The Long Walk, by Stephen King

I read that this was Stephen King's first novel, written when he was 20 and in college.  As I understand it, he later revised it and published it as a "Bachman Book."  I read it mainly to compare King's early work (which is where I'll be when I get back to actually writing instead of just reading) to his later work, which I think is excellent.  I wanted to see the degree to which King developed his ability, and perhaps give myself hope that I could do the same.

The Long Walk was well written in terms of style (which could have been accomplished while editing later), but lacked the depth of character and plot which are present in King's later novels.  The Long Walk refers to a walk to the death run as some kind of national sport in an alternate reality of the United States which has somehow become a dictatorship.  The novel starts and ends with the Long Walk which makes a nicely delimited plot for a beginning author to work within.

Overall, my reading of The Long Walk accomplished my purpose.  I saw that King's ability to create interesting characters and plots developed as he wrote.  It gives me hope that I can accomplish the same with lots of practice.

Unmasking Europa, by Richard Greenberg

I read this non-fiction book as background for a potential adventure book for kids (my own kids are into space right now).  Unfortunately, it didn't give too many details on the planet that I didn't already know.  Instead, the book focused on the battle between Greenberg's academic lab and NASA.  While it was interesting to see how "big science" is inefficient and sometimes downright corrupt, I was more interested in the subtitle of the book, "The Search for Life on Jupiter's Ocean Moon" and in this regard the book delivered very little.

The Gun Seller, by Hugh Laurie

This first novel by comedian and actor Hugh Laurie was pretty good.  It had some funny lines, a decent plot and we got to know the main character in a more-than-superficial way.  Having said that, I wonder if the book would have been better under a pseudonym.  The main character, especially when being comical, sounded just like Laurie so it was hard to separate the character from the author.  I understand why they published it with Hugh's real name--to sell probably 100 times more books--but for me it took away from the experience because it was hard to get lost in the world created by the book..

The Green Mile, by Stephen King

Once again, I was not disappointed by Stephen King.  This book was originally published as six "chap-books," about one every month.  Except for the first one, they all ended with a nice cliff-hanger and started with a nice re-cap.

King, as usual, gets us into the story and really caring about the characters.  I think this is what impresses me most about King.  It's not that the characters are particularly good or heroic, and they are not necessarily passionate valuers.  Perhaps its that they are honest with the reader, and with themselves.  That is one contrast with Blood Orange--I felt that the main character wasn't honest with herself and, by extension, with the reader.

Even though the book has a religious theme, I didn't mind even though I'm an atheist.  I ended up caring about the characters and their values and the religion was more of a plot device than a theme for me.  It seems a lot of the suspense and mystery in King's stories deal with the supernatural.  I wonder why.