Summer Reading

Well summer has come and gone and fall has officially arrived. In Oklahoma the weather is cool and crisp and holding in the mid-eighties. My Yankees will more than likely miss the playoffs, my Sooners are off to a great start, my eleven month old son is in to everything, and congress is still fighting like a bunch of morons… Some things change and some stay the same.

I didn’t do a ton of writing this summer. I decided to let my tank re-fill and spent a lot of time catching up on some reading. It was a wise move on my part, because having a young son- Well the free time just wasn’t all that available. So I figured I would just take today’s post to share with everyone some books I read and enjoyed… Here they are in no particular order.

1.       Wool by Hugh Howey

2.      Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill

3.      The Shining by Stephen King (A Reread)

4.      11/22/63 by Stephen King

5.      Iscariot by Tosca Lee

6.      Legion by Brandon Sanderson (A Novella)

7.      The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson (A Novella)

8.     The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

9.      Courted by a Cowboy by Lacy Williams (A Novella)

10.    NAS4A2 by Joe Hill

I have to say that 11/22/63 was probably my favorite on the list. Being a big Stephen King fan I must say that it is probably the best he has put out in years… Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box was probably the creepiest of the lot I read and would highly recommend anything by him…

This fall’s reading list is not quite as large partly because I plan on writing a lot this fall, but if anyone has any good options I’m open to them…

Living within the Pages -Neil Gaiman’s “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”

ocean

A good book can have me hooked by page twenty, great ones get me on page one, but a brilliant book is one that makes me want to live within the pages. That’s all I can say about Neil Gaiman’s “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.”

I think in order for one to fully appreciate this book for all that it is worth, you must be a mature adult. One that is not ashamed or afraid to look back on his or her childhood and say “I miss some things.” I think that’s what made me enjoy this one in nearly one sitting. It brought back those thoughts of a time when life was once simple… It’s not a long book by any means, but not a short one as well… It’s just one of those stories where you turn the last page and realize – “I won’t find another one this good for sometime.”

Full of beauty, love, and indeed pure sadness. The story revolves around a middle-aged man, visiting his hometown for a funeral, recalling a time from when he is seven years old. The memories flood back as he sits reminiscing at the edge of a small pond on the farm of his childhood friend Lettie Hempstock. The memories begin innocent enough, of the man as a quiet boy who preferred to spend his time reading by himself, but turn much darker and sinister as the boy is introduced to death by an Opal Miner who is boarding with his family in Sussex England. This leads to the boy meeting Lettie Hemptsock, and learning that she is not simply a little girl growing up on a farm down the lane.

I highly recommend this little book. I only wish I could take the time to create a list of all the quotes that made me pause, back up, and re-read the line just to enjoy the beauty of a master story-teller. To sum it up you’ll find some of my favorites below…

“I lived in books more than I lived anywhere else.”

“I lay on the bed and lost myself in stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.”

“I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.”

“I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.”

“I liked myths.  They weren’t adult stories and they weren’t children’s stories.  They were better than that.  They just were.”