Archives for November 2006

I don’t like horror. Ghosts and ghouls have never been my thing. I don’t read horror books and I don’t see horror movies. I probably couldn’t even eat a horror cookie if there was such a thing. And believe me, I like cookies.

I think it’s all because I’m a fraidy cat by nature, prone to nightmares and mistaking shadows in the dark for hideous alien creatures or axe murderers, all hovering over my sleeping body just waiting to suck the remaining life out of me.

Plus there’s the evil factor. I think most horror is simply evil stuff, bad medicine for the soul, if you know what I mean. It’s just not Sunday reading — not that everything we read has to be, of course, but horror is just bad news. And why fill your head with bad news? The world gives us plenty of that already.

So it should come as no surprise that I’m no fan of Stephen King. The man writes a lot of horror, often gruesome, gory stories of zombies and killer dogs and (worst and most evil of all) little children possessed with some deadly malicious power. I have better things to do with my time than read something that’s only going to keep my up at night.

Then I read The Gunslinger, the first book in King’s The Dark Tower series. Well, actually, I listened to it. Seven months ago when we moved from California to South Carolina, I wanted to have several books on my iPod to listen to during the long, cross-country trip, and The Gunslinger was one of them.

Even though I had reservations about listening to it — it was written by Stephen King remember? — I decided to give it a go, partially because my dear friend Eric Smith, whose opinion of good fiction and all things soul related (He’s LDS like me), had read it, liked it, and suggested I give it a go and partially because it had a picture of a cowboy on the front, and I’m a sucker for Westerns. As it turned out, I enjoyed The Gunslinger very much indeed. It had a gritty circle-the-wagons feel to it mixed with a hearty dose of contemporary fantasy and just a smidgen of what King does best: horror.

I’d recommend it to anyone, except for maybe my Dad and only then because he’s already read it and didn’t like it.

Despite having enjoyed the first volume so much, I didn’t rush out to buy the second one. My reading list is long as it is, and tackling a seven-volume series just wasn’t on the agenda.

Then the second event in this little tale occurred. (The first was my reading The Gunslinger, in case you’re keeping track). I spoke with a friend at work about fiction. Turns out his favorite author is King, a fact I decided not to hold against him; my aversion to King decreased drastically after The Gunslinger.

When he learned that I had, despite enjoying the first book of The Dark Tower series, not continued reading the remaining books, he returned to work the very next day with a copy of the second book to borrow. I thought it a nice gesture, and since it precluded my having to go to the library and check it out or, worse, buy it with my limited supply of real American dollars, I gladly accepted.

And boy am I glad I did! The Drawing of the Three is one of the best works of fantasy I’ve ever read. Dark? Yes. Spooky? Yes. Filled with heavy profanity? Goodness yes! But none of it could keep me from loving the story therein.

The Drawing of the Three is a nothing less than a fast-paced yarn of two worlds colliding — ours and that of the hero Roland, the last gunslinger, as he continues his quest toward that ominous, still undefined Dark Tower.

King is a poet. There, I’ve said it. The man is a genius. He can capture the rhythm and cadence of street speech, ethnic speech, gangster gab, anything, and still make it sound genuine. This isn’t hokey pulp dialogue. This is hear-as-it-comes talk, a believable look into some pretty scary and seedy places. It’s what King is best at, pulling back the curtain of those places we would never dare to visit and showing us what would expect and a thousand things we wouldn’t.

I once heard someone say that King will be remembered from our generation just as Dickens and Steinbeck are remembered from theirs. And I believe it. Critics love to pan the man because his fiction is guilty of that unpardonable literary sin: appealing to the masses. Good fiction can’t be popular, shouts the literary elite. Good fiction is that fiction that only we, the intellectual giants, can appreciate and understand. Well, to them I say poopie. King is a giant. A legend. And will be for many years to come, long after he’s gone the way of the dodo.

So, as you can see. I loved The Drawing of the Three. Loved it immensely, in fact. And I have since decided to read nothing else until I’ve finished the remaining five books of this series. And I will READ them. Audiobooks will be too slow to fill my need for a Dark Tower fix. I want it straight and intravenously. Give me the good stuff, Mr. King, at a speed that fits the craving.

Sure, I’ll listen to audiobooks in the meantime; I have to drive to work, after all. But when it’s time to pick up a book, my next five are spoken for. Sorry, reading list. A new drug is in town. Let’s only hope King can keep the magic alive.

A month or so ago I was browsing through the audiobook collection at the Greenville Library, which I find surprisingly extensive, when a kindly elderly woman approached me.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asked.

She looked like a librarian. “Oh, just browsing,” I said.

“Have you ever read any of the Mrs. Pollifax novels?” She smiled like someone about to divulge a well-kept secret, pulled an audiobook off the shelf, and held it up for me to see.

The cover featured an old woman wearing a silly hat and looked like the kind of book this elderly woman would read and I wouldn’t. “No,” I said. “I haven’t.”

She looked delighted. “Well, they’re fabulous. You’ll love it.”

And before I could object she placed it in my hands. The decision was made. I was checking out The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax. She was just too sweet and too pleasant to say no to. We talked briefly after that, and I learned that she was not, in fact, a librarian but an audiobook lover like me. I also came to the conclusion that she was a very lonely person and that a random conversation with a stranger in the library — even if that stranger happened to be someone as boring as uninteresting as myself — would be the highlight of her day.

I thanked her profusely for the recommendation, and we eventually went our separate ways. I didn’t get around to Mrs. Pollifax until recently. This polite willingness to accept the woman’s recommendation and listen to her book waned almost immediately after leaving the library; as soon as I got home, I put the book at the back of my audiobook queue and forgot about it. (I rip the audiobook off the CDs, put the MP3 files on my iPod, then erase the files when I’m done. That way I can listen to the book at my leisure and not worry about only listening to it in the car and missing library due dates).

Well I’ve now listened to The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax and I owe that sweet old lady a warm embrace. The book was as delightful as she had promised. I’ve already checked out the second one.

The story concerns one Emily Pollifax, an aged widow not altogether pleased with her life. She finds her meetings with the Garden Club and her time as a volunteer at the hospital rather dull. Then one morning she reads in the newspaper of a woman similar to her age who was just discovered on Broadway, and Mrs. Pollifax realizes that it’s never too late to pursue one’s dreams. What makes the story unique is that Mrs. Pollifax’s dream has always been to become a spy. And rather compulsively, on a whim, she decides to pursue this end with vigor. She contacts her local Congressman to get a meeting with the C.I.A. and then waltzes into the C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia to offer up her services. She isn’t taken seriously of course, but by a happy accident of mistaken identity, Mrs. Pollifax is enlisted to be a simple C.I.A. courier on a special assignment to Mexico City. When that assignment goes sour, Mrs. Pollifax finds herself kidnapped by villainous enemies of the state and holed up in an Albanian prison.

What follows is an unexpectedly wonderful novel. Mrs. Pollifax is no super heroin. She knows no marshal arts and only has basic knowledge of handing a pistol. Her greatest weapon is her age. She’s just an honestly nice old woman, much like the woman who suggested this book to be.

The narration by Barbara Rosenblat is wonderful. She brings Mrs. Pollifax to life with an endearing sweetness, capturing that gentle, innocent timbre so often heard in the voice of the elderly. She can also pull of a nice Chinese, Russian, and Albanian accent, giving life to an assorted cast of spies, prison guards, and Albanian goat herders.

I’ve since learned that there are 14 Mrs. Pollifax novels, and while I may not get to them all, I’m certainly excited to follow Mrs. Pollifax on another charming adventure.

In my last post I commented that Lauren and I hardly ever get to go to the theater. Well, that very night we went to the theater. It wasn’t planned, but Lauren’s mom was kind enough to babysit the boys, so Lauren and I went out to eat and then to catch a movie.

Stranger Than Fiction was Lauren’s idea. I was pushing for the new James Bond movie Casino Royale, but I’m glad we went with her vote. STF was fabulous, an easy-paced comedy starring Will Farrell as Harold Crick, an IRS auditor living a rather bland existence. Harold counts his toothbrush strokes every morning, counts his steps to the bus stop every morning, and shuffles around his cublicled office like a zombie on autopilot. Harold is a very boring man.

All that changes one morning when Harold begins to hear his life narrated by a voice in his head. That voice belongs to Emma Thompson, a reknowned author battling writer’s block and a nasty nicotine habit. As it turns out, Thompson unknowingly is writing (or perhaps controlling) Harold Crick’s life. She believes she invented the character, but Harold Crick is a real human being, very much alive.

Well, according to Thompson’s narration, Harold won’t be alive much longer; she reveals early on in the narration that the story concludes with Harold Crick’s imminent death. Harold hears this and is thrown into a panic. He first seeks the help of a psychiatrist and then ends up in the office of a literary professor, played masterfully by Dustin Hoffman. The scenes with Hoffman as he attempts to define the type of story Harold is hearing are hilarious. (I think I found them funnier than other people did, because a few times I was the only one laughing.)

Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a young baker being audited by Harold. She, like, Thompson, turns Harold’s life around as he discovers for the first time what love is.

The entire cast is fantastic. Queen Latifah does her duty as Thompson’s assistant, not overplaying the role. Thompson is electric and deserves a nomination. Hoffman, like I said, is hilarious and the perfect example of an actor DOING business as he acts. He makes coffee, shuffles papers, eats yogurt — and never in a way that suggests he’s an actor being busy but rather as a literary professor who spends twelve hours of his day in this small office and knows every inch of it by heart.

And Will Farrell is wonderful as well. EW gave him some flack in their review because he wasn’t “Will Farrell” enough. They wanted to see my slapstick, I suppose. Dumb. I tell you, when it comes to movie reviews, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Had Will Farrell done his “Will Farrell” clown act in this movie, it not only would have resulted in a hammy silliness untrue to the character and story, but it also would have resulted in Will Farrell being criticized for being Will Farrell. “Can’t he play anyone else?” the reviewers would have said. “Can’t this guy be serious for one second?”

The answer to the latter is yes. Will Farrell can actually act when he wants to. I didn’t see Talledega Nights and probably never will. That Will Farrell doesn’t interest me. But THIS Will Farrell, the Harold Crick Will Farrell. For him I’ll hire another babysitter and pay big bucks to go to the theater.

The person most deserving of praise is Zach Helm, the unknown screenwriter who wrote the script. I’ll be surprised if Helm isn’t nominated also. The script was poetic and honest and even though it had a character who was a writer (without fail the most boring characters in film), the story, dialogue, and building suspense were all first rate.

And I can’t forget Marc Forster as well, whose direction made it all possible. Forster directed Finding Neverland, which was wonderful in its own right and probably why Dustin Hoffman was in this one (Hoffman was in Neverland also.) Kudos to you, Mr. Forster. We’ll all be keeping our eyes on you to see what you come up with next.

We rarely get to the theaters these days, what with the two little bumpkins and what not. A trip to the movies would cost us a small fortune. But we almost ponied up the money to see Cars when it hit theaters earlier this year, which is to say we really wanted to see it.

Thrift overcame desire, however, and we decided to wait for the DVD. My mom and dad were kind enough to buy it for Luke and Jake, which thrilled Lauren and me since we wanted to see it just as much, if not more than, the boys did.

Well, we’ve seen it, and it’s as wonderful as we had hoped. Pixar has never let me down, and they didn’t start with Cars. I never thought I’d see a buddy comedy with Owen Wilson and Larry the Cable Guy, but alas here it is. And perhaps it’s not completely accurate to call this a buddy comedy; it’s Owen Wilson’s movie. And as usual, there’s a great supportingig cast of eclecticic characters — from the hippie VW van Fillmore to the military jeep Sarge, who, naturally, runs the local Army Navy Surplus store.

The animation is amazing. Some of the shots looked almost real, like one of a closeup of a fluorescent light with flies buzzing around it. I’m constantly amazed at how Pixar uses light, particularly in places like the huge speedway. To think that each one of those twinkling flashing lights is an intentional stroke of the animator’s brushes makes every frame of Cars a work of art. I laughed out loud. And although I didn’t tear up at the end, I got pretty close. This is a wonderful family film for kids and adults alike. Bless you, Pixar, for giving it to us.

My only disappointment was that there were too few special features on the DVD. The two animated shorts were a nice addition, but the abundance of special features on The Incredibles DVDs made Cars‘s special features feel a little empty. I wanted more “making of” documentaries. And I always love seeing the cast recording their voice overs. There was none of that here. But other than that, this is a worthy addition to any DVD collection.

As noted in a previous post, I only recently saw the second Godfather movie. What prompted my seeing it was the audiobook of the novel The Goodfather by Mario Puzo, which I had been listening to and only just finished. The audiobook was a full cast reading. Most audiobooks are read by a single narrator, but a few rare gems use a full cast of actors to play the role of every character in the novel. The effect is like listening to a movie, and I mean that as a compliment. It’s easy to follow the dialogue because you grow accustomed to the actors’ voices. And since each of them insert their own unique performance into their respective roles, you get more emotion and delivery than is often heard from a single voice.

The Godfather deserves to be the great classic it has become, but in my opinion, this is one instance in which the movie (or movies, plural, since the second Godfather movie also came from the book) is better than the novel. Puzo takes too many tangents, following minor characters and their respective plights rather than sticking closely with the Corleone family wherein lies the heart of the story. The most frequent tangents follow Johnny Fontaine, the crooner/movie star who is supposedly based on Frank Sinatra. I kept wanting to speed-listen through these parts and get back to the real story.

But Puzo is a master of narrative drive. He kept me going with the anticipation of something about to happen. Video games use the same principal: put the gamer through a scenario that will take him nearly to the limit of his tolerance, than introduce a new obstacle. It keeps players going for hours. And Puzo can establish an impending action with a single sentence at the end of the chapter. He won’t let you stop reading . . . or in my case, stop listening.

The Godfather will always remain a masterwork of storytelling. It’s a great saga. Few authors can make such sinister people so endearing and so worth following. And the tension is palpable. When Michael Corleone kills Sollozzo and the police captain in the Italian restaurant, I was on the edge of my seat. The audiobook scene was just as riveting as the scene in the film.

The biggest negative of the novel, however, is that Puzo spends far too much time on sex. Everybody has sex. And it’s not enough to simply insinuate that they do or even say that they do. Puzo has to describe the sex act with vivid and graphic detail. He’s not content simply telling us they had sex. He has to tell us what TYPE of sex they had. I found myself rolling my eyes and reaching for the fast forward button more times than I cared for. It gave me the sense that Puzo was a perverted old man, which probably isn’t true. Puzo was just a product of his time; The Godfather was written at the height of the sexual revolution, after all. Not that books didn’t depict sex before then, but I doubt they did to the same degree. Anyway, despite the abundance of the nasty, The Godfather is quiate possibly the greatest crime novel of all time. And if you’re going to take a stab at, I suggest the audiobook cast recording.

Lauren and I started reading this aloud to each other last year and for a reason I can’t remember we stopped reading it halfway through. It had nothing to do with the content of the book. It’s a young adult novel, so it’s clean. And we certainly didn’t put it aside because it was boring. It was anything but. In any event, something came up, and we set it aside and forgot about it.

When I saw the sequel, Peter and the Shadow Thieves at the bookstore, I remembered that Lauren and I had never finished the original, and we took the original off the shelf and jumped right back in. So much time had passed since we had last read it, that we had to go back and review. But soon the story came back to us, and we were back in the middle of the action. And there’s plenty of action.

Peter and the Starcatchers is the story of how Peter Pan became Peter Pan. How Captain Hook became Captain Hook. How Tinkerbell and mermaids came to exist. How the lost boys came to be and why they can’t fly like Peter can. As you can see, it’s the story of Neverland, the prequel to the early twentieth century play Peter Pan.

I don’t want to give away any of the story. You should have the pleasure of discovering all the backstory yourself. To even hint at some of the events would lessen the surprise.

Suffice it to say that Peter and the Starcatchers is a wonderfully magical, thrilling, touching, altogether wonderful read. How Lauren and I were ever able to set it aside unfinished is a mystery. The last 100 pages are a thrill ride. You can’t put this thing down. Everything about — with the exception of the number of typos it has — is perfect. I felt like a kid again.