Recently Read

Skip it if you wanna.



1. Promise Not To Tell by Jennifer McMahon - Murder mystery. Interesting, and an okay read.

2. Under the Dome by Stephen King - Whew, this one took me a couple of months to get through. Not that it wasn't interesting; it just takes me a while to plow through a thousand pages. It's a novel about a community sealed off from the rest of the country - who did it, and why? I LOVED the big reveal - when you find out, you'll be reminded of an old Twilight Zone episode. It's typical King - Long, with lots of interesting characters, a plot that keeps you turning the pages, and an ending that's an absolute barn-burner. Oh, and there was one passage, just a couple of sentences, actually, that made me cry. It's been a long time since a book did that. One quibble - characters kept saying "clustermug", which may indeed be what they say in that part of the country, but where I come from, it's "clusterfuck", and I kept wondering why he didn't just go ahead and use it. Good book - good read.

3. Lark and Termite by Jayne Phillips - Novel about a young woman and her disabled brother in the fifties. It got good reviews, but I felt distanced from the main character and gave up about halfway through. I might try it again sometime.

4. Making Shit out of Sticks - haha, not really. I DID get a book out of the library called "Making Furniture from Twigs" or some such, because that willow tree out back is shedding like crazy - but I took a look at the diagrams and thought "nope".

5. If The Creek Don't Rise by Rita Williams - Memoir of an African-American woman raised by her grandma out west - interesting.

6. Dogwood by Chris Fabry - I really, really liked his book "Junebug", so I thought I'd like this one, too, but sadly, I just couldn't get interested.


7. Okay, let's do a movie review! (500) Days of Summer is a cute romantic comedy. There's no explicit sex scenes, in case you're looking for something to watch when the folks are visiting. It's bright, and funny, and not a bad way to spend a couple of hours.


So that's what I've been reading and watching lately. "Under the Dome" was the best of the bunch. How about you - read, or watched, anything good lately?