The Wind Through The Keyhole by Stephen King

The two most beautiful words in any language are: I forgive

This Dark Tower book is labeled as #4.5, it should fall between Wizard and Glass and Wolves of the Calla but, as King lets you know in the forward, you can read this as a stand alone book if you've never ventured into the Dark Tower series. So, non-DT fans, feel safe to grab this excellent story-within-a-story-within-a-story novel.

I really love how this book is set up. We start off with Roland and his ka-tet of Eddie, Jake, Susannah and the billy-bumbler, Oy. They are still traveling to the Dark Tower but they all notice Oy acting peculiarly. Roland is sure he knows why but can't grasp the thought (he's been through quite a lot by this point). An old man named Bix is the one to inform them that billy-bumblers detect Starkblasts, terrible freezing storms that appear out of nowhere, unless you have a billy-bumbler to detect them. Our crew hurries to the nearest stone building to take shelter from the starkblast.

Which leads us to the new story.....

To while away the night and storm, Roland tells the story of his young self and fellow gunslinger, Jaime, who are sent to a small town in search of a skin-man. A skin-man might be described as a were in modern times,  a human that changes shape into an animal. Except the skin-man can become any animal and can rip the arms from people and beat them to death with their own arms (the story gets a bit gruesome - a la King).

Which leads us to the new story......

While trying to calm a young survivor of the latest skin-man attack, young Roland tells the story of Tim Stoutheart, a young boy who is very brave (and foolish) and goes on a quest to help his mother. He encounters dragons, plantpeople, mages, and many more scary and fascinating creatures.

Which winds us back to....

The young gunslingers and the skin-man

Which winds us back to....

The ka-tet finishing out the Starkblast on their way to the Dark Tower.

This was a book to take to your recliner with your cup of tea and a blanket. While the storms rage around you, you have a good place to go...with Roland the Gunslinger and his stories.

Heat Rises by Richard Castle

I found this one at the library even though I was determined to not get any more library books since I have so many books at home to read.

My willpower, she is weak.

This was a pretty darn good book. Nikki Heat catches the case of a priest who is murdered in a bondage dungeon. Things get weird (that wasn't weird enough) as her Captain, Charles Montrose, is acting strangely and keeps her from fully investigating this murder. It turns out that the dead priest is just the tip of an iceberg that reaches back to Monstrose's patrol days.

Short review because I don't want to give anything away, but this is a rather excellent mystery.

The Phantom of The Opera by Gaston Leroux

Part of my goals for myself this year was to read more classics. I started off by listening to Phantom of the Opera. I've never seen the play, the musical, what have you. All I knew was the gist.

And the gist is this: a scary opera ghost (referred to as OG often in the book) is haunting an opera house in Paris. He terrorizes a singer.

What the book really is: a great story told from the perspective of the author as the person investigating the claims of the opera ghost and of the disappearance of Christine Daae. The opera ghost, according to the author, is really Erik. A person, although a deformed person. And a crazy person.

Filling in the blanks from the gist I had was entertaining. I would recommend the audiobook simply because of all the French, it just sounds better than what I could have read in my head.

1 classic down....

Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer

This was a pretty interesting and entertaining book about the art of remembering. Foer, as a journalist, was covering the Memory Championships and, while interviewing some of the contenders, believes he needs to try to become a contender as well.

Remembering is an art. Back in the day (WAY back in the day), everything pertinent to life was memorized. Now days, we don't remember anything because we have computers, cell phones, etc. Honestly, who remembers phone numbers now? You just look up the person's name on your phone and there you go.

Ed Cookie, one of the mental athletes, takes to coaching Foer. We learn how to create memory palaces to remember pretty much everything. We learn tricks to memorizing a deck of cards (hence the title of the book). But really, this book isn't a how-to on improving your memory. It's a trip, through history, through interviews with savants, amnesiacs and Rainman, into why your memory is so important.

Our memories are intricately linked to who we are. It contains our life, our autobiography, everything we are.

I think the best piece of advice Foer offered up was that to remember you need to be present. You need to be mindful of what's going on around you. When you meet that new person, really pay attention to that person. Don't think about yourself and what you plan on saying or doing next. Be in the moment. In the end, Foer learned that the tricks were cool but he really learned to be here, in the now. And that's what helped the most.

How zen.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I have no idea what took me so long to read this. It was probably terror at reading a YA book that could end up being like Twilight. Since the movie is now out and I have issues with seeing movies based on books without reading the books, I had to break down and read The Hunger Games.

And read it I did. Within 24 hours. What a book!

North America seems to be....pretty messed up. We now have Panem, with a Capital that is surrounded by 12 Districts. The people of the Capital seem to be horrible and keep a tight rule on the outlying districts by forcing each district to "volunteer" one boy and one girl into the Hunger Games. The Games are televised live for the enjoyment of everything (Am I the only one who thinks we are not far off from this with all the reality crap we have on TV now??)

On the Reaping Day, Prim Everdeen is called as a tribute. She's just a kid so her sister, Katniss, volunteers to take her place. Katniss and Peeta are then tributes for District 12.

They head into the Games with the other tributes from the other 11 districts and it's a fight to the death.

For a YA book, this was pretty well written and exciting. I've heard that I need to stop reading after the 2nd book, Catching Fire, as the 3rd book isn't so good. We'll see. I'm sure I'll read them all to form my own opinion but I'm not rushing to the 2nd book. Now, I just need to see the movie.

Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy

So i finally got an audible account and this was the first book I downloaded. I felt it necessary to hear Jackie in her own voice and own words. For someone who did not live through this era, this was very interesting and somewhat boring.

I'll get the boring out of the way, and it's not much but still.... Arthur Schlesinger, Jr and Jackie talked about JFK and his legacy. There was considerable talk about certain members who were either in government or the press or just around the president. I will admit that my history knowledge is not nearly good enough to know who all of these people were. So therefore, I got a little bored. That was it. No more boring.

Hearing Jackie speaking was awesome until the times you realized what she just said (Did she really say THAT?). You could tell she was doing her best to preserve JFK's legacy, perhaps even build it up, but she was also very candid. While I'm sure JFK had flaws, although no one seems to admit it, you will not know it from these tapes. I understand what they were trying to accomplish with the tapes but I think they seem a bit....I don't know. It's tough to put my finger on.

Jackie had very candid opinions about everyone, including MLK, Jr. (Who knew he liked orgies??) and she has been blasted in the news since this book came about about being so candid. On that note, I need to say: everyone has opinions. At this point, she was removing herself from the public eye and why shouldn't she be allowed to speak her mind? Especially since these tapes were not to be released til after her death. I don't fault her for this at all. In her mind at the time, it seems she did not consider herself valuable to the public and was working on helping JFK's legacy, not her own.

This is well worth the listen, I think, if only to hear a little piece of history. I'm sure folks who lived through this time will appreciate it even more. And for the record, thank goodness Jackie's opinions on "a woman's place" changed as she got older. I cringed at some of the antiquated ideas of how a woman should be/act/live.

The Visible Man by Chuck Klosterman

I enjoyed Klosterman's other books, like Fargo Rock City, but I wasn't sure how I would like a fiction novel from him. Turns out.... I really liked this.

The Visible Man is written in the form of a manuscript and transcripts of sessions by therapist Victoria Vick for the patient Y___. Interesting way to set up the novel and it works really well, telling the complete story. Y___ calls up Vick and asks for phone therapy, no face to face, and Vick agrees. He seems quite a bit arrogant and quite intellectual. Both in equal doses. But honestly, I wanted to punch him just through the phone calls.

Anyways, Y___ lets Vick know that he's created a suit and cream that make him virtually invisible. And that while he goes about his social experiments in the invisible suit, he feels like he should have guilt and that is why he is talking to a therapist.

Y___'s social experiments are just plain creepy. While invisible he creeps in to people's houses to observe them, to find out how people are really their true selves when alone. But he hardly remains an observer, despite his protests that he does. Things get overly involved between patient and therapist and quickly get out of hand.

This is a really good, original story that kind of gave me the creeps.