Life After the Dark Tower

Last night around 6, I finished my second full read of the Dark Tower saga.  I think the deaths were hard to take because I spent so much time reading and re-reading the first four books in ice age-long gap between the publishing of the fourth and fifth book.  I'll definitely be re-reading the series again but hopefully it won't take me seven years to start the journey again.

Once I finished and Roland returned to the beginning of his quest, I did some housework and shaved off the several days worth of stubble I'd accumulated.  I'm really excited about the book Stephen King has coming out that bridges the gap between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla.

I went a little out of control over the past couple of weeks and my unread pile is now at 30 books.  I'm not sure I'm going to be able to knock them all out by the end of the year.  Speaking reading...

Re-Reading goals for 2012:

1. The Big Sleep
2. Red Harvest
3. The Earthsea Trilogy
4. All the P.G. Wodehouse Jeeves and Wooster Novels
5. All of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories

A Case of the Mondays

I always drag on Mondays but today has felt like an eternity.  I couldn't sleep last night due to a "15 minute nap" that turned into a 90 minute coma.  It threw off the rest of the evening and it took me forever to go to sleep.  My boss is on jury duty today so the project I'm working on hasn't gone anywhere.

As I've mentioned in the past, I've been re-reading the Dark Tower series the past six months.  The final volume was suppose to start September 1st but I started it Saturday.  People on Goodreads were reviewing Song of Susannah and I couldn't wait anymore.

When the last Dark Tower book was finally published in 2004, I took a Friday off work to make sure I'd have plenty of time to read that first weekend.  I don't remember how many days it took to read through the 800+ pages but I know I tore through it.  The re-read has almost been like a completely new book.  Except...

...Well, there's no real way to sugar coat this.  For people who haven't read the Dark Tower, I'm going to leave out the names but I cried at three deaths the first time through.  As of last night, I was halfway through.  Since I knew what was coming, you'd think I'd be able to brace myself for the deaths of two of my favorite characters.  Nope.  There were silent man tears.  I think it was actually worse this time since I knew what was going to happen.  I don't imagine the other death isn't going to have the same effect. 

So much has changed since 2004 when I last finished this book.  People have passed through my life and some have passed on altogether.  To the clearing at the end of the path, as Roland would say.  A lot happens in seven years.

I brought a different book to work today to read at lunch.  The official reason is because a big honkin' 800 page hardcover is too big to lug around. 

Musical Nostalgia - Dandimite

The year was 1997, that golden time when ska shows were still plentiful in STL and many of my friends hadn't scattered to the four winds.  I didn't have any ambition or future plans and a lot of things still had a newness to them.  I remember first hearing about Dr. Ring-Ding on St. Louis's ska radio show, Ska's The Limit and liked whichever song it was they played.  Then my friend Steve proceeded to have Dandimite on the cd changer in his car every time I rode with him for the next four or five eternities.  After several listens, I was hooked.

There are certain difficulties involved in seeing a German ska/reggae/rocksteady singer and trombone player live, especially if you don't live in a city like New York or Los Angeles.  Years went by and Dr. Ring-Ding stayed on my radar and I finally made the pilgrimage to Chicago with Ska Greg in 2008.  Ring-Ding was a really nice guy and seemed genuinely touched that we drove all the way from St. Louis to see him with the intention of driving back the next day.  I said "It's not that big of a trip.  You came all the way from Germany."  I've had some interaction with him on MySpace and Facebook since, as recently as last Tuesday when I posted "How long does it take a cheap bottle of gin to get cool in the freezer?"  Dr. Ring-Ding responded shortly after I pressed enter with "About twenty minutes." 

Anyway, my favorite Dr. Ring-Ding CD is Dandimite.  It stands the test of time a lot better than other ska records from back in the day.

1. Phone Talk    
2. Dandimite    
3. Big Man    
4. Medley: Save Bread/Save a Toast
5. (What Me) Money Back
6. Bellevue Asylum    
7. What a Day    
8. Green Pepper    
9. Rudeboy Style    
10. Knocking on My Door    
11. Got My Boogaloo    
12. Gloria    
13. One Scotch, One Bourbon, One Beer    
14. Latin Goes Ska    
15. Stay Out Late    
16. Free Spitrit    
17. Top Notch Version    
18. Man in the Street

Reggae legend Derrick Morgan does guest vocals on a couple tracks.  I'd try to name a track as my favorite but it would wind up being a five or six way tie.  I will say that his version of Latin Goes Ska is as good as the Skatellites' version and Man on the Street is better than the Skatellites' version.

A Few Things I Don't Understand

1. Why do people call it a hot water heater?  It's a water heater.  The "heat" implies the "hot".  There's no such thing as a cold water heater.
2. What's with people leaving five seconds on the microwave clock and walking away?  How hard is it to let the last five seconds tick away?  Or, if it's the beep at the end you're afraid of, clear the remaining time as a courtesy to the next user.
3. Why do people feel the need to dog-ear the corners of pages of books that aren't their's?  Do they not have a piece of paper in their house?
4. Peanut Butter in the fridge?  Completely unnecessary.
5. Whenever I notice people playing with their phones during every spare moment, it gives me pause.  What did these people do to avoid their own thoughts before cellphones became so prevalent?

That's all I have at the moment.  I'm sure I'll run into a few other things I don't understand at some point in the future.

Werehamster!

I've had a love/hate relationship with the epic fantasy genre for quite some time.  There are way too many million page rehashes of the Lord of the Rings are out there.  One time was enough!

Anyway, there are a few science fiction/fantasy epics that I like quite a bit.  Stephen King's Dark Tower is the first one that comes to mind.  I also like Dan Simmons' Hyperion Cantos, Roger Zelazny's Amber (the five Corwn books, anyway), Michael Moorcock's Elric, Jack Vance's Dying Earth, Gene Wolf's Book of the New Sun, and Philip Jose Farmer's World of Tiers.  And the one I'm about to mention.

I can't remember what made me subscribe to Planet Stories.  I must have been in a pulp phase at the time.  The Planet Stories volume that really gripped me was The Walrus and the Warwolf by Hugh Cook.

"Who's Hugh Cook?" you ask.  He's one of those fantasy writers that didn't get much attention while he was alive.  His primary work was The Chronicles of an Age of Darkness, a ten volume fantasy series.  It's not a very tightly linked series.  The first five books all happen concurrently and can be read in any order.  I'm on the eighth book right now and enjoying it tremendously.  There's a damn werehamster in The Werewolf and the Wormlord for God's sake!

The Chronicles mix fantasy, advanced technology that's misunderstood by the general populace, general weirdness, and British humor.  They feel as if they're written with my admittedly peculiar tastes in mind.  None of characters conform to the usual fantasy stereotypes.  Nothing is black and white.  Most of his lead characters are more like regular joes than fantasy heroes.  Drake Douay from The Walrus and the Warwolf is a scoundrel who's just trying to get laid.  Alfric Danbrog is a banker.  Togura is a teenager trying to lose his virginity.  Cheggory Guy is a rock gardener who also feeds a giant crab a bucket of fish guts every day.  See what I mean?

As I've said, I'm nearing the end of the eighth book now.  I'm a little hesitant about reading the last two.  Once they're gone, they're gone.

For more information on Hugh Cook's Chronicles of an Age of Darkness, consult the Chronicles of an Age of Darkness Wiki.

An interesting article

Lester Dent, aka Kenneth Robeson, the writer of over a hundred Doc Savage novels, used this formula for short stories.  I'm thinking about trying to use it just to see how things go.  I find parts of it unintentionally hilarious.

The Lester Dent Pulp Story Formula

He's very perceptive for a man who writes about magic marital aids

One of the many blogs I read on a regular basis is James Steele's.  I've mentioned his short story contest several times in the past month or so.  Today he has a great entry about working retail as he approaches 30.

I don't have a lot else to say except that I'm going to dust off The Pogonologist, a weird short story about a detective who solves mysteries by examining the facial hair of the suspects, and work on editing it.  I think it's pretty funny but still rough in places.  I'm growing to not hate short stories as much after writing The Pogonologist and Felix and the Sinster Cerberus, the story I did for James' contest.