Saturday, April 23, 2011

30 day Book Challenge: Day 16

Day 16: Longest book you’ve read



Probably Dreamcatcher by Stephen King 879pg... It seems to be the longest on my bookshelf, at any rate.
" For all its nicely described mayhem, Dreamcatcher is mostly a psychological drama. Typically, body snatchers turn humans into zombies, but these aliens must share their host's mind, fighting for control. Jonesy is especially vulnerable to invasion, thanks to his hospital bed near-death transformation, but he's also great at messing with the alien's head. While his invading alien, Mr. Gray, is distracted by puppeteering Jonesy's body as he's driving an Arctic Cat through a Maine snowstorm, Jonesy constructs a mental warehouse along the lines of The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. Jonesy physically feels as if he's inside a warehouse, locked behind a door with the alien rattling the doorknob and trying to trick him into letting him in. It's creepy from the alien's view, too. As he infiltrates Jonesy, experiencing sugar buzz, endorphins, and emotions for the first time, Jonesy's influence is seeping into the alien: "A terrible thought occurred to Mr. Gray: what if it was his concepts that had no meaning?" King renders the mental fight marvelously, and telepathy is a handy way to make cutting back and forth between the campers' various alien battlefronts crisp and cinematic. The physical naturalism of the Maine setting is matched by the psychological realism of the interior struggle. Deftly, King incorporates the real-life mental horrors of his own near-fatal accident and dramatizes the way drugs tug at your consciousness. Like the Tommyknockers, the aliens are partly symbols of King's (vanquished) cocaine and alcohol addiction. Mainly, though, they're just plain scary."

I don't read too much in the way of Stephen King... I've read this, Desperation, Misery, Pet Cemetary, and The Stand. I do like his books, so I'm not sure why I never read more. Probably because I've sort of shifted away from most fiction books (I mostly do travel writing these days). Lately, when I do grab a fiction, it's usually a Tom Robbins or a Chuck Palahnuik, because they're usually quick romps into the wonderfully weird.

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