I'm still reading

I know it's been a while since I updated this blog, mostly because the literary discussions I tried to generate went nowhere. If you're interested in discussing Harry Potter, here are a couple of good blogs: Uppity Women Unite! and Page 37.

I've recently returned to Stephen King, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers. I read Cujo and 'Salem's Lot. I really had no interest in either, but I love Stephen King and want to eventually read all of his stuff. I was pleasantly surprised. Salem's Lot is an early King novel, and he does some things in it that he learns to do better later on. It sort of reminded me of The Tommyknockers, which I think is great.

Cujo was the biggest surprise for me. It epitomized everything I love about King's stories. Yes, he creates memorable monsters, but for me the strength of his storytelling is the realistic depictions of good and evil in everyday human life. In Cujo, there is a monster dog terrorizing a small town, but from the beginning, had people treated each other with love, the disaster would have been avoided. Despite King's admission that he was too drugged up to even remember writing Cujo, I highly recommend it.

I've read quite a few graphic novels this summer as well, which leads me to a discussion question that I always find interesting. If you could have any super power, what would it be? Answer first, and then ask yourself why. Is it because you personally would derive a lot of satisfaction out of the power, or because you could do the greatest amount of good with it? Right now I would choose the ability to make people shut up. I admit I would choose it for selfish reasons, but I do believe it would do a great amount of good.