October ~ 2013

Reading nothing but fantasy and horror this October!

131. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone...J.K. Rowling
132. HP and the Chamber of Secrets...J.K. Rowling
133. HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban...J.K. Rowling
134. HP and the Goblet of Fire...J.K. Rowling
135. HP and the Order of the Phoenix...J.K. Rowling
136. HP and the Half-Blood Prince...J.K. Rowling
137. HP and the Deathly Hollows...J.K. Rowling

It's been a few years, so I thought I would re-read the series. Just as great as I remembered!


138. Shutdown...Laurell K. Hamilton
A short story with Anita, Richard, and his new girlfriend.


139. Practical Magic...Alice Hoffman
For more than two hundred years, the Owens women had been blamed for everything that went wrong in their Massachusetts town. And Gillian and Sally endured that fate as well; as children, the sisters were outsiders. Their elderly aunts almost seemed to encourage the whispers of witchery, but all Gillian and Sally wanted was to escape. One would do so by marrying, the other by running away. But the bonds they shared brought them back-almost as if by magic...

I liked the book, but I do have to admit...this is one of the few books where I actually liked the movie better.




140. Cell...Stephen King
On October 1, God is in His heaven, the stock market stands at 10,140, most of the planes are on time, and Clayton Riddell, an artist from Maine, is almost bouncing up Boylston Street in Boston. He's just landed a comic book deal that might finally enable him to support his family by making art instead of teaching it. He's already picked up a small (but expensive!) gift for his long-suffering wife, and he knows just what he'll get for his boy Johnny. Why not a little treat for himself? Clay's feeling good about the future.

That changes in a hurry. The cause of the devastation is a phenomenon that will come to be known as The Pulse, and the delivery method is a cell phone. Everyone's cell phone. Clay and the few desperate survivors who join him suddenly find themselves in the pitch-black night of civilization's darkest age, surrounded by chaos, carnage, and a human horde that has been reduced to its basest nature...and then begins to evolve.

There's really no escaping this nightmare. But for Clay, an arrow points home to Maine, and as he and his fellow refugees make their harrowing journey north they begin to see crude signs confirming their direction: KASHWAK=NO-FO. A promise, perhaps. Or a threat...

There are one hundred and ninety-three million cell phones in the United States alone. Who doesn't have one? Stephen King's utterly gripping, gory, and fascinating novel doesn't just ask the question "Can you hear me now?" It answers it with a vengeance.

Loved it! DS1 is reading it now...maybe it will scare him into not using his cell phone so much!


141. Pet Sematary...Stephen King
142. The Shining...Stephen King