Re-Reads Redux

 

Over the past two or three years, I find myself more and more revisiting books I encountered in my teens and twenties. Some by choice, others by chance. It’s not unlike reconnecting with an old friend after two or three decades of living separate lives. I’ve done this twice in my life, via Facebook friends from the past, and one time was very nostalgic and fulfilling, while the other was kinda cringy and uncomfortable.

 

Anyway, I enjoy the tension of whether or not I’ll experience the same feelings I had upon the first read through a work. Or, if the book was something assigned to me in school and I didn’t get The Message back then, perhaps I would upon a re-read? Either way, whether a fantastic re-read or a certified dud, I find myself an enthusiastic re-reader.

 

Off the top of my head, I’ve re-read at least 24 books since 2023. Most have been rewarding; few have failed the re-read test. If I had to categorize them, it’d be something like this:

 

Great

 

My Tom Clancy re-adventure: Without Remorse, Patriot Games, The Hunt for Red October, The Cardinal of the Kremlin, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears, Debt of Honor, Executive Orders

 

Watership Down (Richard Adams)

 

Moby Dick (Herman Melville)

 

Half of my Dean R. Koontz re-reads: The Bad Place, Dragon Tears

 

Conquerors from the Darkness (Robert Silverberg) – childhood nostalgia!

 

The Grayspace Beast (Gordon Eklund) – childhood nostalgia!

 

Okay … Just Okay

 

The War of the Worlds (H.G. Wells) – had some great parts, though

 

The Once and Future King (T.H. White) – also had some great parts

 

Floating Dragon (Peter Straub)

 

The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway) – still didn’t “get it”

 

The other half of my Dean R. Koontz re-reads: Cold Fire, Midnight

 

Disappointing

 

Altered States (Paddy Chayefsky)

 

The Wolfen (Whitley Strieber)

 

Jaws (Peter Benchley)

 

Imajica (Clive Barker)

 

I mention all this because a few months back I decided that Stephen King’s It would be 2025’s Halloween read. Since the book is about 1,150 pages long, I figured it would be best to start early, September 1st. Problem is, I’m now just shy of 200 pages in. Yep, still a page-turner. I’ll probably get it done – and review it – in about three weeks or so. Which gives me another pleasant dilemma: Do I give another Stephen King a go, or move on to the next book waiting patiently in the On Deck circle. If I do another King, should it be one I haven’t read since high school (I’m thinking The Shining) or one I’ve never read (Under the Dome, since I had a lot of fun watching the corny series with my girls when they were little)? Or pick up The Three Musketeers, staring balefully down upon me as a write these words?

 

Well, let’s just wait for the spirit to move me. Come October 1st, I might be in the thick of a book I’m currently unaware of at the moment. We’ll see.

 

Happy Fall Reading!

Tsondoku

 

 

We’ve had some unions out west return from a two-week strike (and a couple of sympathy strikes) and I spent the morning taking care of that from my humble accounting end. I’m waiting to hear back from a couple of people and am otherwise caught up, if not slightly ahead of the curve, going into the final third of May. So I thought to myself, sitting here alone in my home office, listening to the lawnmowing going on in the park across the street, “This would be an opportune time to compose a short blog post.”

 

Only problem is, not much is going on.

 

Yeah, there’s politics (Trump), there’s religion (Leo), there’s personal familial stuff common to all families that I don’t go into here on this semi-anonymous site. We’ve had a crappy weekend, including tornadoes last night and predicted ’nadoes this evening, but so far there’s been no damage to house or property, save for a few extra leaves blown on my yard. I did go outside at ten p.m. amidst the wailing of the howling storm sirens, hoping to glimpse a swirling mass of blackness post-lightning strike, but did not save for some highly evil-looking clouds resembling a demonic claw reaching down to the ground in the southwestern distance. Brilliant streaks of lightning hurled from Zeus himself, smashing the ground with what must have sounded like an atomic bomb explosion to Oppenheimer and his bros, convinced me that it would be best to huddle inside on the ground floor with the family.

 

Then I turned my head and saw my On-Deck pile. These are books I’ve bought that I just haven’t found the time, energy, or circumstance to read. Like teachers appearing when you are ready for them, I find the same is often true with books.

 

Also, I’ve suffered all my adult life from “tsondoku,” if indeed that can be considered a form of suffering. “Tsondoku” is the Japanese word for collecting and accumulating books meant to be read at some uncertain point in the future. It is not neglect, but a weird kind of joy, knowing that there is always a book at hand, ready to unlock some corner of the universe for you, to thrill you, inspire you, inform you, change you, or merely distract you.

 

Here are some of the choice tomes sitting in my half-dozen closely situated On-Deck piles:

 

The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge (2002) by Michael Punke. The book which the beautiful and harrowing Leonardo di Caprio moved was based. Originally purchased January 2020.

 

The Thin Red Line (1962) by James Jones. Bought in March 2021 while I was still in the midst of my World War II tinkering.

 

Being and Nothingness (1956) by Jean-Paul Sartre. One day I’ll get to it, if only to beat the depression out of myself when I find myself blanketed in it. Bought back in October 2018.

 

The Winds of War (1971) by Herman Wouk. Bought August 2015 at a thrift store in Hilton Head for a buck or two. Pre-dates my World War II interest; I just always liked Wouk since I read him in English class in Middle School.

 

The Way of Kings (2010) by Brandon Sanderson. Bought in July of 2020. Trying to break into some non-nauseating modern fantasy in search of a compelling universe to fall into. Interesting but not addicting; I’ve tried it twice over the past five years but only got as far as page 70 on both attempts.

 

The Prophecies of Nostradamus (1973) by Erika Cheatham. Schlocky and non-scholarly interpretations of the prophecies of Michel de Nostradame. Bought in tandem with a better work in May 2023. I’ll get to it eventually. I enjoyed stuff like this as a kid and its always nostalgic fun to revisit now and then.

 

Plus about ten books on Catholicism, three on Buddhism, two Robert Ludlum spy hardcovers, a handful of science fiction paperbacks, four tomes on World War II (plus a fifth I want to re-read – but that’s an encyclopedia in itself), two books on the Roman Empire, and four more on philosophy. And those are the ones I can see. That’s about 35 books. Still have a couple boxes packed away in storage, so the total tsondoku Hopper has could range upwards of 60-70 books. I’ll have to consider these for 2026; this year’s all “booked” right up to New Year’s Eve.

 

Happy Reading!

May Mid-Month

 

What a hectic month it’s been!

 

Summer is here already in northeast Texas. Temps already hovering in the 90s. The days are lengthening, with darkness creeping up around 8:45 every night. My grass is growing with a vengeance after an extremely wet pseudo-spring. So I’ve been mowing every weekend, along with weeding, mulching, and hedge-clipping.

 

But it’s more than the outdoor chores that keep me busy. The wife had a short trip to Austin earlier this week, making me Dog Lord and Mr. Mom. I’ve been navigating a stressed-out Patch with her AP finals the past ten days. Little One comes and goes (and I’m the chauffeur), staying with us earlier in the month to interview and obtain a job at a day-care/summer camp place in town, and a few days ago moving out of her dorm with my help. We’ve been rooting for the Stars in the Stanley Cup playoffs and all the stress that entails. They’re the equivalent of the Eli-era Giants or the ’15-’16 Mets, alternately brilliant and abominable, and you never know which team’ll show up. Work gives me little reprieve, especially with the overload of traffic, traffic lights, and construction getting to it. About the only oasis of sanity in my life this month has been that cold NA beer in the shade before a freshly mown backyard. Oh, and reading.

 

I’m a creature of habit, and my lifelong hobby of immersive reading is no exception. Lately I decided to install a new habit – that of reading through the Gospels after every Easter. I did so a few weeks back, and am in the process of re-reading them a second time. With dedication you could knock out Mark in an evening, or the longer Matthew, Luke, or John in two or three days. Me, leisurely reading about a half-hour a night, found it takes two weeks to read through all four.

  

I also scratched off a bucket list item, The Confessions by St. Augustine. I found myself enjoying his incessant questioning (a trait I find in myself) and his spiritual awakening during the first half of the book, but found his philosophical musings in the latter half – on Spirit, time, form, creation – interesting but not riveting. I have come to the realization that I am not, at this stage of my life, interested in philosophy. Or perhaps other things are now more important to me than the love of wisdom, for I have found it – rather, it has been under my nose the whole time. Regardless, as I get older, my patience for non-productive activities is sharply declining.

 

But back to books. I think I have the rest of the year plotted out. Care to indulge me? OK!

 

I have finally returned to Tolkien. My plan is to read through his works within his story chronology. Starting with The Silmarillion (I’m already 30 pages in), then moving to The Children of Húrin, The Fall of Gondolin, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, then my battered copy of Unfinished Tales. With J.E.A. Tyler’s Complete Tolkien Companion at my side. The time is right, and I am right there. This should yield a fun, nostalgic summer for me. By my rough calculations, this will take me up to Labor Day.

 

September will bring, again, another turn for nostalgia. In the summer of 1989 me and a buddy read through Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is possibly the funniest four-book trilogy I’ve ever read. I mean, laugh out loud funny. Have not touched it since. I picked up a single-volume omnibus an untold time ago (it might predate my children). It should be a quick read, and I should gulp down the whole thing in a month. This should make September a happy month, as it should be, being the month of my birthday and those of Little One and Patch.

 

For my October/Halloween “horror” reading I am going to (re)turn to Stephen King. Yes, he has morphed into a loathsome and cringy troll with his leftist politics, much like DeNiro. However, just as I can (barely) watch a DeNiro movie with the man’s clueless second-hand embarrassment not affecting the performance (the Mrs. and I watched Heat a few weeks ago), I am hoping to re-read King’s magnum opus It with the same bit of authorial dissociation. It was one of my favorite reads as a teen/twentysomething, when I was in my horror phase. I read it last in 1987, and, like The Lord of the Rings, it holds a lot of nostalgia for me. I remember where I was during various portions of the novel. I have not read any King in over twenty years, so I am testing to see if I can still enjoy his writing, specifically It on a second reading. I think it might be a blogworthy topic.

 

My Thanksgiving reading will return to Dickens. About a dozen years ago I listened to about an hour of The Pickwick Papers during my commutes back and from work. I soon realized that the serialized novel required the printed page to be fully enjoyed, and put it on the Acquisitions List. Well, last weekend I found an aged, absolutely beautiful hardbound volume in my local library, and this thousand-page tome called and cried out to me. This is what I will read in November and the early part of December.

 

Finally, I have a neat SF paperback from the fantastic Robert Silverberg, of whom I recently blogged about. It’s called Roma Eterna, and is an alternate-history pastiche of novellas that falls under the most classic of alternate-history scenarios: what if the Roman Empire never fell? The cover boasts a scenic view of a Roman city-scape, stone and marbled columns and arches and all, with a rocket ship launching off in the distance. I was instantly hooked.

 

Well, that’s what’s up with middle-aged Hopper. Negotiating the stresses of life with his simple enjoyments of the printed page. Along with the grooved record and the electrified guitar, the walked path, the lifted weight, the – oh, enough of this. Enjoy!

 

An SF Similarity

 

I was thinking a bit about yesterday’s post regarding the stagnant state of silver screen science fiction in 2025. From what I’ve heard and read, there’s a slow recognition from Hollywood that the excesses of the past decade or so need to be curtailed in order to make a profit. Dial back on the DEI, the wokeness, the girl bosses, the Mary Sues, the political and cultural agenda hidden and not-so-hidden in every movie … perhaps that would put more viewers in theater seats or at least clicking on the streaming services and watching until the end.

But do I think a true change of heart is at hand? A return to the golden years of the 80s and 90s for science fiction action flicks?

No. Not really.

The phenomenon parallels nicely with the 2025 papal conclave set to commence on May 7. In that case, a lot of Catholics – in fact, a “silent majority” I would contend – are kinda frustrated with the direction Francis had guided the Church over the past dozen years. Since 2013 Francis, full of modernist ideas, had attempted to change millennia of Church teaching to varying degrees and varying successes, through the use of papal documents containing potentially heretical ideas, off-the-cuff airplane interviews where ideas contrary to the Faith were uttered, and suppression of traditional catholic orders, priests, and bishops.

So I think Hollywood has about the same chance of righting its course as does the Catholic Church. Dark times ahead, but I’d love to be proved wrong. Time will tell, I suppose.

* * * * * * *

But if the film studios do in fact toss out their enforced and often unpalatable agendas, may I offer a suggestion?

Mine the works of Robert Silverberg. And in doing so, be faithful to his stories and characters.

In 2017 I read a half-dozen Silverberg novels, and perhaps another half-dozen in the years before, going way back to my childhood. His tales age well. The characters all have fascinating backstories and dialogue is natural in revealing innermost thoughts and advancing the plot. There’s always a compelling science fiction-y dilemma, and a pinch of existential horror tossed in. I can honestly say I’ve never read a bad Robert Silverberg story.

Not sure what he’s up to now, at age 90, but he’s said to have retired from writing in 2015. His last published novel was in 2003, and the following year he was voted a Science Fiction Grandmaster by the Science Fiction Writers Association. He first was published in 1955, so there are 60 years of material for screenwriters to peruse – over 500 works. Perhaps they have reached out and he’s rejected every offer. Couldn’t and wouldn’t blame him. But what a treat it would be to a fan of legitimate SF if one of his novels made it to the big screen in a faithful adaptation.

 

Here are seven reviews of Robert Silverberg novels, for those who may be interested:

 

Downward to the Earth (1970)

“… an SF-stylized take on Kipling … a ‘snake milking station’ … a deranged yet undoubtedly charismatic man named Kurtz (enjoyed the reference!)”

 

Kingdoms of the Wall (1992)

“… some interesting speculative dialogue, bits of horror, neat confrontational characterization, even an M. Night Shyamalan twist towards the ending …”

 

Lord Valentine’s Castle (1980)

“… this is going to sound a bit loopy, but – I think I just spent a year on another planet …”

 

The Majipoor Chronicles (1982)

“Majipoor truly comes alive – and it is a wonderful world. Dangerous, yes, amoral, often, but so lifelike and real, more real to me than, say, Australia or China or the African continent.”

The Book of Skulls (1971)

“What would you do, see, study, experience, master, if you would live forever without having to taste death?”

 

Tom O’Bedlam (1985)

“… something very strange begins to happen. It starts with Tom – dreams of distant worlds, lush green worlds, worlds with multiple suns in the skies, then dreams of the inhabitants of these worlds, ‘eye’ creatures, ‘crystalline’ creatures, horned giants and flying ethereal things …”

 

Nightwings (1969)

“… translucent bodies soaring in the twilit skies … fortune-tellers who foretell the present … starstones to decipher the will of the Will … and a man with his back to the wall who sells out mankind …”

 

Bonus recommended books (but not reviewed on the Hopper):

   The Face of the Waters (1991)

   Conquerors from the Darkness (1965)

   At Winter’s End (1988)

   The New Springtime (1990)

   Planet of Death (1967)

   A Time of Changes (1971)

Multiple Re-reads

 

Thinking about how I’m currently traversing my third go-round with Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, I began musing on how many other multiple re-reads I’d done.

 

First off, it’s good to re-read a good book; it’s an excellent idea to re-read an excellent book. The better the book, the more profitable a re-read should be. For the longest time, say, from about 2000 to 2020, I had little interest in re-reading books, save for childhood faves. Instead I cast as far and wide a net as possible, especially the years when I fancied myself an up-and-coming slash potential author. Occasionally I would do deep dives into certain authors’ bibliographies. But since the Wu Flu, I’ve kinda grown disgusted and dissatisfied with a lot of stuff out there. Most of the stuff out there. So much so that if it’s a nonfiction topic I’m exploring and it’s at all possible, I choose something before 1980. Something before 1965’s even better. Less chance the material is infected by certain mind viruses. This feeling applies equally to the fiction that I’ve tentatively considered of late.

 

That’s one reason why re-reads are a great idea. Another is the nostalgia factor – what were you doing, feeling, being when you first encountered the particular book. What was going on peripherally in your life. Yet another is the technical knowledge you’d reinforce if we’re talking nonfiction, and the degree you’d assimilate literary technique if it’s fiction in front of you. Yet another factor, similar, is that books meet you where you are. You change, and the book changes to meet you. Wonderful books I’ve read as a kid failed to leave an impression on me as an adult; some books that were meh to me as a young man floored me in my middle ago; and vice versa. Still another reason is that you always – always – see something new and exciting in later re-reads. Something fresh and different always jumps out at you. Like revisiting a classic film periodically throughout the years.

 

Why would you only see Paris, the Grand Canyon, or the Alaskan glaciers once and only once if you had the means and opportunity? Do we not speak to our friends on a regular basis? Even better for long-lost ones, to re-connect? If we enjoy skiing, biking, playing tennis, chess, you name it, we never just do it once and say, “Well, that was fun. Never again. I’ll just savor the memory.” Just so with re-reading.

 

All right, enough of that. That’s where my headspace is at the moment. I wholeheartedly encourage you to re-read the great books you have read earlier in your life. Trust me, it’s worth it.

 

What have I re-read multiple times?

 

I’m such a reading nerd that I have been tracking all the books I’ve read over the course of my life. Currently, give or take a dozen or so forgotten in the fog of age, I’ve read just shy of 1,300 books over just shy of 50 years.

 

92 of those books I’ve read more than once. That’s only 7 percent.

 

Of those re-reads, care to guess which one book I’ve read the most?

 

Easy. Lord of the Rings. I’ve read the trilogy five times (last time being 2021). But technically, the book I’ve read the most is The Fellowship of the Ring, at six times, since I revisited it in the summer of 1994 but did not proceed to the other books in The Lord of the Rings (band, college, and a girlfriend all conspired to make it difficult to continue).

 

Two books I’ve read four times each:

   The War of the Worlds, by H.G. Wells (once as a kid in the 70s, then again in the 90s, in 2015 as an audiobook, and finally for Halloween 2023).

   The Life of Christ, by Bishop Fulton Sheen (once in the late 90s, and then three times [!] in 2015)

 

Nine books I’ve read three times each:

   The Hobbit, by Tolkien

   Moby Dick, by Herman Melville

   Watership Down, by Richard Adams

   and then five science fiction paperbacks –

      Red Planet, by Robert Heinlein

      To Die in Italbar, by Roger Zelazny

      The Grayspace Beast, by Gordon Eklund

      The Colors of Space, by Marion Zimmer Bradley

      The Spinner, by Doris Piserchia

      Red Tide, by D. D. Chapman and Deloris Lehman Tarzan

 

The remaining 80 or so read only twice are too numerous to list, but I will note the ones that I could see another future re-read, pushing them into the vaunted and respected “Threepeat” category:

 

   The Silmarillion, by J.R.R. Tolkien

   The Children of Hurin, by J.R.R. Tolkien

   The Inferno, by Dante

   Watch the Skies!, by Curtis Peebles

   A Voyage to Arcturus, by David Lindsay

   Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens

   Conquerors from the Darkness, by Robert Silverberg

   Foucault’s Pendulum, by Umberto Eco

   In Dubious Battle, by John Steinbeck

 

Not sure what my next re-read will be, but I have an omnibus edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams behind me as I write this; that seems to be probably the finest candidate at the moment (it would be a second re-read, my first encounter with them being the late 80s).

2025 Reading Plan

 

 

Over the holidays we had a pipe break in the wall between the master bedroom and the storage space beneath the stairs going up to the second floor of our home.

 

This decided my Reading Plan for 2025.

 

I originally thought I’d read my way through the Great Books collection I inherited a two decades ago. I tried Herodotus, and failed. I tried Plutarch, and failed. I started getting worried. I pulled out Augustine, Cervantes, even Boswell, and was repelled by each in turn like similar poles of a magnet.

 

What was going on?

 

I’ve learned over the years that a book comes to you when the time is right. Kinda like that saying that the teacher appears when the student is ready. Books are teachers, of that I have no doubt, and I guess I’m not ready for the intellectual rigor and focus required to get though these Great Books. Or rather, I have other pressing duties and obligations first to fulfill before I sit down before a roaring fire and journey with Herodotus through the ancient world, or tilt at windmills with Don Quixote.

 

So what does all this have to do with a burst pipe?

 

Well, we had to remove some boxes from the storage room so the plumber could get in, cut out part of the wall, and do his plumbing magic to the fractured pipe (it actually was a slow leak, more like a drip that must’ve been dripping for several weeks). Two of the boxes contained books packed during our move from New Jersey nearly four years ago. A lot of those books were from my On Deck piles. Most, if not all, I haven’t read. Those books, predominantly history and physics/math fiction and nonfiction, had instantly become my 2025 Reading Plan.

 

I’m starting off with two Civil War books that the Mrs. had bought me for my birthday back in 2020. There are also some WW2 doorstops, four WW2 novels, and a book on the Crusades. Since I like to juggle two books at a time, I’m also working my way through a book on particle physics. There are two others I found on quantum mechanics, and – wow! – a Douglas Adams Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy omnibus! All four books of the Hitchhiker trilogy in one hardcover! I read these books in the summer of 1989 with a buddy, and what a fun read that was. Truly. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy could be the funniest book(s) I ever read.

 

I decided to be laid back after a somewhat rigid 2024 of reading (such as Tom Clancy books in story chronological order, or Dean Koontz books in the order I read them as a kid). Now, once I finish a book, history or science, I’ll see what one jumps in my hand next. Could be a switch to fiction. Dunno. Whatever I’m ready for, well, that will be what I read next. But I do want to get to the Hitchhikers books in the spring, when it starts getting a little warmer out.

 

I did order three paperbacks on, of all things, the history of Buddhism, thanks to some deep dives into meditation and mindfulness I’ve done recently. They were, however, erroneously delivered to my daughter’s mailbox at college. So when she comes back home next, in two or three weeks, I’ll toss those books onto the “Storage Room Box” pile and get to them, too, before spring.

 

Happy laid-back reading, all!

 

N.B. For those who think I always have my nose in a book, I read about an hour a day. I do not watch TV regularly, save for some hockey games here and there, a weekly movie with Patch and a weekly SF movie over the weekend while the ladies are out, and maybe a show here and there with the Mrs. So I basically read during the time most of my family and friends are watching TV.

 

Return to Koontzville

 

So last month I re-read a bunch of Dean R. Koontz novels – or Dean Koontz, as he goes by since I was actively reading him. More like I just read them, minus the “re”, as something like 90-95 percent of the plot, characters, and specific scenes seemed new and fresh to me, since they’ve been long misfiled in my memory. Four novels I burned through, all originally read between 1989 and 1993 – the last over 31 years ago, when I was but a young innocent lad. Since that ’93 Koontz I’ve put away around 980 more books by my reckoning, but who’s counting?

 

It was an experiment in the same spirit as my Tom Clancy re-reads earlier this year. Those nine monstrous doorstops of Jack Ryan took me five months to slog through, but, truth be told, that slog was an extremely enjoyable ride down nostalgia lane. Would the Koontz experiment have the same result?

Yes and no.

 

I put away four novels in 32 days. Each was around 360 pages, so I averaged 45 pages a day, so, yes, they were page-turners. One took about 12 days and the other three took less than a week. As usual, the closer I got to the end of a novel, the faster those pages burned through my hands.

 

Here’re the synopses, in reading order:

(minor spoilers)

 

Midnight (1989) … My first foray into Koontzville. My buddy, the horror aficionado who got me into Stephen King in high school, recommended this to me and I remember reading it while still living at home with my parents – and being floored by it. Couldn’t put it down, and was utterly fascinated with the main twist(s). What appears to be werewolves haunting a quiet, cozy seaside town turns out to be some evil nanotechnology run amok, and Koontz pushes it to its ultimate regression. A sinister and warped genius of a bad guy versus an FBI agent and the sister of the first victim isolated in the town and being hunted. First novel I think I read where computers really come into play.

 

The Bad Place (1990) … Again read at my parents’ house. This was a crazy one about an insanely psychotic family of psychics with teleportation ability versus a husband-and-wife private eye team. Gory, weird and surreal. How do you fight something with godlike powers? (more on that down below). A nasty journey through the past provides a plausible explanation for how the psychos were bred. A lot of colorful side characters, too many of whom meet brutal ends. Great ending. This was my favorite Koontz back then, and after the re-read still remains my favorite.

 

Cold Fire (1992) … This was read in my apartment before I returned to college. Didn’t remember much of it, save for that it was a much occluded mystery. A man seems to be called by God to be here or there at a moment’s notice to save the life of an insignificant person. During one such seemingly random event, a (naturally unattached attractive) female reporter sees this happen and begins hunting around into the man’s past. They meet on an ill-fated plane and fall in love, and fall into the mission of continuing these rescues and trying to find out why they happen. Especially since something evil has entered both their dreams and is slowly making inroads into waking reality. A mystery involving a windmill, a few misdirections, and before we know it we’re questioning whether there are aliens or demons or who-knows-what puppeteering the man for unknown purposes. (Though I guessed the true reason rather quickly – rare for a Koontz novel.)

 

Dragon Tears (1993) … Didn’t remember much of this, including whether or not I liked it – but it turned out to be the gem of this re-read session. Two cops (male and female, naturally, and attracted to each other, check) stop a random shooter at a burger joint and find themselves … ready for it … sit down … they find themselves inexplicably being stalked by a god-like entity who can not only stop time but wants to end the cops lives in the most brutal fashion imaginable, as the male cop finds out when he checks on a friend later that day. The entity is called “Tick Tock”, since he gives an ultimatum to his victims in hours, and the clock begins ticking immediately. This had the best surprise as to the origin of Tick Tock – I literally slapped my forehead and grinned at the sneakiness of Koontz’s writing ability.

 

My grades:

   Midnight – B+

   The Bad Place – A+

   Cold Fire – B

   Dragon Tears – A+

 

Bottom line is I enjoyed the Koontz re-reads, but noticeably less than the Clancy re-reads. Could be ’cuz horror is not really my thing anymore (but, then again, neither are techno thrillers) save once-a-year at Halloween. Could be ’cuz my memory skewed overly positive on the first-time reads, so no re-read could ever match up. I dunno. But, like Clancy, I don’t think I will revisit Koontz again. (Man, the finality of that statement kinda hits me weird, no?)

 

Would I recommend? Yes! If you are into old-school horror and want an alternative to Stephen King, check him out. He can be gross, he can be gory, he can be formulaic, but he is always highly imaginative and always surprising. I think the sweet spot for reading Koontz is the late teens. Maybe a senior in high school. I read him in my early to mid-twenties, and it worked just as well. Unfortunately I don’t know anything about 21st-century Dean R., but just about anything he wrote between 1980 and 1993 is worth your investment in time, especially since they’re all page-turners of varying degree.

 

Remember,

 

Koontz : King :: Beatles : Rolling Stones

 

Dean Koontz

 

So I decided to end my year re-reading some of the novels of Dean R. Koontz.

 

I had such a great time re-reading Tom Clancy’s books earlier this year, from March to August. I wrote a couple of posts here detailing the experience. The re-reading was filled with nostalgia and the books still packed a punch, be it through shock or can’t-put-it-down suspense. I graded them all A’s, and threw plusses or double-plusses on the ones I really enjoyed. Most importantly, re-reading these books became a little oasis from the daily grind, the never-ending duel with issues and problems and curve-balls that work- and family- and personal-life consistently throw at me.

 

When I finished, I started seeking a new oasis. And I found it.

 

Way way way back in the 20th century I was hooked on Dean R. Koontz. This was even before I heard of Tom Clancy. I wasn’t keeping any records back then, but I think it must have been from 1989 to 1993 that I read through about 15 of his books. I have a hard time remembering which ones I read because a) it was a lifetime ago and b) his books tend to have generic titles.

 

I do remember the first book of his I read, 1989’s Midnight.  I was 22 and still living at home with my parents. A buddy, a fellow-reader, the guy who got me addicted to Stephen King in high school, recommended it to me one summer day. And soon enough I read through something like 15 more Koontz novels, most in the span of a busy four years. Busy because I was working full time, attending night school, managing a girlfriend, renting a house with two other guys then getting my own apartment, all while trying to launch a successful rock band. Yeah, even with all the partying I did back then I had so much energy I still shake my head in wonder. How I found time to read anything at all amazes me, but I did. It was an oasis back then.

 

Fortunately, the local library here stocks about 20 of his novels, all in hardcover. On Halloween I borrowed Midnight and burned through it in a week. (I am still reading the massive One Thousand Days narrative of the JFK presidency and am about 2/3rds done with that.) Later tonight I’ll take Patch out for dinner and stop at the same library for the next Koontz on my list, The Bad Place (1991).

 

Most of the Koontz books yield few specific memories save for a character or two, one or two shocking scenes, and a bare bones outline of the plot. For my re-reading list I’m using how I recall my gut feeling about the book. Midnight and The Bad Place give good vibes. I plan on reading four more to the end of 2024, for similar recollection of good vibes: Cold Fire (1992), Dragon Tears (1993), Twilight Eyes (1985), and Lightning (1988).

 

Two other Koontz’s I read and enjoyed back then, Whispers (1980) and Phantoms (1983) I would put on my re-read list then had I not re-read them in the early 2000s. I’d recommend either one to a reader interested in Koontz for the first time. They even made a movie of Phantoms in 1998 starring Ben Affleck (!) and Peter O’Toole (!!!). It was terrible, please avoid.

 

The last book of his I originally read up until last week was Intensity (1995), and it was the only Koontz I hated. I remember it as standard serial-killer cat-and-mouse humdrum, with a stretch of 40 pages describing a woman trying to free herself while tied in a chair. After reading that I moved on from horror in general, though I’m aware he started writing several series of interconnected novels, including an updated version of the Frankenstein saga.

 

Koontz is a prodigious and prolific writer, publishing something like 145 novels, if my counting of his Wikipedia bibliography is accurate, dating back to the late 1960s, under a variety of pen names. At least two other novels were made into movies, Hideaway (1992) with Jeff Goldblum (I liked the story but the special effects were atrocious) and the very-well received Demon Seed (1973), about a computer which forcibly imprisons and later impregnates a woman. That movie, from 1977, gave me many unsettling nightmares from my youth sneak-watching it in the early days of cable TV.

 

I’ll do a re-evaluation at the end of the year, similar to what I did for Clancy, on how the books held up over 30 years. Or perhaps how my memory held up. Regardless, it will be seven weeks of fun reading, a cool oasis from the hustle-and-bustle of Thanksgiving, Christmas shopping, obligations, and work for the remainder of 2024.

 

Pagetrotting

 

 

October thus far has been quite the busy month. Aside from the usual ephemera, otherwise known as the daily grind, and other interesting but not blog-appropriate adventures, I have been delving into two thick, hefty worlds of literature, each reminiscent of the adobe bricks found in the Chama Valley of New Mexico. Both laid on a scale would rival the poundage of a newborn.

 

It’s not just the physicality of the two books that are thick, hefty, and brick-like. The subject matter is just as impressive. The word “worlds” used above is not just a metaphor, as each conjures an entire sociosphere and a globe-sized universe of culture, character, and plot. One is of a time now long past, the early 1960s; the other is of a time that’s never been save for within the mind of the author himself.

 

The first book is A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House, a 1964-biography-of-sort by Arthur Schlesinger Jr., a liberal historian who served as a Special Assistant to the President during the 1961-1963 Kennedy administration. A darling of and expert in the history of the American left, Schlesinger won a second Pulitzer Prize for this work. Taken with a grain of salt (i.e., one must wear hagiography-repellant glasses when reading), this is a deep immersion into those hectic, heady days of the ’60s prior to what you thought were the hectic, heady days of the ’60s. Back door politicking, the Cold War, Cuba, Khruschev, and a changing culture pushed in large part by the sainted Massachusetts president.

 

The second is Imajica, which I can best describe, for better or worse, as horror maestro Clive Barker’s go at a Lord of the Rings. He conjures up his particular brand of gory, somewhat-occultic fantasy, a journey through five worlds or “dominions” to set free the lands from an evil sorcerer Autarch. There are macabre and freakish races of creatures as a substitute to the well-worn tropes of Elves and Dwarves etc. There’s magic, dreams, societies, and a half-dozen detailed plot lines racing with the characters to the Autarch’s palace. Plus heavy doses of Barker’s subversive sexually-tinged horror.

 

Each has its strong points and weak points. I plan on writing reviews on both upon completion. Each is an investment in time.  A Thousand Days is 1,031 pages and Imajica is 827. With a par of 20 pages a day I should finish the Kennedy book just before the 61st anniversary of his assassination in Dallas. In the past I always read something JFK-related in November, so this is a throwback to that. The pace is doable and I am on schedule. Imajica, however, is more a challenge. It’s this year’s “Halloween” reading, and in order to finish that I need to reach 26.7 pages a day. I am slightly behind schedule at page 390. But I’m up for the challenge.

 

After these two books I think I’m going to spend the last two months of the year deep-diving into Dean R. Koontz. I so enjoyed my retro-reading of Tom Clancy this past March to August that a return to Koontz strikes me as a fun way to end these twelve months. Back from, say, 1989 to 1991, I believe I read 15 of his books. There are five which I’m interested in checking out again: Midnight, The Bad Place, Twilight Eyes, Cold Fire, and Dragon Tears. This might be a bit much for two months, especially with Christmas festivities and all, so it might extend into early 2025. We’ll see. I’m up for the challenge.

 

Anyway, happy readings, all!

UWTB

 

Salo, Rumfoord’s crony on Titan, was a messenger from another galaxy who was forced down on Titan by the failure of a part in his space ship’s power plant. He was waiting for a replacement part.

 

He had been waiting patiently for two hundred thousand years.

 

His ship was powered, and the Martian war effort was powered, by a phenomenon known as UWTB, or the Universal Will to Become. UWTB is what makes universes out of nothingness – that makes nothingness insist on becoming somethingness.

 

Many Earthlings are glad that Earth does not have UWTB.

 

As the popular doggerel has it:

 

Will found some Universal Will to Become,

Mixed it with his bubble gum.

Cosmic piddling seldom pays:

Poor Willy’s six new Milky Ways.

 

   - The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut (page 138 of my Dell paperback)

 

I am enjoying Vonnegut, as I have the couple of times I’ve read him in the past. However, with this novel I’m detecting a small but significant undercurrent of creeping leftism. Now, I’m not a Vonnegutian scholar or anything like that, not even a proper fan, having only read a couple of his books. But there’s this vague odor of condescension or derision in his work, particularly when addressing religion. I don’t recall sensing it previously, though the last time I read him was in the late 90s and my radar wasn’t attuned to that frequency.

 

But it does subtract a little bit from the pleasure of reading his prose. He’s a genuinely funny guy, a brilliant writer, an excellent storyteller than keeps the reader consistently guessing what will happen when the page turns. Despite his leftish pet peeves, I’ll still give The Sirens of Titan an A-minus. The book I read prior to this one, Slaughterhouse-Five, I like a little better, so I’ll grant that full A status. And I’ll still seek out his novels in the future, shall my paths cross with theirs.

 

The best image that comes to mind is that the novels of Kurt Vonnegut (at least Cat’s Cradle, Hocus Pocus, Slaughterhouse-Five and The Sirens of Titan) are kinda like a more high-brow Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Though “high-brow” might not be the best adjective. Think of the comparison with Vonnegut and Hitchhiker more like Obama-era SNL versus Clinton-era SNL. I think that might be a more accurate analogy.

 

Anyway, I have a very ambitious and exciting reading project for October which I’ll post about later this week.

 

Oh, and September – you were an OK month. No, better than average. But, please, can you tell October to lower the thermostat down here? Thanks.

Vonnegutia

 

“Also, Barbara and her husband were having to look after Billy’s business interests, which were considerable, since Billy didn’t seem to give a damn for business any more. All this responsibility at such an early age made her a bitchy flibbertigibbet … “Don’t lie to me, Father,” said Barbara. “I know perfectly well you heard me when I called.” This was a fairly pretty girl, except that she had legs like an Edwardian grand piano.

   - Slaughterhouse Five, pages 28-29 of my Dell paperback

 

Billy Pilgrim says that the Universe does not look like a lot of bright little dots to the creatures from Tralfamadore. The creatures can see where each star has been and where it is going, so that the heavens are filled with rarified, luminous spaghetti. And Tralfamadorians don’t see human beings as two-legged creatures, either. They see them as great millipedes – “with babies’ legs at one end and old people’s legs at the other,” says Billy Pilgrim.

   - same, page 87.

 

Forgot how much I enjoy reading Kurt Vonnegut. Read two of his books in the 80s as a high schooler and two others in the 90s as a single lad in a bachelor pad. Always an interesting read, and, as the excerpts above point out (at least to me), every paragraph a small gem of something quite humorous or something that makes me nod and pet my beard saying, “Wow … that’s unexpectedly deep.”

Currently reading Slaughterhouse Five with The Sirens of Titan in the On-Deck Circle.