I Am Legend by Richard Matheson – I Am Legend

One of the most influential vampire novels of the 20th century, I Am Legend regularly appears on the 10 Best lists of numerous critical studies of the horror genre. As Richard Mathesons third novel, it was first marketed as science fiction (for although written in 1954, the story takes place in a future 1976). A terrible plague has decimated the world, and those who were unfortunate enough to survive have been transformed into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Except, that is, for Robert Neville. He alone appears to be immune to this disease, but the grim irony is that now he is the outsider. He is the legendary monster who must be destroyed because he is different from everyone else. Employing a stark, almost documentary style, Richard Matheson was one of the first writers to convince us that the undead can lurk in a local supermarket freezer as well as a remote Gothic castle. His influence on a generation of bestselling authors–including Stephen King and Dean Koontz–who first read him in their youth is, well, legendary. –Stanley Wiater

Horror Stories And Novellas By Richard Matheson
Excellent SF by Richard Matheson. In an alternative present or near future the human civilization has been destroyed by a virus that turns people into vampires. The story focuses on Robert Neville, maybe the only human who seems to be immune. On the days he drives around the empty city looking for resources and make his house/stronghold more resistant. In the night the vampires arrive and try to break in. The story is very well written and full of suspense. And very dark. Not exactly a feelgood book.
Mathesons’ novel was made into a movie in 1970: “Omega Man” with Charlton Heston in the role of Neville. The film is very well worth watching, if just to compare with the novel. There are many differences which is interesting. (Also “I am Legend” was recently made into a film by some Hollywood studio with Will Smith as Neville. I haven’t seen it but I really don’t think it is as dark as the novel, or half as interesting.)

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I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Things Fall Apart (African Writers Series) by Chinua Achebe – Welcome To Africa

One of Chinua Achebes many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming neer-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his fathers weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy: Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwos fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.

Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. –Alix Wilber

Welcome To Africa
This book has definitely earned the right to be called a CLASSIC! It gives the reader a good image of what it was like to be colonized by foreign powers that have no knowledge of the culture (and Im using anthropologys definition of culture NOT the mainstreams definition) and have NO interest in learning of it. Also shows how missionaries tend to negatively affect the culture and act as a neo-imperialist institution. Still its only a fictional account, but it DOES provide a valid POV of colonialism from the colonized peoples POV. Hopefully, people can make sense of my ramblings here. lol

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Things Fall Apart (African Writers Series) by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart: A Novel by Chinua Achebe – Best Story Ive Ever Read!

One of Chinua Achebes many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming neer-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his fathers weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy: Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwos fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.

Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. –Alix Wilber

Best Story Ive Ever Read!
This book has definitely earned the right to be called a CLASSIC! It gives the reader a good image of what it was like to be colonized by foreign powers that have no knowledge of the culture (and Im using anthropologys definition of culture NOT the mainstreams definition) and have NO interest in learning of it. Also shows how missionaries tend to negatively affect the culture and act as a neo-imperialist institution. Still its only a fictional account, but it DOES provide a valid POV of colonialism from the colonized peoples POV. Hopefully, people can make sense of my ramblings here. lol

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Things Fall Apart: A Novel by Chinua Achebe

Things Fall Apart (Guided Reader) by Chinua Achebe – Best Story Ive Ever Read!

One of Chinua Achebes many achievements in his acclaimed first novel, Things Fall Apart, is his relentlessly unsentimental rendering of Nigerian tribal life before and after the coming of colonialism. First published in 1958, just two years before Nigeria declared independence from Great Britain, the book eschews the obvious temptation of depicting pre-colonial life as a kind of Eden. Instead, Achebe sketches a world in which violence, war, and suffering exist, but are balanced by a strong sense of tradition, ritual, and social coherence. His Ibo protagonist, Okonkwo, is a self-made man. The son of a charming neer-do-well, he has worked all his life to overcome his fathers weakness and has arrived, finally, at great prosperity and even greater reputation among his fellows in the village of Umuofia. Okonkwo is a champion wrestler, a prosperous farmer, husband to three wives and father to several children. He is also a man who exhibits flaws well-known in Greek tragedy: Okonkwo ruled his household with a heavy hand. His wives, especially the youngest, lived in perpetual fear of his fiery temper, and so did his little children. Perhaps down in his heart Okonkwo was not a cruel man. But his whole life was dominated by fear, the fear of failure and of weakness. It was deeper and more intimate than the fear of evil and capricious gods and of magic, the fear of the forest, and of the forces of nature, malevolent, red in tooth and claw. Okonkwos fear was greater than these. It was not external but lay deep within himself. It was the fear of himself, lest he should be found to resemble his father. And yet Achebe manages to make this cruel man deeply sympathetic. He is fond of his eldest daughter, and also of Ikemefuna, a young boy sent from another village as compensation for the wrongful death of a young woman from Umuofia. He even begins to feel pride in his eldest son, in whom he has too often seen his own father. Unfortunately, a series of tragic events tests the mettle of this strong man, and it is his fear of weakness that ultimately undoes him.

Achebe does not introduce the theme of colonialism until the last 50 pages or so. By then, Okonkwo has lost everything and been driven into exile. And yet, within the traditions of his culture, he still has hope of redemption. The arrival of missionaries in Umuofia, however, followed by representatives of the colonial government, completely disrupts Ibo culture, and in the chasm between old ways and new, Okonkwo is lost forever. Deceptively simple in its prose, Things Fall Apart packs a powerful punch as Achebe holds up the ruin of one proud man to stand for the destruction of an entire culture. –Alix Wilber

Read This For Class…It Was Great
This book has definitely earned the right to be called a CLASSIC! It gives the reader a good image of what it was like to be colonized by foreign powers that have no knowledge of the culture (and Im using anthropologys definition of culture NOT the mainstreams definition) and have NO interest in learning of it. Also shows how missionaries tend to negatively affect the culture and act as a neo-imperialist institution. Still its only a fictional account, but it DOES provide a valid POV of colonialism from the colonized peoples POV. Hopefully, people can make sense of my ramblings here. lol

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Things Fall Apart (Guided Reader) by Chinua Achebe

Sabriel (Abhorsen) by Garth Nix – Loved It

After receiving a cryptic message from her father, Abhorsen, a necromancer trapped in Death, 18-year-old Sabriel sets off into the Old Kingdom. Fraught with peril and deadly trickery, her journey takes her to a world filled with parasitical spirits, Mordicants, and Shadow Hands. Unlike other necromancers, who raise the dead, Abhorsen lays the disturbed dead back to rest. This obliges him–and now Sabriel, who has taken on her fathers title and duties–to slip over the border into the icy river of Death, sometimes battling the evil forces that lurk there, waiting for an opportunity to escape into the realm of the living. Desperate to find her father, and grimly determined to help save the Old Kingdom from destruction by the horrible forces of the evil undead, Sabriel endures almost impossible exhaustion, violent confrontations, and terrifying challenges to her supernatural abilities–and her destiny.

Garth Nix delves deep into the mystical underworld of necromancy, magic, and the monstrous undead. This tale is not for the faint of heart; imbedded in the classic good-versus-evil story line are subplots of grisly ghouls hungry for human life to perpetuate their stay in the world of the living, and dark, devastating secrets of betrayal and loss. Just try to put this book down. For more along this line, try Nixs later novel: Shades Children. (Ages 12 and older) –Emilie Coulter

Beloved
I was enthralled in middle school and Ive read it several times since then, and Im 25 yrs. old now. I still love it. I am so charmed by the characters in Sabriel. This is a good series to get into, and I think that this is the best book in the series simply because Sabriel as a heroine is preferable to the one in the subsequent books (Lirael is whiney and angst-ridden for too much of the other books). I always read the bad reviews before I type my own review about books that I like, and I think that the people who thought the book was unclear and that the characters werent likable must not have been in the mood for this type of story or something. The story unfolds vividly for me and I am able to picture the entire story in my mind (and have done so).

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Sabriel (Abhorsen) by Garth Nix

America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It by Mark Steyn – Best Book In A Long Time

This title is the New York Times bestseller – now in paperback. In America Alone, Mark Steyn uses his trademark wit, clarity of thought and flair for the apocalyptic, Mark Steyn to argue that America is the only hope against Islamic Terrorism. Steyn addresses the singular position in which America finds itself, surrounded by anti-Americanism on all sides. He gives us the brutal facts on these threats and why there is no choice but for America to fight for the cause of freedom – alone.

Steyn Issues Wakeup Call To The West
pon hearing that Mark Steyn”s America Alone was about the rise of radical Islam and its war against a declining Western Civilization, my brother said he did not think he had the stomach to read it. He stated he would probably feel like cutting his wrists by the end of the book. Well, he was wrong; I am sure he would feel like cutting his wrists about halfway through the book”s opening prologue.

Yes, America Alone is a doomsday book. In the prologue, Steyn states the seriousness of the problem succinctly: “Let me put it in a slightly bigger nutshell: much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries.”

So, what catastrophe does Steyn believe will wipeout Western civilization? Will coastal cities be flooded by melting polar ice caps? Will the world overpopulate and foolishly and recklessly use up its natural resources? Hardly. Unlike most global, run-for-the-hills, the-sky-is-falling doomsday books, America Alone does not focus on exaggerated environmental concerns but, instead, offers a decidedly convincing neoconservative take: Steyn believes Western civilization will be overrun by radical Islam.

In America Alone Steyn attempts -largely succeeding – to show the severity and seriousness of radical Islam”s declared war against Western Civilization, by focusing on three primary factors:

1) Demographic decline. The swiftly shrinking numbers of native populations in western countries and the rapidly rising global Muslim population.

2) The unsustainability of the advanced Western social democratic state. A welfare state cannot sustain economic vitality while supporting a disproportionately aging population.

3) Civilization exhaustion. Multiculturalism has robbed the Western world of its identity and sense of accomplishment.

Demographic Decline

Steyn begins by explaining that in order for a country, any country, to achieve a stable population, it needs to maintain a total fertility rate of 2.1 live births per woman. In other words, for Country X to have a population of one million in 1980, one million in 1990 and one million in 2000, it needs to maintain a fertility rate of 2.1. Simple enough. Steyn then tells us the fertility rate of the United States is almost exactly 2.1, meaning if it weren”t for immigration, the United States population would not be decreasing or increasing, just holding steady. That wouldn”t be that bad except that the United States has the highest fertility rate among all countries in the developed world – by far. By comparison, Canada has a rate of 1.48, Europe 1.38, Japan 1.32 and Russia 1.14. In other words, native populations in the industrialized world are steadily, and in some cases drastically, decreasing.

The whole world is not following suit, however. In fact, some countries are experiencing a population boom. The one characteristic many of these countries share? Their populations are predominantly Muslim; countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have fertility rates well above 5.0.

How much have these trends affected the makeup of the world”s population? In 1970 the developed world represented 30 percent of the world”s population. By 2000, that number had shrunk to a mere 20 percent. During that same time Muslim nations increased from 15 percent of the world”s population to 20 percent. In other words, forty years ago the industrialized nations outnumbered Muslim nations by a 2:1 ratio. Ten years ago they were roughly equal. After sharing these numbers, Steyn concludes, “And by 2020?”

After reviewing these numbers, some might wonder what all the fuss is about. What difference does it make if it”s secular Europeans or Muslim Europeans? In fact, Steyn remarks, some would probably make the comparison to an all-black Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! Same set, same songs, different cast. Steyn clarifies that the problem isn”t about race; it”s about culture. He writes:

“To agitate about what proportion of the population is ”white” is grotesque and inappropriate. But it”s not about race; it”s about culture. If 100% of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy, it doesn”t matter whether 70 percent of them are “white” or only 5 percent are. But if one part of your population believes in liberal pluralist democracy and the other doesn”t, then it becomes a matter of great importance whether the part that does is 90 percent of the population or only 60 percent, or 50, or 45 percent.”

So, have Muslims adopted a liberal democratic worldview? Ample evidence would suggest otherwise:

“In the 2005 rankings of Freedom House”s survey of personal liberty and democracy around the world, five of the eight countries with the lowest “freedom” score were Muslim. Of the forty-six Muslim majority nations in the world, only three were free. Of the sixteen nations in which Muslims form between 20 and 50 percent of the population, only another three were ranked as free: Benin, Serbia and Montenegro, and Suriname.”

If Muslims are not successfully assimilated into the Western culture of the nations they emigrate to, these nations will gradually begin to take on the characteristics of the Muslims” home countries. As the Freedom House rankings suggest, this means much more than an increase in the number of neighborhood mosques and Arabic restaurants dotting the landscape; it directly translates into the level of personal freedom individuals can expect to enjoy in these countries.

The Unsustainability of the Modern Welfare State

Shrinking populations are a problem in their own right – before even considering the threat of rising radical Muslim populations. The modern welfare state is built around the premise of lots of young people paying for the care and retirement of a smaller number of elderly. When this pyramid is upended, even the most optimistic liberal is forced to admit the system is just not economically viable. As Steyn explains, it”s because “the twentieth-century social-democratic state was built on a careless model that requires a constantly growing population to sustain it.” Steyn continues:

“Big Government depends on bigger population: Americans have a relatively smallish government compared to Canada and Europe, but the U.S. Social Security system assumes a 30 percent population growth between now and 2075 or so and, even then, expects to be running a deficit after 2017. Now imagine you”re Spain and you”ve got even bigger public pensions liabilities and a population that”s going to be halving every thirty-five years. The progressive Left can be in favor of Big Government or population control but not both. That mutual incompatibility is about to plunge Europe into societal collapse. There is no precedent in human history for economic growth on declining human capital – and that”s before anyone invented unsustainable welfare systems.”

In other words, welfare simply cannot work on models with shrinking populations; yet, this is exactly where the rest of the industrialized world finds itself. This problem, Steyn explains, is not just fiscal in nature but moral as well. By passing on the care of the elderly to the government and not reproducing at minimum population replacement rates, the Western world has placed itself in an exclusively present tense state. Steyn writes:

“… Since 1945, throughout the West, a variety of government interventions – state pensions, subsidized higher education, higher taxes to pay for everything – has so ruptured traditional patterns of inter-generational solidarity that Continentals now exist almost entirely in a present-tense culture of complete sel

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Duma Key: A Novel by Stephen King – Duma Key

Amazon Significant Seven, January 2008: It would be impossible to convey the wonder and the horror of Stephen Kings latest novel in just a few words. Suffice it to say that Duma Key, the story of Edgar Freemantle and his recovery from the terrible nightmare-inducing accident that stole his arm and ended his marriage, is Stephen Kings most brilliant novel to date (outside of the Dark Tower novels, in which case each is arguably his best work). Duma Key is as rich and rewarding as Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (yes, that Shawshank Redemption), and as truly scary as anything King has written (and thats saying a lot). Readers who have always wanted to try Stephen King but never known where to start should try a few pages of Duma Key–the frankness with which Edgar reveals his desperate, sputtering rages and thoughts of suicide is King at the top of his game. And thats just the first thirty pages… –Daphne Durham

Duma Key: Where It All Began A Note from Chuck Verrill, the Longtime Editor of Stephen King In the spring of 2006 Stephen King told me he was working on a Florida story that was beginning to grow on him. Im thinking of calling it Duma Key, he offered. I liked the sound of that–the title was like a drumbeat of dread. You know how Liseys Story is a story about marriage? he said. Sure, I answered. The novel hadnt yet been published, but I knew its story well: Lisey and Scott Landon–what a marriage that was. Then he dropped the other shoe: I think Duma Key might be my story of divorce.

Pretty soon I received a slim package from a familiar address in Maine. Inside was a short story titled Memory–a story of divorce, all right, but set in Minnesota. By the end of the summer, when Tin House published Memory, Stephen had completed a draft of Duma Key, and it became clear to me how Memory and its narrator, Edgar Freemantle, had moved from Minnesota to Florida, and how a story of divorce had turned into something more complex, more strange, and much more terrifying.

If you read the following two texts side by side–Memory as it was published by Tin House and the opening chapter of Duma Key in final form–youll see a writer at work, and how stories can both contract and expand. Whether Duma Key is an expansion of Memory or Memory a contraction of Duma Key, I cant really say. Can you?

–Chuck Verrill

MemoryMemories are contrary things; if you quit chasing them and turn your back, they often return on their own. Thats what Kamen says. I tell him I never chased the memory of my accident. Some things, I say, are better forgotten.

Maybe, but that doesn’t matter, either. Thats what Kamen says.

My name is Edgar Freemantle. I used to be a big deal in building and construction. This was in Minnesota, in my other life. I was a genuine American-boy success in that life, worked my way up like a motherf—er, and for me, everything worked out. When Minneapolis–St. Paul boomed, The Freemantle Company boomed. When things tightened up, I never tried to force things. But I played my hunches, and most of them played out well. By the time I was fifty, Pam and I were worth about forty million dollars. And what we had together still worked. I looked at other women from time to time but never strayed. At the end of our particular Golden Age, one of our girls was at Brown and the other was teaching in a foreign exchange program. Just before things went wrong, my wife and I were planning to go and visit her.

I had an accident at a job site. Thats what happened. I was in my pickup truck. The right side of my skull was crushed. My ribs were broken. My right hip was shattered. And although I retained sixty percent of the sight in my right eye (more, on a good day), I lost almost all of my right arm.

I was supposed to lose my life, but I didn’t. Then I was supposed to become one of the Vegetable Simpsons, a Coma Homer, but that didnt happen, either. I was one confused American when I came around, but the worst of that passed. By the time it did, my wife had passed, too. Shes remarried to a fellow who owns bowling alleys. My older daughter likes him. My younger daughter thinks he’s a yank-off. My wife says she’ll come around.

Maybe sí, maybe no. Thats what Kamen says.

When I say I was confused, I mean that at first I didn’t know who people were, or what had happened, or why I was in such awful pain. I cant remember the quality and pitch of that pain now. I know it was excruciating, but its all pretty academic. Like a picture of a mountain in National Geographic magazine. It wasn’t academic at the time. At the time it was more like climbing a mountain.

Continue Reading Memory

Duma KeyHow to Draw a PictureStart with a blank surface. It doesnt have to be paper or canvas, but I feel it should be white. We call it white because we need a word, but its true name is nothing. Black is the absence of light, but white is the absence of memory, the color of cant remember.

How do we remember to remember? Thats a question Ive asked myself often since my time on Duma Key, often in the small hours of the morning, looking up into the absence of light, remembering absent friends. Sometimes in those little hours I think about the horizon. You have to establish the horizon. You have to mark the white. A simple enough act, you might say, but any act that re-makes the world is heroic. Or so I’ve come to believe.

Imagine a little girl, hardly more than a baby. She fell from a carriage almost ninety years ago, struck her head on a stone, and forgot everything. Not just her name; everything! And then one day she recalled just enough to pick up a pencil and make that first hesitant mark across the white. A horizon-line, sure. But also a slot for blackness to pour through.

Still, imagine that small hand lifting the pencil… hesitating… and then marking the white. Imagine the courage of that first effort to re-establish the world by picturing it. I will always love that little girl, in spite of all she has cost me. I must. I have no choice. Pictures are magic, as you know.

My Other Life My name is Edgar Freemantle. I used to be a big deal in the building and contracting business. This was in Minnesota, in my other life. I learned that my-other-life thing from Wireman. I want to tell you about Wireman, but first lets get through the Minnesota part.

Gotta say it: I was a genuine American-boy success there. Worked my way up in the company where I started, and when I couldn’t work my way any higher there, I went out and started

Great Read
In the first handful of chapters of Duma Key, the reader gets an eerie suspicion that King is writing from personal experience. From Edgars accident itself to the after-effects of the trauma, the details are breathtakingly clear. As someone who has worked with Traumatic Brain Injury patients in the past, I became mesmerized in the way King described Edgars loss of words and the resulting substitutions and frustration–sit in the char, the chum, sit in the god damn friend. As a reader, you are immediately sucked into Edgars plight.

Kings excellence at his craft shines through as well in the conversational way Edgar relates the whole tale to you like he is chatting with a friend (you) over coffee. Having listened to Stephen King read his book On Writing, the pace, the language, and the images in Duma Key are very similar to the way King relates his own lifes story at the beginning of On Writing. One of the noticeable differences in Duma Key, compared to other King titles, is the use of repetition. The reader realizes less than half-way through the lengthy novel, that when a phrase or detail is repeated it is important. A second noticeable difference is that Stephen King creates some truly beautiful prose, rather than the frightening, suspenseful scenes that he is renown for. Scenes between the Freemantles (Edgar, wife Pam, and daughters Ilsa and Melinda) are heartfelt and tender at times, but also show the pain and rage that can impale families dealing with a trauma.

The ensemble of supporting characters are rich, intriguing, and provide a backdrop for Edgars development. Jerome Wireman, the resident lawyer turned caretaker, provides Edgar with not only a companion, but also a philosophical guide through Edgars new life. He is a good friend with a tale of his own to spin. Kings ability to characterize Wireman is a true mark of his greatness as a writer. Elizabeth Eastlake, the Floridian Godfathers Daughter, is not only Edgars landlord, but she is also the main character in Kings secondary plot. This King trademark of braiding two plots together has culminated in an amazing, rather than frightening story. As Elizabeths fog deepens, she remembers fragments from her past that urge Edgar forward to discover what is so special about Duma Key.

This Stephen King novel is by far his best in years. It contains hints, at times not so subtle ones, of the supernatural, but supernatural horror is not the primary focus of this story. Its focus is clearly the humanity of the characters. The themes resounding in Edgars, Wiremans, and Elizabeths experiences exclaim redemption, second-chances, and recovery.

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Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama – Dreams From My Father

The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years later, Obama receives a phone call from Nairobi: his father is dead. This sudden news inspires an emotional odyssey for Obama, determined to learn the truth of his fathers life and reconcile his divided inheritance. Written at the age of thirty-three, Dreams from my Father is an unforgettable read. It illuminates not only Obamas journey, but also our universal desire to understand our history, and what makes us the people we are.

A Book Worth Reading
This would have been a great book even if Obama hadnt been elected President.

Dreams from My Father is not political. Its the personal story of a confused and troubled youth growing up and becoming a man. The honesty is brutal, the insights painful and joyful in turn. This is one of those rare books that can help you become a better person.

I read the book through twice, repeatedly forgetting that it was written by the President of the United States. I cant think of a much higher compliment.

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The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster – Wheres My Tollbooth?

It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time, Milo laments. [T]heres nothing for me to do, nowhere Id care to go, and hardly anything worth seeing. This bored, bored young protagonist who cant see the point to anything is knocked out of his glum humdrum by the sudden and curious appearance of a tollbooth in his bedroom. Since Milo has absolutely nothing better to do, he dusts off his toy car, pays the toll, and drives through. What ensues is a journey of mythic proportions, during which Milo encounters countless odd characters who are anything but dull.

Norton Juster received (and continues to receive) enormous praise for this original, witty, and oftentimes hilarious novel, first published in 1961. In an introductory Appreciation written by Maurice Sendak for the 35th anniversary edition, he states, The Phantom Tollbooth leaps, soars, and abounds in right notes all over the place, as any proper masterpiece must. Indeed.

As Milo heads toward Dictionopolis he meets with the Whether Man (for after all its more important to know whether there will be weather than what the weather will be), passes through The Doldrums (populated by Lethargarians), and picks up a watchdog named Tock (who has a giant alarm clock for a body). The brilliant satire and double entendre intensifies in the Word Market, where after a brief scuffle with Officer Short Shrift, Milo and Tock set off toward the Mountains of Ignorance to rescue the twin Princesses, Rhyme and Reason. Anyone with an appreciation for language, irony, or Alice in Wonderland-style adventure will adore this book for years on end. (Ages 8 and up)

Wheres My Tollbooth?
I didnt know what to expect when picking up The Phantom Tollbooth.

Sure, I had read it and loved it when I was younger. And the names Milo and Tock seemed vaguely familiar to me. But reading it again begged the question: Would I love it again?

The answer? Hell yes.

The premise of The Phantom Tollbooth is that a young boy, Milo, is too busy going places and doing things to live life. When the Tollbooth mysteriously arrives in his bedroom, he hops in his car and soon finds himself on a deserted road in the Kingdom of Wisdom. He soon meets Tock, a watchdog who ticks, the Humbug who is usually mistaken, and a cast of characters that are like no other. When discovering the lands make no sense without Rhyme and Reason, the princesses who have been banished, he undertakes a mission to save the kingdom of Wisdom.

Without being overtly educational, the book strives to highlight all the things we humans are too busy doing to acknowledge. Milo journeys through the lands of Digitopolis (ruled by the Mathemagician), Dictionopolis (ruled by the Mathemagicians brother, King Azaz), the Mountains of Ignorance, the Island of Conclusions, the Valley of Sound, and the Forest of Sight to save the Princesses. Each land has a corresponding character (or several) that emphasize the importance of appreciating the world around Milo, and indirectly, the reader.

I was quite impressed with the cleverness of Norton Juster, as he managed to create so many characters that epitomized their individual lands and lessons. Chroma resides within the Forest of Sight where he conducts a colorful symphony daily that teach Milo just how amazing the world can be when displayed in technicolor. Chromas rendition of the world is played out on a daily basis by his orchestra, which Milo soon finds out is much more complicated than it seems. Later, when Milo arrives in the Valley of Sound, he learns the Soundkeeper has forbidden any sort of noise, wanting to teach the residents the importance of silence. Yet a withheld But on the tip of Milos tongue restores sound to the Valley, and reminds Milo of the beauty of noise. Likewise, Juster plays upon conventional wit by having Milo, Tock, and the Humbug absconded to the Island of Conclusions when they make an assumption that proves to be incorrect.

What I loved most about The Phantom Tollbooth is that these were characters I wanted to befriend, to spend a day with, to learn from. Yet in a way, we all have. Weve all dealt with the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit. Similarly, weve all dealt with the Senses Taker – anyone whos ever worked in retail knows exactly what I mean. At the same time, weve been comforted by Rhyme and Reason, who in this book are anthropomorphized by the two banished Princesses. Justers ability to take a fictional world and translate it so closely to a world that we all live in and sometimes forget to appreciate is what makes the Phantom Tollbooth such a successful modern fairy tale.

Though it is meant to be a childrens book, there are lessons every child and adult can learn and relearn, while enjoying the fabulous whimsy of The Phantom Tollbooth. Now, to figure out how to get my own Tollbooth, so I can go hang out with Tock…

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Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama – A Book Worth Reading

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man—has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey—first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of his mother’s family to Hawaii, and then to Kenya, where he meets the African side of his family, confronts the bitter truth of his father’s life, and at last reconciles his divided inheritance.

Pictured in lefthand photograph on cover: Habiba Akumu Hussein and Barack Obama, Sr. (President Obamas paternal grandmother and his father as a young boy). Pictured in righthand photograph on cover: Stanley Dunham and Ann Dunham (President Obamas maternal grandfather and his mother as a young girl).

Well Satisfied.
Would I have read this book had its author not been elected President of the United States? Probably not, but I would have missed a book worth reading.
The miracle of Obamas election last November only grows after reading this account of his childhood, youth and young manhood. We learn how he was born, the result of a romance between his Kenyan father and young American mother; how his father returns to Africa, his mother remarries an Indonesian man and his years in that country. Returning to Hawaii, the young Obama goes through years of confusion about his identity and the meaning of his blackness. He becomes a community organizer in Chicago (these chapters provide the most vivid writing) and visits his late fathers family in Kenya.
One is struck by the fact that this young man has graduated from the University of Life as well as Harvard Law School. He knows firsthand about poverty and the problems of our innercities. He knows how so many young black men have fallen victim to hopelessness and the streets. He knows from direct experience how hard it is to make progress, to fight the dead weight of poverty.
One thing I miss in this book is the birth of Obamas ambition. He presents himself as a young drifter engaged in an intellectual search for identity but he must have been much more than that. What impelled him to grab the chance to transfer to Columbia University? Were not precisely told. What prompted him to go to Harvard law. Again, its left a bit opaque.
Another quibble: we get too much for my liking about the elder Obama, the absent father, and not enough about his mother who stuck around to raise him. We learn about Dr. Obamas blighted career, his many infidelities, his bewildering set of offspring with various women, his drinking, his reckless generosity and on and on. Also a little too much about the mythic origins of the Obama clan deep in African prehistory.
If Obama is the product of an African father and a white mother, it is the absent father who looms much the larger in his imagination. The white side of his family — his long-suffering mother and the grandparents who helped raise him — get short shrift. We hear about Obamas grandfathers attitude to race and black. He too is a disappointed man who failed to live up to his own expectations of himself. Yet, he helped produce Obama.
Its fascinating to me how an absent parent can loom larger in a young mans mind than the one who stuck around and did the hard day-to-day job of raising the child.
The writing is admirably clear and for the most part the book is consistently interesting. I think we are blessed by having such a self-aware and knowledgeable man as our president. This is far more than the usual campaign-biography, produced with a ghost writer to present the candidate or potential candidate in the best possible light. This is a real book about a real person. Thats the highest praise I can offer.

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