Cycle of the werewolf(1983) by Stephen King, Genre: Horror/Mystery, 3.5/5

This has turned into a King week all the way what with me revisiting his classic chiller "The Shining", the latest installment of the Dark Tower, "Wind Through the Keyhole" and finally "Cycle of the Werewolf".

The book is divided into twelve chapters for the twelve months of the year. The story is set in a small community called Tarker's Mills. It begins with a person being decapitated by a "big,hairy animal" in January . This menace then rapidly escalates as every month, during the full moon, a resident is brutally mauled to death.

A crippled boy, Martin Coslaw, is the main protagonist of this novella. He wards off the Werewolf once and injures it in the process.

Slowly, the understanding begins to dawn that the Werewolf is someone native to the place. Would he be identified and caught before he succeeds in killing Coslaw?

This is a 120 odd pages long book which has beautiful illustrations by Berni Wrightson. It is furiously paced and can be read in under an hour.

King, as is his wont, ends up creating memorable characters. The astonishing bit is he gives himself only two to three pages wherein the people are introduced and then bumped off violently by the werewolf. He revels in that self imposed constraint. The periodic bursts of action give a shock to the reader and act as the hook which makes him keep on turning the limited number of pages.

However, my biggest grouse with the book is it ends up being just another take on the werewolf without any new twist to the lore.

Hence it is strictly recommended for the existing legion of King fans. For those who are new to this creator of The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, I would suggest early classics like Carrie, Salem's Lot and The Shining. Chilling times are guaranteed.

Date a girl who reads...by Rosemarie Urquico; dedicated to the lady I am crazy about. You rock my world, woman.

“You should date a girl who reads.
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes, who has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she has found the book she wants. You see that weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a secondhand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow and worn.

She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.

Buy her another cup of coffee.

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.

It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas, for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry and in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

She has to give it a shot somehow.

Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who read understand that all things must come to end, but that you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes.”

The Wind Through the Keyhole(The Dark Tower#4.5) (2012) by Stephen King, Genre: Fantasy/Horror, Rating:4/5

The Dark Tower is a series which I have consciously made a decision to avoid for some years. I once tried reading The Gunslinger, the first book in the series. However, I gave up after 30 odd pages. After reading The Wind through the Keyhole, I think I must have been out of my fucking mind back then.

The author’s introduction in the book mentions how he was greatly influenced by Tolkien’s “Lord of The Rings” along with the spaghetti westerns of the 60s by the great Sergio Leone. This is partly King’s homage to Tolkien and Leone and partly an attempt to write a world class fantasy. It ends up as a great futuristic tale which has more than its share of scary post-apocalyptic moments.

For those who are new to Dark Tower, it is a series of eight books. It is the story of Roland, the gunslinger, and his friends or “ka-tets”, who move through a land “which is disturbingly like modern day US” as they make their way to the Dark Tower. 

The story unfolds in “Middle World” in the future. The civilization as we know it has ended. The Middle World may remind the reader of the famed Middle earth of the Lord of The Rings trilogy.

This book is unofficially subtitled Dark Tower 4.5. I approached this with trepidation as I had absolutely no clue about the different characters. To avoid inconvenience to the new reader, King tells three things about the series in the introduction.

As far as the book is concerned, it is actually a story of three tales which open up one inside the other. The first begins when Roland and his mates are caught in a storm or “Starkblast”. Then Roland tells them a story about a shape shifting man. The eponymous tale is of a boy’s odyssey to the farthest corners of the forbidden land for his mother’s well being. 

Like LOTR or A Clockwork Orange, the book has its own set of words which may confuse the reader at first. However, the sheer beauty of the language and the power of King’s description never allow the attention to flag and slowly hook the reader in.

This is an excellent piece to taste King’s lyrical narrative. I guarantee that the reader would love to go back and read all the Dark Tower books. Very highly recommended for fans of dark fantasy tales.

The Shining(1977) by Stephen King , Genre: Horror, 5/5

Let me tell you about something which happened to me during a drink induced sleepover last month.

I was in a deep slumber, dead to the world. I felt a rough shove and somebody whispered in my ear ”Which is your favorite horror book of all time?”. You see, FlipKart was running this great sale and people wanted to buy books and it was close to midnight and the “happy hours”, so as to say, were about to end.

Normally I would have uttered some abuse and gone back to sleep. However, this question was kind of easy to answer as there have been two books which have dealt with the supernatural and their mere mention raises goose bumps . So I acted all cool as if my liquor muddled mind was reflecting back on the travesties it had read in the name of “terrorizing” works of art just to pretend I was deliberating about the query. It took me less than a minute to say “The Shining”.

Books which have horror as their genre have to rely on the sheer ingenuity of the author as unlike horror movies which make use of the image of the ghost/gore or sudden sounds to scare the pants of the readers, here the reader has to be first lulled in to a sense of false security before pulling the rug from under his feet. This is where The Shining is excellent. It would make even readers tough at heart scream uncle.

Jack Torrance is a recovering alcoholic and an ex school teacher who has been suspended from his job due to his terrible temper. He is appointed as the care taker for the Overlook, a hotel which is closing down for the winter. Torrance arrives there with his wife Wendy and his young son Danny. Danny “shines” which is King lingo for telepathic ability. They are there effectively cut off from the rest of the world for the winter.

The Overlook is no ordinary hotel. Soon Danny and Jack start seeing apparitions of the hotel’s mysterious past and the stage is set for the showdown.

King is at the peak of his writing abilities. In any other writer’s name, this would have become all hackneyed. Here, the way his words creep on the unsuspecting reader is unsettling. The description will rattle the casual reader. The atmosphere of dread which pervades each page is to be seen to be believed.

This was made into an eponymous movie helmed by the great Stanley Kubrick starring Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance. The movie has its more than fair share of fans. However, I am firmly one of those who believe this is a book which cannot be faithfully adapted as the terror is nearly impossible to create.

I am jealous of the new readers of this masterpiece. Firstly, they would have the thrill ride of their life while turning its pages. Secondly, they would not have to wait for long for its much awaited sequel which is coming out on the 24th of September, 2013.

There is a reason this was among the very few books published in the last quarter of the century(along with Blatty’s The Exorcist) which were included in the best horror books of the 20th century list. It is the benchmark for genuine horror and can’t be recommended highly enough.

P.S. The other book which screwed my brain was Heart Shaped Box written by Joe Hill who is incidentally Stephen King’s son writing under a different surname. I would love to review it some other day.

Marley & Me(2008) by John Grogan Genre: Memoir/Humor 4.5/5

There are two types of books. The first type is those which you read, you rave against and consign to the deepest and darkest recesses of your mind and the absolute corner of your personal library. Then there are books like Marley & Me. You read them and you cannot stop dreaming about them. You want to grab the person dearest to you and give him a copy so that he can also experience the magic of this deeply moving and absolutely brilliant book.

I have tried to get a copy of this book for the past four months. However, on most of the sites it is out of stock or available at an exorbitant price. I finally got it for only two hundred bucks two days back and dived right in to it.

The story starts when Grogan and his wife of fifteen months, Jenny, decide to get themselves a dog. They have a theory to find out whether a dog is pusillanimous or brave and they end up zeroing in(or is it the other way around?) on a small pup who they eventually name Marley. 

This is a biographical memoir written by John Grogan. He recounts, as the book’s subtitle goes, life and love with the world’s worst dog. It is also autobiographical in nature as Grogan interlinks the story of Marley with his family.

The “worst dog” in this case is the absolutely marvelous Marley, a Labrador retriever. He is a dog who “suffers” from the human equivalent of attention disorder. He is a ball of energy who is hyper excited all the time. 

Grogan is a writer who presently writes for the Philadelphia Enquirer and it shows in the way he describes the different and always amusing situations which Marley leads the family into. The book is easy to relate to due to Grogan’s mastery of the matter and his love for Marley shines through on every page. 

It left me with moist eyes and I recommend this to anybody who loves to read. Marley is an impossible to resist character and I am sure the reader would derive as much joy as I did after going through Marley & Me.

The Wackness(2008) Genre: Comedy/Drama/Romance, Runtime: 95 min, 3.5/5

Luke Shapiro (Josh Peck) is a young drug dealer. He supplies drugs to his psychiatrist Dr. Squires (Ben Kingsley) and to the good doctor’s daughter Stephanie (Olivia Thirbly). Shapiro is a loner without any friends. He has a crush on Stephanie. 

When the school is out for the summer and all the students go away, he gets his opportunity to strike friendship with her. However, Shapiro has trouble brewing, quite literally, at his home front where his father has endangered their abode because of his bad investments and Shapiro and his family are staring at eviction.

This is a funny and often poignant take on Shapiro’s journey through the hurdles of life. The interactions between him and his psychiatrist are the life of the movie. The dialogues are often rapier sharp and smart.

Ben Kingsley is in the form of his life in the part of a shrink who wants to “get laid”. He mouths obscenities as well as erudite thoughts perfectly and it is apparent to the viewer that he has had great fun while performing the role.  Peck is also pretty cool in his part and after watching this, I casually browsed through his filmography and found myself staring at a long list of shitty movies. He should choose better as he definitely has the potential.

The director Jonathen Levine would go on to direct more famous movies like 50/50 and Warm Bodies in the future. Here, he is the scriptwriter too and does a very good job at the helm.

This is a relatively unknown and unappreciated little gem. I wholeheartedly recommend this to anyone who wants to enjoy a good comedy with just the right touch of drama and romance.

Vince Flynn: A tribute

                                                                      

                                                                      1966-June 19, 2013

I remember a train journey. I don't remember either the year or the place I was going to.

Train journeys are miserable in nature due to the quality of the train berths. I avoid them as I end up getting sore backs. I always pack at least half a dozen books with me when I am going on a long expedition. I find myself hopping between different books as the tedious nature of the odyssey creeps into my reading and I end up getting easily bored.

It was on one such journey that i discovered Mitch Rapp and his creator Vince Flynn.

The book was Memorial Day. It was a conventional story of the bad guys planning to bomb the Memorial Day event to smithereens. It was the way the story was told and the character of Rapp which held me spellbound.

The intensity of anger and the impotency which any soldier feels when he finds himself mired deep in bureaucratic bullshit was conveyed perfectly by Flynn.

He was a master of the Islamic-terrorists-running-loose-with-weapons-of-mass-destruction genre. He did not put in too much technical details a la Clancy which made his books more racy. The violence unleashed on the terrorists may seem gratuitous to the so called liberals but more often than not got my blood pumping and adrenaline flowing.

I haven't read his recent books but plan to check them out real soon. I was turned off by Extreme Measures, a 2009 bestseller which seemed cliched and contrived.

I was shocked to read about his demise from prostrate cancer and the memory of a long sojourn made pleasant by a balls-to-the-wall book came floating to the front of my mind from the depths it was buried in.

Mr. Flynn, you and your no nonsense hero would be missed by your legion of fans. Once upon a time, you made my day. I hope you are in a better place now and are finally at peace.

Perfect Blue(1997) Genre: Animation/Thriller/Mystery, Runtime: 75 min, 4/5

Mimarin is a member of a band called CHAM. She wants to graduate to something better and different and hence decides to leave the band and become an actress. During her last performance, she sees a stranger who gets into a fight with some local ruffians who are trying to spoil the show.

Over a period of time, after some strange and scary incidents, she becomes convinced that she is being stalked by the same stranger. She finds online mention of her day to day activities and soon begins to loose her mind and starts confusing the real bits with the imaginary.

The movie is splendidly paced. There is a really disturbing sequence wherein Mimarin has to act as a girl who is being raped amongst customers in a discotheque. It is reminiscent (the movie mentions it too) of the Jodie Foster scene in The Accused.

I loved this because it is the antithesis of almost all the animation movies I have seen in my life. It is dark, perverse, tense and a terrific thriller. Until the last frame, the viewer is unsure about what is the truth. There is an oblique homage to Psycho and it really gave me goosebumps.

If you have ever thought about what would have been the result if Hitchcock would have collaborated with Walt Disney, look no further. Check this film. It is a great thrill ride, one which would leave inedible marks on the watcher's psyche. 

Texas Chainsaw 3D(2013) Genre: Horror/Thriller, Runtime: 88 minutes, 3/5

When I saw its trailer, I was a bit ambivalent.

The rational part of my mind groaned "Oh no, not again"! This is like the nth remake/reboot/sequel of a genuinely disturbing movie, this time in 3D.

 However, my heart gave a small flutter of anticipation as it had been a long time since I had seen an out and out "gore flick" and I have been a fan of the original and the remake.

The original came out in 1974. In that horror classic, Tobe Hooper, the director introduced the viewers to "Leatherface", the chainsaw wielding psychopath and his family of cannibals, the Sawyers. It had few scenes of body parts being torn apart but the intensity of the scenes, of the madness they convey was truly frightening.

This movie is kind of a direct sequel to the 1974 version. The people living around the Sawyers, along with the local police, deliver their own brand of justice. Few Sawyers survive, among them Leatherface and a baby girl who is adopted by one of the many comprising the lynch mob.

Some years pass. The girl grows into a beautiful lady. She gets a letter telling her that a woman has bequeathed a house to her. The girl goes to the house along with her group of friends and all hell breaks loose.

The cardinal principal when remaking or rebooting is that the new version should be either a better executed take on the original or should take the series towards a new direction which long term fans cannot predict but would be satisfied with after viewing. This takes the second route.

This movie gives Leatherface a motive which make his crimes seem justified and makes him less of an evil figure. That may prove to be a dampener for fans of the franchise. However, the ending does not seem contrived and seems kind of logical.

The gore quotient is medium with one gruesome kill. Fainthearted people should stay away from this. The rest should give this a try. It would keep you on the edge of your seat and that is more than what can be said about half the so called thrillers which are released these days.