Come and play with us

I really enjoyed reading Dr. Sleep, Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining. Although no book can replace my feelings for The Shining and it’s glorious anti-hero, Jack Torrance, this was a good followup. When viewed together, a lot of the revelations about ‘Steam’ in this second book make TheOverlook Hotel’s pursuit of little Danny even more reasonable. I have to admit that I love the Kubrick film version, but I simultaneously recognize the purity of the book and I’m glad King made no bones about following his prior novel, not the film. (It does remind me of another Kubrick film that caused the author to write his sequel to the film rather than to his own first novel…What film was that????)

If I wanted to be critical, I would say that I wanted it to be a bit longer and see the True Knot’s power working on more of the protagonists. I’d hate to see any of them go, but it would have made me dread the final encounter with Rose the Hat even more.

Overall, I’d call it a 9/10 star book and recommend it to any King fan looking for a good read.

Once I finished that, I started right in on The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson. It’s the story of a scientist that I’ve been fascinated by for many years, but never learned much about, Joseph Priestly. So far it’s been a great read as well. One fact I was startled to learn was that Benjamin Franklin was one of the first to recognize and map the Gulf Stream’s circulation within the Atlantic Ocean. As postmaster general, he was in excellent position to investigate the reason that mail going to Europe from the colonies always travelled significantly faster than that going the other direction. I look forward to posting more from this book as I progress.