Doctor Sleep

It's hard for me to give an unbiased review of any Stephen King book. From the ages of 13-18 he was like my surrogate boyfriend*: staying up late with me, telling me all about things my parents definitely didn't want me to know about, and scaring the bejeesus out of me (that's how love works, right? Help meee). 

And after I went to college and started slutting around, literature-wise (how you doin', Sarah Waters? Looking good, Michael Chabon!), we stayed on great terms. I no longer needed to have his latest hot off of the presses, but when I did get to it I'd always feel a rush of nostalgia and hum a little Buck Owens. Best of all, it felt like we were maturing together! Lisey's Story & Full Dark, No Stars managed to become two of my favorites by him - still plenty of thrills & chills; no terrifying clown demons needed. 

And now, this! A sequel to The Shining. The SHINING you guys. Arguably his most famous novel, definitely one of his best - so dark and layered and ominous and if all you know is the movie, you gots to get on that mass market paperback train, yo. That movie is great but it might as well have been an Asylum joint called "The Gleaming," for how little it holds true to King's plot and vision. 

Have you read The Shining?

You've read it?

For sure - like, you know what happens with the...and then the...and you know that he doesn't....?

Okay, you may proceed.

So, Danny Torrance is all grown. He's a drunk and a drifter, haunted by both his father's addictions and the remnants of the Overlook's evil. His shining proves to have an upside, though, as he finds work at a hospice and discovers he can help soothe the patients as they die. Hence: Dr. Sleep. 

His story is told in tandem with that of a little girl born a few towns over, Abra, who has unusually strong shining abilities - unfortunately they're so powerful that they attract the attention of some shine-sucking immortal vampiric creatures who travel around the U.S. in RVs torturing similarly gifted little kids and slurping up their sweet shine-juice. Yup, these dudes are no good, and Danny and Abra are going to take. Them. Down! Shine Twins activate!

Here's where the bias comes in: is it a little goofy? Yes. Is it scary? Not especially, though there are definitely some uneasy passages (Stephen King why do you keep trying to ruin bathtubs/indoor plumbing for me?!).

Did I love it? OF COURSE I DID. I'm no longer a young, bookish loner who needs paperbacks to get her heartbeat racing. I'm an old, bookish loner who can watch Breaking Bad whenever she needs to feel alive again. I'm okay with a book by an old friend (Stevie!) that brings back another old friend (Danny!), and lets him fight crime with a cute, precocious teen. I've gone soft, and that's cool.** Stephen King has, too, apparently....for now.

BIASED REVIEW: Stephen King Stephen Kings out of Stephen King. 

UNBIASED REVIEW: 3 goofball Mystery-style velvet top-hats out of 5.

*so much hotter than having an ACTUAL boyfriend, you guys

**I even teared up a the end...you know the part with ___? Where he helped him by ___? And it was like aaahhhhh of course!!!??? And then he looks back? Yeah that part. *Sniff*

Congo

Emboldened by my enjoyable revisit to Jurassic Park & the Lost World, I thought I’d pick up another Crichton novel I barely remembered but knew I’d read in my early teens. Foolish, foolish, Jane. This. Book. Is. Bananas.*The plot DID give me some great ideas for band names though:

• Corporate Jungle Heist
• Parachuting Gorilla
• Killer Police Apes
• Gorilla Ticklers
• Stone Skull Crushers
• Amy & The Blue Diamonds
• The Japanese Consortium

Sure, there is some action when the aforementioned killer police apes start busting out the aforementioned stone skull crushers, but mostly the book is concerned with how one company is going to beat another company to a source of rocks that will make computers faster. There are a lot of sentences that begin “Karen had to upload the data to the satellite uplink to get the new probability for the desired outcome.” Nerds, do NOT tell me if I got that wrong.

So unless you like reading a lot about old technology, just see the movie. Or, don’t – because apparently it’s also pretty bad (Amy the Talking Gorilla was nominated for worst supporting actress and LOST TO MADONNA. BRB going to be laughing about Madge being worse to watch than this for awhile).  

1 out of 5 playtime sessions with All Ball & Koko.

*Um, YEAH pun intended. Are you new here?

Jurassic Park & The Lost World: A Dinosaur Twofer

Jurassic Park might be the movie I have seen the most. I was 10 when it came out, and my dad took my brothers & me to see it and then hid in a bush on the way home and jumped out and scared us. Great parenting, Dad! Dr. Alan Grant was one of my first crushes (don’t panic, Indiana Jones-era Harrison Ford – you’ll always be #1. Apparently I like gruff older men who are frequently exasperated while wearing dusty fedoras....Paging Dr. Freud!). We got a VHS tape of the movie and played it every single day after school. My family quotes it constantly (Mom: “Finish your dinner.” Me: “Now you will eventually have DINOSAURS, on your dinosaur tour? Hmm?” Mom: *Cries silently and wonders where she went wrong*). I just had my bachelorette party and my bridesmaid designed Jurassic Park themed t-shirts for us all to wear, and, spoiler alert: my bridesmaids are going to walk down the aisle to the theme song (What? It’s PRETTY).

So when the movie was re-released in 3D IMAX, I was psyched to see it on the big screen again. It did not disappoint! Haters to the left. My mom says I read the book when it came out, which would have made me 7 (?!). Did I understand ANYTHING ABOUT IT? What a weird kid. Anyway, 20 years later, enthralled once again, I decided to re-read the book and the sequel, The Lost World.

Lessons learned:

• Movie Alan Grant is way better than book Alan Grant. Book Dr. Grant actually LIKES children. Terrible. 
• There's an awesome T.Rex river chase that never made it to the big screen - probably because actually seeing the T.Rex dog paddling makes it look cute instead of scary? Too bad.
• The book is less scary, though, overall. My theory is that dinosaur names are too nerdy on the page: "The dilophosaurus attacked!" Oooooh I'm sooooo scaaaaared. "The razor teeth terror beast attacked!" *shits pants, cries, puts book in freezer*
• In both the novel & the book, Ellie is the coolest and consistently shows the men in the room what the hell is up.  I want to be a paleobotanist!*
• The Lost World is pretty much just Jurassic Park, again, on a different island. NOT COMPLAINING.
• Michael Crichton can't write children - the ones in both books are one-dimensional plot devices. "Oh no we've lost little Billy! Time to move from plot point A to B!" And scene.

I am regretting reviewing these books. They're neither bad, nor good - they simply are (Jurassic Park). Okay, they're probably not great - but they are a million times better than anything Dan Brown ever wrote, paleontogists > symbologists 4EVA. 

Jurassic Park: 4 Dodgson's out of 5.

The Lost World: 3 Goldblum cackles out of 5.

*You're right - I just want to look good in short shorts. 

A Day No Pigs Would Die

This book is my personal no-cry challenge, and I fail every single time. It's about young Rob Peck saving a cow, getting a pig, and BECOMING A MAN. His dad is Haven Peck: the illest Shaker farmer/butcher in all of 1920s Vermont. Dear old Dad is illiterate, but that doesn't stop him from dropping mad knowledge bombs all over the place like steaming cow patties:

• "That's what being a man's all about, boy. It's just doing what has to be done." Haven, I'm all OVER this ish - you need a cow milked, I will milk that cow for you - or preferably whatever the urban equivalent is (latte run?).
• "Dying is a dirty business. Like being born." You're talking about poop, right? On second thought, let the details remain a mystery. Gross coming in, gross going out - got it.
• "Never miss a chance...to keep your mouth shut." Um, okay, this is good advice but I tend to favor the Real Housewives philosophy over the Shaker one in my own personal interactions: "She who out-yells everyone wins - but save some insults for the confessional." To each their own, Have. 

I'm sure you're intrigued already, and I haven't even mentioned the adorable pig named Pinky and the fact that uptight moms are constantly trying to have this book banned (banned books are the best books, obviously). Even if you're not into reading about porcine-boy friendships (WEIRDO), any time you need to feel again just grab a saline-stained copy and ride this novella to Tear Town, population: YOU. Better than a really good episode of Oprah, I promise you.

5 cow goiters out of 5 disgusting cow goiters. 

Lightning

Oh, Dean. What cruel twist of fate engineered the fact that you would be constantly preceded by Stephen King on the library shelves, forever doomed to be following in his footsteps in alphabetization as in life? Still, my brothers and I devoured all your books as teenagers*, so maybe you're better thought of as a gentle "intro to" dark adult fiction instead of a poor man's version of weightier author.

Anyway, you're a millionaire and churn out about a dozen books a year and I can barely do one review a month, so pretty sure you're doing alright.

Lightning was one of the first Koontzy's I read, and his tale of a love-struck time-traveling Nazi defector scientist held me in its thrall. I was going to re-read it but I'd rather review it from the perspective of an awkward teen than a confident and savvy adult (I am trying to incorporate my daily affirmations into these reviews. I can feel them working!). So, as a 90s teen, I cannot recommend this book enough and I really look forward to the movie adaptation, coming out in July 1999, starring Val Kilmer.

90s teen rating: 5 The Saint-era Val Kilmers out of 5. Suspected current Jane rating: 2 beach-ready Val Kilmers out of 5.

 *and we also had a weird obsession with the evolution of your author pic - in earlier editions, you had a mustache worthy of the Brawny Man and a receding hairline; in later ones, you were clean shaven but suspiciously thick-coiffed. This led to an attempt to speculate on your wikipedia page about a frenzied late-night mustache-to-pate home hair transplant, which remained in your entry for one tantalizing day before being edited into oblivion.

Chrysalids

First of all, I chose to use this cover as illustration because, and I can't stress this enough, this book has nothing to do with human/praying mantis hybrids wearing fur ruffs and samurai armor, and brandishing spears. Not once does this happen. If there is a book about that, send it to me, because it sounds great. But it's not this book.

This book is about less-dramatic mutants (your six-toed individuals, your telepathic individuals...etc. Well, actually, that's pretty much it). Our telepathic friends are living in a post-,post-,post-apocalyptic USA, where deviation from the norm is not tolerated. I first read this book in high school, and with the wisdom I've accumulated since then I now see that they were trying to teach us a *very special* lesson about tolerance, conformity, and nuclear fallout.

But I have ALWAYS loved mutants, because my mom has two earlobes on one ear. So, thanks for wasting my time, high school English class.

To summarize, John Wyndham is great and you knew that since you read Day of the Triffids and realized that plants are plotting against us, and secretly that's the reason you eat salad, not to watch your weight like you tell everyone.

6 toes out of 5! Hmm, no, it's not that good. You could also mutate fewer appendages, couldn't you? 3 super-strong radiation enhanced super-toes out of 5.