From the TBR Shelf #53: The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah

The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah (2004) by Stephen King

Ok, after Wolves of the Calla, almost anything was going to be a kind of letdown. I mean, Wolves was kickin'.

Song of Susannah, though, moves the plot forward significantly, since here is where Susannah/Mia/Odetta/Detta finally has her/their(??) baby. Ok, that doesn't happen until the end, but this novel explains exactly who/what the baby is. We also learn more about the Rose, the vacant lot, and why Calvin Tower has refused to sell it to Eddie's former bosses.

From the TBR Shelf #52: The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla (2003) by Stephen King


Yup, this is my favorite Dark Tower book- so far.

It's concentrated and self-contained, even as it continues the main themes of questing and good vs. evil that run through the previous books. Here, a small farming community- Calla Bryn Sturgis- is preparing for a once-in-a-generation attack by unknown creatures. As had happened many times before, these creatures swoop in, take one twin from each pair in the community (most children born there are twins), and whisk them off to an unknown location. These children are ultimately sent back to their families, but with significant physiological and psychological problems. No one knows why they are taken, or what is done with them. But this time, instead of just letting the kidnappings happen, the people of Calla Bryn Sturgis are determined to fight. They ask Roland and his ka-tet (who are passing through their region) for help.

From the TBR Shelf #51: The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King

The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass (1997) by Stephen King


I have to say, this wasn't my favorite book in the series.

Granted, it fills in much-needed back-story about Roland's past: why he left his home in Gilead; how he met Susan Delgado; and why he's such a bitter, hardened, haunted dude.

From the TBR Shelf #50: African Titanics by Abu Bakr Khaal

African Titanics by Abu Bakr Khaal, translated from the Arabic by Charis Bredin (Darf Publishers, 2014)


This often happens to me- I'm reading a work of fiction just before or during an event that captures the world's attention. I was reading Germinal when a terrible mining accident occurred in the U.S. a decade ago. I was reading James Weldon Johnson's essays on Haiti just after the disastrous earthquake several years ago. And just a few days ago, I read African Titanics, with the refugees from the Middle East and Africa still streaming into Europe.

This kind of coincidence helps me juxtapose the fictional and the real, past and present, foreign and domestic, thus helping me understand a situation or disaster that I otherwise have no context for. Thankfully I've never had to make a treacherous journey to another country, but African Titanics and the current crisis in Europe have underscored the hardships and choices that people make when they flee war, poverty, violence, and hopelessness.

From the TBR Shelf #49: The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands by Stephen King

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1991) by Stephen King


Wow.

As in...wow.

Thanks to Stephen King, I will never be able to look again at lobsters or trains with equanimity. But this Dark Tower series sure is a wild ride, and I plan to see it through to the end.

From the TBR Shelf #48: The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987) by Stephen King

Ok, everybody's fired for not having made me read the Dark Tower series before now.

Just kidding. I know you guys are just trying to manage your own tottering TBR piles!

So: The Drawing of the Three. King picks up the thread from The Gunslinger and launches us into an entirely different world, one in which Roland can move back and forth between his own and that of our reality. He can even move through time, and that's how he picks up the people who become his companions on the way to the Dark Tower.

From the TBR Shelf #47: The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982) by Stephen King

I've been a hard-core Stephen King fan for a while now, but somehow never got around to his Dark Tower series. I'm changing that now by listening to the audiobooks each night, and between the often exhilarating prose and the narrator's dynamic reading, I'm thoroughly enjoying the experience.

For those of you who haven't yet read this series, I'll try to summarize the plot, but that might be difficult since I'm still trying to process it. So in the world of the novel, the characters live in a time after "the world moved on," whatever that means, and Roland Deschain of Gilead is chasing "the man in black," whoever he is. I mean, he sounds like Mephistopheles, but who knows. Ultimately, Roland wants to reach "The Tower," where all universes? dimensions? converge.

From the TBR Shelf #46: The Paris Architect by Charles Belfoure

The Paris Architect (2013) by Charles Belfoure

I had heard good things about this novel when it first came out, but was so crushed by my own TBR pile that I didn't get around to reading it until now. However, my mom was looking for something to read a couple of months ago, and knowing that it was about WWII, I figured she'd enjoy it. I was right.

I have to say, I enjoyed it, too, but not because Belfoure is a brilliant stylist (he isn't), or because it is based on a compelling true story about French people hiding Jews during the Nazi Occupation (it isn't). Rather, I flew through this book because the story offers us a unique angle on life in France at this time (think Suite Francaise). 

From the TBR Shelf #44: Games Without Rules by Tamim Ansary

Games Without Rules: The Often-Interrupted History of Afghanistan (2012) by Tamim Ansary

I sometimes think about what I'll say when my kids ask me about the history I've lived through- especially the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. You'd think that seeing news reports every night and hearing about battles and strategies from presidents and politicians would make all of us well-informed citizens, but often it seems like the opposite. So much information is thrown at us, so many contradictions and arguments swirl around us, until we realize that only after a few decades, when we can look back more calmly on previously volatile situations, might we be able to understand the whys and whos of our own era and its conflicts.

This is partly why I started listening to Tamim Ansary's book about the history of Afghanistan. I don't remember learning anything about the country when I was in school, and news anchors only talk about its mountains and our troop surges and the Taliban and caves, etc. etc. I wanted to learn about the real Afghanistan, not the one that's portrayed as backward and hostile. I knew vaguely about the Soviet invasion in the 1980s, but that's about it.

From the TBR Shelf #43: The Last Gunfight by Jeff Guinn

The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral and How it Changed the American West (2011) by Jeff Guinn

Thanks to tv, radio, and film, many Americans born after 1950 have a specific image of the "Wild West" as a lawless, violent place, where "good cowboys" and "bad cowboys" had shoot-outs on Main Street every other day. Even opera has perpetuated this myth- see Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West.

Because of Jeff Guinn and other historians of frontier America, though, we can learn what the West was actually like: filled with optimists who poured out of the overcrowded East and were interested in building up towns around gold and silver strikes. Contrary to the myths, violence (especially gun violence) was relatively rare and actively dissuaded. In places like Tombstone (Arizona Territory), for instance, men weren't allowed to carry concealed weapons, and even had to check their guns in saloons and other establishments like we check our coats today. After all, bloody shoot-outs and violence scared would-be investors away from burgeoning frontier towns, and when the gold and silver discoveries ended, the towns needed some kind of economic stability.

From the TBR Shelf #42: Boneshaker by Cherie Priest

Boneshaker (2009) by Cherie Priest

When I first discovered steampunk, I kept seeing Cherie Priest's name everywhere, along with Boneshaker, a "steampunk-zombie-airship adventure," in the words of Scott Westerfeld. And so, finally, I grabbed it off of the TBR shelf and dove in.

I must say, that Cherie Priest has imagination. After all, it isn't everyone who could successfully bring together steampunk technology, alternate Civil War history, a mysterious vapor that turns people into zombies, and airship pirates. Oh yeah.

From the TBR Shelf #41: Dragon Hunter by Charles Gallenkamp

Dragon Hunter: Roy Chapman Andrews and the Central Asiatic Expeditions (2001) by Charles Gallenkamp

When I was in second grade, I had a "boyfriend" who was totally into dinosaurs. He lived, breathed, ate, and dreamed dinosaurs. Me- I was into books and stuffed animals. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to spend time looking at lizard-like, freaky-looking creatures, like dinosaurs, all day long.

And then, about twenty years later, I saw part of a documentary about dinosaurs and fossil-hunting and something clicked. Some years before that, I had become interested in the history and politics of museums and their collections, and learning about the acquisition of dinosaur bones and eggs by natural history museums suddenly seemed fascinating.