Attempting to read 52 books this year. As Stephen King said, "If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." Here's the third batch of thirteen:
SEEKING PERFECTION: THE UNOFFICIAL GUIDE TO TREMORS by Jonathan Melville
The team behind the Stampede Entertainment production company delivered one of the greatest monster movies ever made with the 1990 film Tremors – then continued to bring the entertainment with three exceptionally good direct-to-video follow-ups (with Tremors II being the best direct-to-video sequel ever made, as far as I’m concerned), plus a short-lived TV series. Tremors is one of my favorite franchises, so I found Seeking Perfection to be a very interesting read, as author Jonathan Melville digs into the making of all four of the Tremors features we got from Stampede, as well as that TV show... Which really should have gotten a second season.
Seeking Perfection was written during the long wait between Tremors 4 (released in 2004) and Tremors 5 (released in 2015), published right before 5 made its way out into the world, so it doesn’t have much in the way of information on that movie and zero information on the two sequels that followed. While I did get some enjoyment out of watching those last three Tremors movies, I don’t like them nearly as much as what preceded them. A large part of the reason why they couldn’t live up to what came before is the fact that Universal didn’t bring Stampede back to make those sequels, despite having them write an early draft of the Tremors 5 script in ‘04. They came from a different creative team with different sensibilities that didn’t quite line up with Stampede’s view of Tremors. So I don’t mind that 5, 6, and 7 aren’t covered in the book. This is all about the good old days. The Stampede era. And fans of Stampede’s Tremors work will have a good time with Seeking Perfection.
VERITY by Colleen Hoover
From what I’ve seen, Colleen Hoover appears to be an incredibly popular author on social media, so I decided to give one of her books a try... and it wasn’t until the acknowledgements at the end of the book that I realized Verity was considered to be a departure from the type of stories she usually writes. So this may not be representative of her overall output, but it did turn out to be an interesting thriller. And it has a great opening line: “I hear the crack of his skull before the spattering of blood reaches me.”
It’s a bit shocking that Verity hasn’t been given some kind of screen adaptation yet, because the story seems like it’s crying out to be turned into a movie or limited series. It centers on awkward writer Lowen, who is chosen to finish a series of novels that were started by best-selling author Verity. As far as the public knows, Lowen (under a pen name) and Verity will have written these new books together... but the truth is, Verity has been left in a vegetative state after a recent car accident. An accident that was just the latest in a line of tragedies her family had suffered, following the deaths of Verity’s twin daughters in two separate incidents. Lowen will need to go through Verity’s notes to figure out how to put the books together, and she is invited to spend time in the home Verity shares with her husband Jeremy and their only surviving child, their young son, while she does this research. Not only does she quickly become attracted to Jeremy, but she also unearths some dark secrets about Verity when she discovers a secret manuscript. A memoir where Verity reveals herself to be an awful person who has done some terrible things. Verity was also apparently obsessed with the sex life she had with her husband, as the sections of the book that are made up of Verity’s confessional writings are filled with sex scene after sex scene. This is the horniest book I’ve read since leafing through the “romance novels” the women in my family used to trade with each other. There’s so much sex to read about, even Lowen gets tired of it.
The story does go in very dark directions and puts some young children, including infants, in grave danger, so maybe that’s why it hasn’t been brought to the screen yet. But there are scenes – especially the ones where Lowen suspects Verity is actually moving around the house when no one’s looking – that would work very well in live-action. As is, it’s a decent thriller book with a crazy amount of sex scenes.
I, SURVIVOR. by Andrew Yong (actually Adam Green and Joe Knetter)
I, Survivor. is one of the coolest pieces of merchandise that has ever been created to tie in with a slasher franchise. Author Andrew Yong doesn’t really exist – he’s a character who was introduced as an EMT in Hatchet III, and when we caught up with him in the “ten years later” sequel Victor Crowley, he was promoting a book that he wrote about his nightmarish experience in the previous film. And fans can buy the book he was promoting in that movie!
Hatchet franchise creator Adam Green teamed up with author Joe Knetter to write a 300 page novel from the perspective of Yong, covering his entire life... and if you know much about Green, you’ll see that his life shares several similarities with Green’s own. They were even in the same band, called Haddonfield. Much of the book is dedicated to Yong’s feelings for his ex-wife Sabrina, feelings which take the idea of unconditional love to the extreme – and occasionally make him look like a total idiot. Of course, a lot of Hatchet fans will be most interested in the section of the book that serves as a condensed novelization of Hatchet III; condensed because Andrew Yong wasn’t present for all of the events, so we’re hearing what happened to and around him specifically. Then the story continues on beyond the end of Hatchet III, when Yong was accused of the murders Victor Crowley committed.
The idea of writing a book from the perspective of one character in a franchise was a really fun one, and it resulted in a quick and easy read.
THE ENEMY by Lee Child
I really enjoyed the Jack Reacher movie that was released in 2012, and as soon as I got home from watching it I embarked on a reading spree through the first ten or so Jack Reacher novels written by Lee Child. Last year, I revisited the first one, The Killing Floor, after watching the season of the Reacher TV series that was based on it. Now I’ve decided to go through the series in chronological order, because... why not? Going chronologically, The Enemy – which was the eighth book to be published – is actually the first one to read, as it’s set seven years before the events of The Killing Floor.
In this one, Reacher is still serving in the United States Army Military Police Corps. The story begins as 1989 becomes 1990 and people have already started chipping away at the Berlin Wall. The Cold War has come to an end, a new year has begun – and Reacher gets a call notifying him that a two-star general has been found dead of a heart attack in a sketchy motel. There doesn’t seem to be much going on here other than an extramarital affair, but then Reacher notices that the man’s briefcase is missing... and then people connected to the general start turning up dead, murdered in ways that are made to look like a home invasion, a hate crime, and a drug deal gone wrong. With the help of a female officer, Lieutenant Summer (yes, of course he sleeps with her along the way), Reacher gradually figures out what’s really going on. At the same time he’s dealing with this investigation, he’s also dealt a personal blow when he finds out that his mother has terminal cancer.
When I was reading the Reacher books in 2012, I didn’t realize just how much filler Child packs into these things. I did notice it when reading The Killing Floor last year, and again when going through The Enemy now. There are long descriptions of things that really don’t matter, and a lot of repetition of information. This book didn’t really need to be 496 pages, even with the subplot of Reacher’s mom passing away. There’s a moment in the book where Reacher thinks about a screening of Cape Fear (1962) that he attended, and says that people in the military aren’t impressed by “watching civilians dither around just to spin out a story for 90 minutes”. Meanwhile, Child is stretching his own story out as far as possible. But when you look beyond the filler, The Enemy is a decent enough mystery.
THE STAND by Stephen King
Stephen King says he has been “accused over and over again of having diarrhea of the word processor” – and I made that same accusation myself when I went through his books Salem’s Lot and The Shining earlier this year. Both of those could have used a trimming of the word count, as far as I was concerned. But the truth is, if I deeply cared about and connected with the characters in those books, I wouldn’t mind reading their stories for longer than what seemed necessary. I just don’t like most of the people who live in Salem’s Lot, and I dislike Jack Torrance from early on in The Shining, so I’m not engaged when he’s searching through the Overlook Hotel archives. But then we reach King’s book The Stand, which truly is unreasonably long. It was 823 pages when first published in 1978, and it only reached that length after the publisher had King remove 400 pages from it (purely based on how much they would have to charge for a book with a page count of more than 1000). It’s a testament to the strength of the story and characters that it all held up well enough, even after having 400 pages removed, that still became many readers’ favorite King novel. Then in 1990, King had proven popular enough that he was able to put some of those lost pages back in, boosting the length to 1153 pages. And it’s a sign of my love for The Stand that when I read the book, I don’t go for the shorter version. I go for the “complete and uncut” edition.
My first exposure to the story of The Stand was the 1994 mini-series adaptation – and through that mini-series, it captured my imagination to a degree that few other stories ever have. I was blown away by it. I was a bit obsessed with it. I loved the story, which is about a confrontation between the forces of good and evil after the world has been devastated by a highly communicable and deadly “super flu”. Although the flu is global, King’s focus is on the United States, as he envisioned this as being a sort of “American Lord of the Rings” epic... and while writing it out, he happened to deliver the Great American Novel. The basic concept blew my mind when I was 10, but The Stand was made all the more effective for me because I also loved the characters. I enjoy spending time with them. That’s part of why I have watched that mini-series many, many times over the years. That’s also a reason why I have read the novel multiple times over the years, and why I choose the longest version of it when I decide to read it. Because I want to spend as much time wrapped up in the world of The Stand as possible.
Objectively, the complete edition of The Stand is too long. There are many scenes that don’t really need to be in there. Especially in the first section of the book, when we see glimpses into person lives while the flu is decimating the world population. King spends a lot of pages on things that aren’t going to mean anything once the flu has had its way and the story shifts to the next stages of survivors traveling across the country, gathering together, and realizing there’s a supernatural evil out there that will need to be dealt with. But I don’t mind those unnecessary pages, because it’s The Stand.
SOLDIER: FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN by Danny Stewart
My review of Soldier: From Script to Screen can be read at THIS LINK.
PACIFIC VORTEX! by Clive Cussler
Pacific Vortex! is the first novel Clive Cussler ever wrote in his series that follows the adventures of Dirk Pitt, a former Air Force pilot who now works for the National Underwater and Marine Agency – but it wasn’t the first published. Cussler wasn’t satisfied with Pacific Vortex!, feeling the story wasn’t all it should have been, so he sat on it for a decade before being persuaded to publish it. By the time Pacific Vortex! reached bookstore shelves, there were already five other Dirk Pitt novels for it to join there. So it’s commendable that, despite being disappointed with his first attempt at writing Pitt, Cussler did keep writing about the guy and publishing the stories. And as it turns out, Pacific Vortex! is a fine adventure novel in its own right. I haven’t read any other Pitt novels to compare the storytelling in this one to the stories of the other ones, but I enjoyed this book as it was.
Cussler sets up a great mystery that revolves around the title location, which is basically like a version of the Bermuda Triangle that’s near Hawaii. Thirty-eight ships have been lost in that area over the last thirty years, and at the beginning of the book a submarine also disappears in the Pacific Vortex. Pitt gets involved when he’s hanging out on the beach and spots a communications capsule from the lost submarine floating in the water. Since he happens to read the top secret contents of that capsule, and since he’s a highly regarded member of an aquatic agency, he gets pulled into the military’s investigation of the missing sub. He (and the reader) are told stories of a mythical island called Kanoli, which is believed to have sat within the Pacific Vortex long ago. There are stories of the missing submarine and destroyed ships being raided by mysterious attackers who slaughter everyone on board. The corpses they leave behind have been turned green, with melted faces. Despite these horrific tales, Pitt will make a couple journeys to the Pacific Vortex – and he is indeed confronted by mysterious attackers. There’s a great moment when people on a ship with Pitt see several large life-forms swimming toward the ship and assume it’s fish... but it’s actually a raiding party of men on their way to attack.
While the mystery is intriguing, the story of Pacific Vortex! moves along quickly and easily, which is exactly what I was hoping for from this adventure novel. It wraps the story up in less than 300 pages and contains several action sequences along the way. Toward the end, when Pitt figures out exactly what’s going on and enters the villain’s home base, it even feels a little bit like an early James Bond novel. The only awkward bit of storytelling I noticed came when Pitt’s childhood friend and NUMA associate Al Giordino is introduced very late in the page count. It’s like Cussler suddenly realized Pitt should have a sidekick on his adventures and just dropped Giordino in there on the spot. But he seems like a great sidekick, so I’m not bothered that he’s involved in the climactic sequence.
Cussler may not have been into it, but I had a good time reading Pacific Vortex! and look forward to following Pitt on more adventures.
NIGHT SCHOOL by Lee Child
Night School was the twenty-first Jack Reacher novel to be published, but as of right now it’s the second book in the series if you read them in chronological order. (In October another book will be pushing it back to third place in the chronology.) This one is set in 1996, when Reacher was still serving in the United States Army Military Police Corps, and begins with him receiving a Legion of Merit medal for carrying out two assassinations. Then he gets sent to school. He’s told he’s being enrolled in a course on inter-agency cooperation with FBI and CIA agents... But by the end of the first chapter he and his FBI and CIA cohorts know they’re not really going to be going to school and attending classes, so any purpose for the book to be called Night School is quickly tossed out the window.
It’s okay that the book has the wrong title, because it’s actually a captivating read. Reacher and members of the FBI and CIA have been gathered together to solve a mystery involving a terrorist organization. The terrorists have set up a deal with an unknown American source, offering to pay $100 million for... well, that’s what they have to figure out, along with the identity of the American. I have complained about other Reacher novels having too much filler, but even though this one doesn’t have much action I didn’t run into any filler issues. I was wrapped up in the story and intrigued by the mystery – which quickly proves to have very high stakes. As you would expect, if a terrorist organization is willing to pay an individual $100 million for something. I was hooked, eager to find out what exactly was up for sale and how Reacher was going to thwart the deal.
Kathryn Stockett’s debut novel The Help was a massive best-seller and spawned a film adaptation that not only made over $200 million at the box office but also racked up multiple Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, with an Oscar going to Octavia Spencer for Best Supporting Actress. But it’s also rather controversial at this point, as some have objected to the way the author, a white woman, handled the subject of subject of race and civil rights in the 1960s. Some actors who were in the movie have even expressed regret about being involved with it. There is an awkwardness to the idea of a white person who was born in 1969 writing a story where some chapters are told from the perspective of African American women working as housekeepers and nannies in the ‘60s... and when I started reading the book and found that the first segment was not only written from the perspective of an African American woman, but also written in a way that conveyed the character was poorly educated, I started to wonder if I had made a mistake. But I stuck with it, and I’m glad I did.
Others can debate whether or not Stockett should have written the story. What I know is that she wrote it in a way that I found to be engrossing, and she quickly made me care about the lead characters: “the help” Aibileen Clark (she’s the one whose segments have that “poorly educated” style to them) and Minny Jackson, and well-off white girl Eugenia "Skeeter" Phelan, who decides to get into writing by compiling a book of stories told by maids about what it’s like to work for their white employers. Some of the people the maids work for are awful. Some are good people. Some are just lame. But the stories told are fascinating and work up plenty of emotional responses along the way. There are infuriating moments, heartbreaking ones, and funny ones. It’s no surprise the book led to a successful, Oscar-nominated film, because it’s practically crying out to get just such an adaptation.
I enjoyed The Help a lot more than I expected to. In the end, it’s a story that takes a stand against racism, and I can’t find fault in that, no matter who wrote it.
FOREVER, INTERRUPTED by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Taylor Jenkins Reid was working in the casting department on Hollywood productions when she decided she didn’t just want to find actors to play characters, she wanted to create the characters from the ground up. So she got started doing that with her debut novel, a drama about the whirlwind romance of Elsie and Ben, who meet on January 1st, get married in the following May, and barely a week later, in June, Elsie is widowed at age 26 when Ben is killed in a traffic accident. In the aftermath of his death, Elsie meets his mother Susan for the first time... and Elsie finds herself mourning the person she thought she was going to spend her life with beside the mother-in-law she never met. And Susan starts to bond with the daughter-in-law she didn’t even know she had.
Forever, Interrupted jumps back and forth between chapters chronicling Elise and Ben’s relationship and chapters with Elsie and Susan in mourning, and the romance chapters were the weakest part of this reading experience for me. Elise and Ben’s relationship never really clicked for me, their interactions didn’t get across why they found each other so captivating. The drama after his death worked much better – and I could easily imagine this book being turned into the sort of production Reid used to help cast. Given that Forever, Interrupted was first published in 2013, it’s kind of surprising that it hasn’t received a film or TV adaptation yet, since some of Reid’s other books have. (Which is how I discovered her work in the first place.) A movie was set up in 2015 with Dakota Johnson attached to star, but it never got made.
THE LONG WALK by Richard Bachman (a.k.a. Stephen King)
In the early years of Stephen King’s novel-writing career, he was told an author could only publish one never per year - but he had more stories he wanted to get out into the world, so he would also publish novels under the Richard Bachman pen name. The second of the Bachman books, The Long Walk envisions an America of the not-too-distant future, where the states are now under the rule of a military dictatorship. Every year, “The Major” hosts an event called The Long Walk, where one hundred youths from across the country are gathered together in Maine and start walking down Route 1. They have to walk at a pace of four miles per hour, and if any walker drops below speed for too long they’ll receive a warning from the soldiers riding beside the road and watching their every move. They can walk off a warning after an hour – but if they’re carrying three warnings at once, they don’t get a fourth. Instead, the soldiers will execute them. The walk goes on until there’s only one surviving walker, and that walker wins The Prize, which is anything they want.
The book is told from the perspective of a walker named Ray Garraty and follows his experience as he walks down Route 1 with ninety-nine others, watching as the kids around him succumb to exhaustion and trying not to suffer the same fate. As he walks, he makes friends with some of the other walks and takes a disliking to others. We come to care about Ray and some of the other walkers, but the entire time we know they’re doomed. All but one of them is destined to die on this walk – and even when a survivor is left, what condition will they be in? When you break it down, this is a book that’s just people walking chapter after chapter, but it’s a harrowing read. It’s also an impressive accomplishment, because King / Bachman was able to make the story sustain 400 pages and those pages just flow by. The book keeps a steady pace throughout, just like the walkers.
CASINO ROYALE by Ian Fleming
In 1953, writer Ian Fleming (who had a history in Naval Intelligence) introduced the world to British spy James Bond in his debut novel Casino Royale – and eventually, Bond became one of the most iconic characters ever created. It was really the 1960s movies that made Bond reach icon status, but Casino Royale was a success itself, spawning a series of books and an American TV adaptation that aired in 1954. The Bond in this novel doesn’t quite have the charisma of the likes of Sean Connery or other actors who have brought him to life in adaptations, but the basics of the character are there. The intense dedication to his work, his appreciation for alcohol and fine dining, the martinis that he orders shaken rather than stirred, and his eye for beautiful women. Fleming’s Bond is a fussier person than his film counterparts. He’s also harsher, darker, very sexist, and a major nicotine fiend. In the first chapter, Bond is said to be lighting his seventieth cigarette of the day.
Casino Royale has the perfect page count for this sort of adventure, coming in at just around 200 pages, and Fleming crafted an interesting but very simple story for it. It takes place soon after Bond has earned his 00 status (he is 007, of course) by carrying out two assassinations for the British Secret Service, as he is given the assignment to the Royale-les-Eaux casino in France to play against a man called Le Chiffre in a high stakes game of baccarat. Le Chiffre handles the money for a Communist organization, and has just 50 million francs in ill-advised investments. Now he’s trying to get it back by gambling. The idea is that Bond will wipe him out in the card game instead. While on this assignment, Bond finds himself working alongside French secret agent Rene Mathis, CIA agent Felix Leiter, and Vesper Lynd, an assistant in the Secret Service. A woman who has a major impact on Bond’s life.
I have never played baccarat, I haven’t even seen it played in person, but Fleming is able to explain it well enough that the game between Bond and Le Chiffre is a captivating read, even though it takes up around 20 pages. Of course, it helps that Bond has to deal with some serious issues when he’s in the midst of playing the game. Once the game is over, things get even more dangerous, leading to a car chase and a famous torture scene. Beyond the action comes emotional depth, as Bond does some soul-searching and tries to embark on a relationship with Vesper. But things are complicated...
Bond’s world view will be frowned upon by many readers, but the story is intriguing and the book is quite well written. I have read Casino Royale many times over the years, and there’s one particular passage that has always stuck with me: “One day, and he accepted the fact, he would be brought to his knees or love or by luck. When that happened he knew he too would be branded with the deadly question-mark he recognized so often in others, the promise to pay before you have lost: the acceptance of fallibility.”
And Bond is indeed brought to his knees in this book.
FLETCH WON by Gregory Mcdonald
Although Fletch Won was the eighth book Gregory Mcdonald wrote about investigative journalist Irwin M. Fletcher, it’s chronologically the first book in the series. Thus the title Fletch Won, since it sounds like Fletch One – fitting for a story that mentions the fun of playing with words. It also happens to have been published the same year the Fletch movie starring Chevy Chase (based on the first Fletch novel Mcdonald wrote, which is chronologically the fourth in the series) was released... and it seems like the author was writing it with the thought that it could become a movie in mind. Fletch books tend to be very dialogue-heavy, and this one has a bit more action and interesting visuals than usual. Within the first fifty pages, Fletch has investigated a murder scene, had a gun pulled on him, smashed up a liquor store, and gone skinny-dipping in a pool. There is a whole lot of dialogue, but the climactic sequence also involves a car chase. Fletch Won reads like it was written to be a movie, so it’s shocking that it has never gotten a cinematic adaptation. There have been attempts made. Scripts have been written. Kevin Smith wanted to make Fletch Won with Jason Lee and nearly made it with Ben Affleck. Bill Lawrence was attached to make Fletch Won, with Zach Braff in mind for the lead. The likes of Will Smith, Ryan Reynolds, Joshua Jackson, Justin Long, and Jason Sudeikis were also in the running. But Fletch Won has never made it out of development hell.
It’s a shame, because this might be my favorite book in the series aside from the first Fletch. In this one, I.M. Fletcher has just gotten started working at the News-Tribune newspaper and is trying to find his place there. He wants to write about sports, but has been assigned to write headlines, obituaries, and wedding announcements, and his irreverence hasn’t gone over well in those departments. Now his managing editor wants him to cover society events, starting with an article about a powerful lawyer donating five million dollars to a local museum. Fletch is supposed to interview the lawyer, but the guy doesn’t make it to the interview. He gets shot and killed in the News-Tribune parking lot. So Fletch starts investigating the murder on his own time while also dealing with his replacement assignment (investigating a company that’s into both fitness and prostitution) and the fact that he’s supposed to get married to his future ex-wife in a couple days. A lot of interesting conversations and amusing moments ensue. Then there’s a car chase.
Fletch Won is a great read, and I’ll always be disappointed that Kevin Smith didn’t get to make the movie.
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