© 2012 Book Chatter | Book Chatter

It is still 100 degrees in So Cal and yet, all I can think about is scary reading and comfort food. For the scary reading part, I am participating in the IT Along which is a read-along of epic clown proportions. It’s a lot more fun this time around because the group that lured me into it seems to be having way too much fun with it. Way too much. Trust me.

I like IT for numerous reasons but what I like most of all, is that it’s really a very simple story. Bad things happen to kids. Other kids stop IT. Then it comes back. Kids return as grown-ups, to see if they can stop IT again. I am listening to the audio which is so well done, yet utterly terrifying! It’s read by Steven Weber. You might remember him from the TV show, Wings. Anyway, he is such an unassuming guy but I am telling you, I get chills while listening to this one.

I just hit the halfway mark and it’s been fun talking about it on Twitter and scaring each other with clown pics and the like, but it’s made me want to re-visit some of King’s other books too, primarily The Shining. I need to get ready for the sequel due out next year.

On Friday we hit the lake for their “Movies on the Lake” and it was our first time going even though they have been doing it for years. Here’s a summary of how it all went down:

Found out they were showing The Hunger Games.
We went to dinner, and decided last minute to check it out.
Once there, The Girl said she had a headache.
The Boy pitched a fit and left to sit in the car. Apparently he had other things he needed to do. AKA, phone was dead.
20 minutes in, The Girl is hungry. We just had dinner.
10 minutes later, we smell a skunk.
The Boy returns. The skunk sprayed near the car. The Boy was forced to come back.
The Girl cries when Rue dies but laughs when someone else dies.
The Boy wants to leave again.
A bright light begins to really annoy me.
The movie ends.
Start the car. Click click click.
Battery is dead. Are you kidding me???
The Girl cries. The rest of us yell at each other.
No jumper cables. WTF?
A nice guy and his wife take pity on us and help us out.
The End.

UGH.

How was the movie? Truthfully, not very good but the idea of seeing a movie, outside on a lake was enough to make it worthwhile to me.

This week is audition week so we will be very busy. The Girl and Boy have been practicing. We’ll see how it goes. I know The Boy knows what to do. It’s his 12th show so he ought to, but The Girl… it is her 3rd show and she is still a little gun-shy when it comes to auditions. She has no problem once she has the part and is in front of an audience, but they audition in front of judges AND peers and I think it’s the latter that she has a problem with. Please send good performance thoughts for Tuesday and Wednesday. I’d appreciate it!

Now for the soup. I was craving tortilla soup so I am making a huge pot of it now. There is no recipe. I toss all sorts of stuff into it. Sometimes even enchilada sauce or cream cheese but today’s soup is pretty traditional (chicken, cilantro, good stock, tomatoes, tortilla strips) topped with avocado and cheese. YUM! We will be eating this all week, I’m sure. Even when it’s 100 degrees I still crave soup every now and then. I’m a soup girl!

Well, I am off to read Blackberry Winter and finish off the soup. Hope you are having a good Sunday!

BTW…for those wondering, the Otter Pup’s broken tooth is out and she is all better! Thanks for sending us good thoughts.

The Dog Stars
By Peter Heller
(Knopf, Hardcover, 9780307959942, August 2012, 336pp.)

The Short of It:

Unassuming, sad and occasionally funny. A book about the Apocalypse but minus the zombies, suppurating wounds, or gratuitous violence that we’ve come to associate with the genre.

The Rest of It:

Nine years after 99% of the population has been wiped out by the flu, a man and his dog navigate the wasteland he’s come to call home, in an aging Cessna, limping along on fuel he’s salvaged from abandoned airports. Hig’s future is bleak. In spite of the “not so nice” people he encounters from time to time, he’s managed to become good friends with a loner named Bangley and when he is flying overhead, with his dog Jasper by his side, things don’t seem too awful.

But…

Hig is lonely. His wife and unborn child were lost during the epidemic and although he’s comfortable and sometimes even has a sense of humor over his current situation, his need for human contact sends him to uncharted landscapes with the hopes of finding that elusive something that can offer up some hope for tomorrow.

I think this book is a tough read for a lot of people. Not because it’s graphic or too heavy but because the first half of it so hard to get into. Hig’s train of thought is presented in short, clipped half-sentences. This took a bit of getting used to and caused the story to halt along as an unnatural pace, but once I got used to the rhythm of it, I really wasn’t bothered and felt that it added something to the story. Hig is a guy who’s spent the better part of ten years with limited human contact; it made sense for him to lose the art of conversation.

The Dog Stars can be compared to The Road – but it’s light. It’s a lighter, more upbeat version of the apocalypse books you’ve come to know and with its limited list of players, the sense of desolation and loneliness take center stage. I could have done without the poorly penned sex scene at the end of the book, but given its rocky start, I liked it quite a bit (not the sex scene, but the book). It’s serious, sad and funny which is an odd combination for a book with this subject matter, but somehow it works.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher via Edelweiss.
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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