The Wind Through The Keyhole by Stephen King

The Wind Through The Keyhole by Stephen King is a new dark tower novel. The dark tower series is complete with the existing books 1-7 and this book is essentially 2 stories that Roland tells his traveling companions set between book 4 - 5. It was ok, I had a hard time getting into it and don't think I'll remember much about it as time goes on. I really wish I had liked it more but it didn't have any real wow moments. If you're a dark tower fanatic it's kind of worth it but if not I'd recommend skipping it

McSweeney's No. 40

I love McSweeney's and I've been really excited for the 40th issue to come out assuming some amount of fanfare. Oddly enough no fanfare but a solid issue. This issue includes 2 books, the primary book seen in the picture about and another hardcover called In My Home There Is No More Sorrow, Ten Days In Rwanda by Rick Bass. The primary book has a bunch of awesome pieces by some of my favorite authors and a collection of writing about the Egyptian Revolution from last year. The issue started off with a great letter section and included the following;

Notes From A Bystander by Said Syrafiezadeh
This is a bit of non fiction about a son of a protester and his experiences at Occupy Wall Street. Cool little piece.

All Together Here by David Vann
Cool little story about a dysfunctional family. The family includes a grandmother, her two loser daughters and their 2 teenagers. The story is told from the point of view of the teenage boy who has a crush on his female cousin. A great little story that got a lot accomplished in a short number of pages.

The Sisters by Kevin Moffett
Moffett is consistently one of the top McSweeney's contributors. This story is about two lonely sisters who have lived their whole lives living alone with only single transient man coming in and out of their lives at a time. Creepy at times, touching at others, extremely well written and another winner.

A Good One by Etgar Keret
Keret is a master at his craft. This one was included in his recent book and is typical magic from the first word. I can't say enough good things about him.

Topsy Turvy by Jason Jagel
This was a comic insert that bothered me because it made the book a little awkward to hold and it made me feel like an idiot as I don't get it.

Adventure Story by Neil Gaiman
I think this is non fiction, either way it's great. It's a short little accounting of a story between Neil and his mother about an interesting stone figure he found that belonged to his dad.

Big Windows by Nathan C. Martin
Only 3 pages and one of the saddest stories I've read. Just crushingly sad but also filled with it's own hope.

Scientific American by Adam Levin
I liked this story. It's about a couple who moves into a new home that has a wall that has a nocturnally reoccurring crack in a wall that fills with gel. That's just the starting point, kind of philosophical and fantastic.

Egyptian Revolution section
This section was a nice collection of writing. My favorites were translated copies of handouts that were given to the demonstrators about things like how to dress & use a trash can as a shield.


In My Home There Is No More Sorrow by Rick Bass

I'm torn about this one. Ok I lied I'm not torn at all I just don't want to sound like an asshole especially because of the cool stuff I learned about the genocide & the silver back gorillas. I just don't like the author, he was insufferable. The book is chocked full of white, not poor guilt (the author goes to great length to explain he is both white and not rich). I would have liked the book if he wasn't such an insufferable idiot. At one point he meets a local professor at a writers workshop he and his wife are putting on. After meeting the profession for literally 5 minutes this is what he writes;

"He seems to me like a man who is aware of two seemingly paradoxical facts, that we are all extraordinarily tiny in the world, specks or motes so insignificant as to essentially be as invisible we are momentary - and second, that despite this insignificance, this diminution, we are, and he is, nonetheless immersed squarely in the matrix of history and keenly aware of its movements."

Holy shit, that's a god damn ridiculous thing to say and a perfect illustration why I hate him as a person. For Christ sake it's OK to love Berkenstocks and thinking that you're saving the planet by recycling more than your beer bottles without all that preposterous crap! I still won't like you but I'll respect you for being true to who you are.

Ultimately it's a shame because I love the content of the book just not the writer and his self serving bs ramblings. The true joy to the book was in the last 30 pages that are writings from the workshop the author put on in Rwanda. The poems included are absolutely amazing and individually out shines almost everything in the entire issue.

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger

Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger

I've wanted to read this book for a while now, obviously Catcher in the Rye is a classic then a beautiful barista told me that her favorite short story was in her and then my favorite book store Longfellow Books had it used for $1.97! I loved the book, the style from Catcher is strongly there in all 9 stories and as you can see from the picture I had a great time reading part of the book on a shore path in Southern Maine.

The book starts out with the barista's favorite A Perfect Day For Bananafish and from what I can tell is Salinger's most famous short story. I think that's justified as it was amazing. Loading with intrigue it centers around a young recently married couple on vacation in Florida. The wife has a phone conversation with her mother back home and her husband tells a sad story about bananafish to another young vacationer on the beach. Sad and impossible to forget.

The rest of the stories are all classic Salinger, the language is all his, the banter between characters is amazing and his delicate handling of working his way to the point of the story in an indirect way is crazy good how it comes together, often on the last page.

Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut is a good little story where 2 former sorority sisters get together for a visit in CT.

Just Before the War with the Eskimos is about a young girl, her friend she plays tennis with and that friends brother. This one more than all the others reminded me of Catcher and I wonder if the tennis friend is a character in that book.

The Laughin Man is about a group of kids who participate in a kind of after school program and the mentor of that group. The innocence of relationships between adults and kids in those days is a sharp contrast with all the recent bad news stories in the last few years.

Down At The Dinghy, loved this story surrounding a young affluent mom and her young son who likes to run away all the down to the dock at their lake house or the local park when they're in New York. This one was probably my second favorite story in the book.

For Esme- With Love And Squalor was a story about a young American soldier training in Europe who meets a really young woman on a day off. This one has a Lolita feel despite anything directly sexual. I'm probably way off because of the age I live in but that's how it feels to me.

Pretty Mouth And Green My Eyes is a story about a conversation about an older man who's sleeping with a young woman and a call from a college who's concerned his wife left a party to have an affair. You're not sure if the girl the older gentleman is sleeping with is the other man's wife until the very end.

De Daumier-Smith's Blue Period is about a young man dealing with the recent death of his mother faking his way into a job as an art instructor at a mail away art school.

Teddy is about a family on a cruise ship and was a great little story. Teddy the main character is an extremely brilliant 10 year old philosopher. Another interesting story that leaves you thinking.

After finishing the book I'm glad I took my time with it mostly reading one or two stories a day. I think if it was rushed through too fast the stories might not have time to bang around in the back of the brain enough.

Movie Review- Prometheus

Went to see Prometheus with some friends last night and I'll paraphrase my new friend Alex that there were a lot of cool things in an OK movie (he was a bit more critical). The movie has been getting a ton of hype as the first space horror movie for Ridley Scott since Aliens and maybe it was just a bit too much pressure. The effects were great, acting all top notch especially Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron & Michael Fassbender but the plot needed some serious work and the movie didn't engage you into caring much about the characters good or evil. It's really strange about how the movie didn't develop the characters enough as it would have made the most powerful scenes that much better rather than just passively watching the effects and action. As to the plot itself, we were all siting about talking about the movie afterwards and we think that maybe what happened is that it got over edited where some of the connect the dots stuff were taken out without them thinking it through. Lot's of confusing stuff, for example at one point a character intentionally contaminates another character with this alien liquid that he knows is bad but none of us could figure out why he did it. I still have no idea what the point was besides creating some action that's fun to watch. That is just one of many examples but I don't want to give too much away from the movie.

On an unrelated note, I'm pretty sure that George Lucas is a little upset with Ridley because the main score of the film was really reminiscent of that iconic Star Wars music. To further hammer home the similarities, in one of the first scary scenes with alien life forms, an alien comes out of this sludge like stuff that looks eerily similar to the alien in the death star's trash compactor scene. I'm not sure if they're intentional homages but either way they were distracting.

I know I've been crapping on the movie and have really only said good things about the acting and the special effects but believe it or not despite the plot issues & lack of characters you're emotionally wrapped up in the movie was still fairly entertaining. This should have been a shitty movie but it wasn't for at least the 1st showing, I think if I were to ever see it again I'd absolutely hate it.

The New Yorker June 4 & 11 The Science Fiction Issue

I just finished reading this issue and my god was it amazing. As I've previously mentioned I have a huge crush on their fiction editor Deborah Treisman and she continues to impress. Just an amazingly talented, smart, beautiful woman with great taste in all things literature and the voice of an angel. This issue is chocked packed with great fiction and interesting articles about science fiction. Sam Lpstye wrote a good little story called The Republic of Empathy that bounced around from different characters points of view. Jonathan Lethem wrote a really short story about 2 exclusive internets that I'm not sure I fully get. There is an article by Anthony Burgess about his book Clockwork Orange that was interesting. Margaret Atwood wrote a quick piece that makes an eloquent point about science fiction genre. Overall I had 3 favorite pieces in the magazine;

Monistro by Junot Diaz


Junot Diaz writes another fantastic story. This one is about an apocalyptic outbreak of a strange illness that started in Haiti and a coming of age story about a young boy in the DR on the other side of the island. The dialog style of Diaz is fun and thinly veils a great sophistication in his writing.

Quests by Karen Russell


Karen Russell is my other great literary crush, funny, beautiful & original. This quick article joins Atwood's to discuss how science fiction gets the shaft as not being taken seriously as a genre. She tells about how she was reading science fiction books when she was 10 as part of a school program to get a free pizza after reading 5 books. Funny and insightful. Can't wait for her new collection of short stories to come out!

Black Box by Jennifer Egan


I'll be absolutely shocked and will loose a lot of faith in the world if this story isn't included in every year end anthology about the best short stories in 2012. It's a story about a woman who volunteered to be a spy for some future or alternate US who has been modified Bionic Woman style. I don't want to give away too much but it's one of the best stories I've read this year by far for the style, writing & plot.

A Dance With Dragons by George R R Martin

Well first off I'm pissed that I don't have any more books from A Song of Ice and Fire to read and based on what I'm reading it seems like it'll be another few years before the 6th book comes up. This book was another amazing one in the series and unlike book 4 it focused on a lot more on characters I'm bigger fans of. Going into the series most everyone that I talked to said the first 3 books were the best and the last 2 were a lot slower but I didn't think that was true at all. Action packed from start to finish but my only complaint is that there was a ton of buildup to a couple epic battles that will apparently happen in the 6th books which made the book feel like it just stopped rather than ended where it was planned. Oddly I'm not left with a jilted feeling I just want to keep reading! Probably the best sign that the book and series are great.