greatest Mysteries of the Unexplained, I forgot to cover trepanning. I first ran into trepanning in Stephen King's The Dark Half where, in my review, I defined. He had used it in connection with curing headaches, but the dictionary defined it as an instrument designed for cutting small holes in a surface or, as a verb, the action itself. Surprise! There's a whole section on trepanning in Greatest Mysteries. And, yes indeed, it's earliest meaning was a procedure used to cure headaches. In fact, it was still used early in the 20th century. I continue to be amazed at the range of stuff Stephen King knows.

Personally the trepanning section in opened up new thoughts about the short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," which was written in the 1890s. All of a sudden I find myself thinking the protagonist might have suffered an even worse fate than chewing the wallpaper and furniture in the room where she was held captive. Granted, her complaint was malaise, but had she even mentioned a headache in connection with it, she might have ended up with holes in her head.

Hooked by Les Edgerton is a how-to book on writing. His main thrust is the importance of hooking the reader with the first—or first few—sentence(s). It takes Mr. Edgerton over 200 pages to explain his point, and I believe, he could have done it in a lot less. Regardless, several pages are dog-eared. Relax. If I remember right, most of them are points I need to remember or books/short stories he interested me in reading. They're not part of the review.

I was right. Not even one dog-eared page for you guys.

Star by Peter Biskind didn't stay in my hands long enough to make it on to my currently reading tag, but here's the review.

First of all, what is Star? I cringe to admit that it's a biography of Warren Beatty.

Second, how did it ever wind up on my shelf of unreads? I had read a review that wasn't bad, and it showed up really cheap on some online store. So I bought it. When it arrived, the first thing I noticed was how thick it was. IMHO, Warren Beatty is not worth 500 plus pages. But, like with all books that make it onto the unread shelf, I figured I'd give it the usual 50-page try.

WRONG! I stopped midway down page two. Why? Let's back up to Hooked. Throughout Edgerton's continuously repeated statements on the importance of the first sentence, he did occasionally throw in pieces of writing advice, mostly dealing with an imprecise use of words. I've read advice like this before; the one that's always stayed in my mind is when some character's "eyes fell/dropped to the floor." Think about the literal meaning of those words. Grizzly, isn't it? Well, in Star I found on page 2 one of the words-can-be-misinterpreted phrases that Edgerton pointed out. "I'm in, I thought to myself…" (Star, page 2) Edgerton's take—with which I agree (although I never thought of it)—is that if you're thinking, who else besides yourself could you be thinking to? And that gave me an excuse to stop reading Star on only the second page.

The Short Life and Happy Times of the Shmoo by Al Capp (and edited by Harlan Ellison) was fun. The intro by Ellison was interesting, if a bit wordy and convoluted, specifically one section where he described looking for and finding the New York offices of the American Communist Party. No, I take that back. It wasn't convoluted because one danger of the Shmoo might also be a danger of communism. Whatever. If you'd like the connection illustrated more clearly, I'd suggest reading Ellison's introduction. No, he doesn't explain it. The connection is there; it's up to the reader to put it together. Truthfully, I didn't see it until five sentences ago.

And the rest of the book? It contains Li'l Abner's Shmoo series, about which I learned a couple things. Did any of you know the Shmoo came about as an aid to help the men run faster on Sadie Hawkins Day? That was news to me, as was the dark side of the Shmoos themselves.

Bottom line: Try it; you'll like it. Reading about Shmoos is a pleasant way to spend an hour or so.

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Al Capp propagandized for the Vietnam War in his cartoons.

His mildly amusing drawings cannot erase my loathing for the man.

I'm much less enamored of him as an adult than I was as a child. Then, I saw his stock characters as amusing. Now, while reading the smattering of Shmoo strips, I found them distorted and offensive.

I do, however, have fond memories of Lower Slobvia. And the Shhmoos themselves, disregarding the political statement Al Capp was making.

For most of Jill McCorkle's The Cheer Leader, I thought I'd actually give the book an A. And then it ended. Badly. I am basing this evaluation on something I read in Les Edgerton's Hooked. One of his writing theories, which makes sense to me, is that structurally a book starts with what he labeled the "inciting incident." Other actions make up the plot. But underneath all of these actions, he believes there needs to be a "story-worthy" event, which is what the protagonist needs to come to understand about himself/herself. I thought The Cheer Leader was going to illustrate this theory beautifully. Early on there'd been a reference to a scary event that the heroine, Jo Spencer, had experienced while staying at an overnight camp. She'd gone to the latrine and something that she didn't want to remember occurred on her way there. Throughout the book she makes bad romantic choices, she starts drinking, and at college she starts throwing her education away. Quite often there is mention of whatever had happened at that camp. So there I was, happily reading along, expecting the end to be when the scary moment was revealed and it would explain Jo's behavior to her and to me. However, her realization at the end was that she was not seeing the value of her own life as she was living it. What a letdown!

But I still have several good things to say about the whole book:

1) The overall structure is fantastic. In the first part of the book Jo is looking at and commenting on pictures from her childhood. The second part moves into first person as Jo describes her life and disastrous romance during high school. The third section, where she is emotionally breaking down, switches to the third person with Jo as the point-of-view character. In each section Jo's thinking becomes more tortured and moves further away from reality. I was looking forward to an ending where the camp event was revealed, and Jo and I would understand the reasons for her destructive behavior. Alas, it wasn't to be.

2) I fell in love with Jill McCorkle's writing early in the book where she describes her mother feeding her baby brother. "… Mama's spoon suspended on the invisible railroad track, her lips pushed forward in a 'choo' while I sit helplessly unable to control what is about to happen, unable to control the story that goes with this picture. I have felt that way many times. (page 5) I liked the description of the pretend train moving along its pretend tracks. But, on this the second reading of that sentence, I have to admit that maybe I was looking for the wrong thing at the end. Maybe the end is Jo's acceptance that she can't have control. Makes the book's structure more logical, but I still like my idea better.

3) In the first part of the book a picture of Jo with her second grade class leads to a discussion of George Washington. "I have heard another story about him that is shunned in the school room. I have heard that he died of syphilis and pneumonia the former which he got from someone other than Martha and the latter which he got on his way to see the carrier of the former." (page 15) How can anyone not like that second sentence? Granted, I had to read a couple times before I got the full meaning, but after that, I was hooked. It's sad that later on that same page there are references to a time in her life when people would not tell her how bad a shape she was in. Again, I was led to believe that something major must have caused a breakdown, and, again, I felt cheated at the end.

4) Good writing and yet another tease: "That night when going to sleep beside snoring, semi-sexually active Beatrice, I had no idea what was ahead, all of the things that would reduce worries over padded bras and small breasts into trivial matters. … I was so protected by my ignorance about a lot of things. This is why Andy (the youngest sibling) was able to sit for years, happy as a lark with torn and tattered Huzzy (a stuffed snake); he did not even know that she was tattered and torn and I did not know that people can get that way even without knowing it." (page 42) Good writing, but I no longer trust her plotting.

5) I identified with the following: "I felt like I needed to … readedicate my life or something equivalent, though I had never been a believer in rededication. If everything that they told you when you dedicated the first time was true then there would be no cause to redo it." (page 138) Have I mentioned in any previous post my teenage experience with the religious camp? I went with two friends for a fortnight's stay, and while there was saved 20-some times and dedicated my life to Christ probably about close to ten. Sadly, I didn't have Jo Spencer's faith. Nor have I ever had a complete emotional breakdown—except for maybe when I was attending that camp.

6) I like authors who play with language. "Too, I discovered that love can be a very depressing thing. It maketh thou heart sick with grief, it maketh thou feel like s***." (page 138) Cool, huh?

7) Immediately after Jo's graduation program, she says goodbye to Beatrice, a grade-school friend who had turned dweeb and desperate in high school. "… When I walked out of that school for the last time I expected it to fall down and crumple behind me instead, it seemed that something had crumpled up inside of me and I didn't even remember having felt that way until I went home for Thanksgiving,. and found that Beatrice had slit her wrists and bled like a stuck pig." (page 158) Great transitional sentence. How sad that the author is again teasing. Of course Beatrice doesn't die. Having Jo deal with something like that would have taken the writer onto really thin ice. Guess I should've seen in that sentence a clue to the actual ending.

8) Jo is thinking about The Bell Jar, which she finds "terribly amusing. It came as a terrible shock when the professor said that Esther Greenwood was crazy… nobody wants to believe that someone who is not crazy would try to kill themselves, that they would have a good reason. Who knows what crazy is anyway? The reading is very good and that is why she doesn't mind saving kicks for a big event when one comes along." (page 169) Sigh. If only Ms. McCorkle's book had had a big event.

Bottom line: I read The Cheer Leader because I had been impressed by one of Jill McCorkle's stories in a Best American Short Stories collection, Right now I have a collection of her short stories on the unread shelf, and I'll probably try one more of her novels. Most likely that will be the end of my McCorkle-reading phase—unless that second novel is good all the way through. Regarding The Cheer Leader specifically, I strongly recommend the first three fourths.

100 Strangest Mysteries by Matt Lamy is the other birthday present I mentioned earlier, the companion piece to The Greatest Mysteries of the Unexplained. I'll admit that I only skimmed this one. On the plus side, it did cover Stonehenge and Easter Island. What I read there wasn't entirely new, but I did learn that Stonehenge is only one of several stone circles found throughout England. I guess Stonehenge has better PR.

Additionally, I found the following sections interesting—although not interesting enough to warrant pages being dog-eared: the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis (yet another "civilization" that might have been done in by its own progress), Amityville, El Dorado, the Big Bang theory, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Stigmata, Ouija boards, Dracula, Jack the Ripper, Voodoo and Zombies.

At this point I feel pretty sure that I've read all I ever want to about the world's oddities, explained or unexplained.