Who is Anne Tyler?

I am a prolific reader, at least I used to think so. Not too long ago I joined a creative writing class on one of the online universities. Anne Tyler’s Accidental Tourist was on the reading list as was several others.

Yesterday I was at work and one of the ladies I worked with asked “What does she write?”. My answer “Excuse me?”

She had no clue who Anne Tyler was. She groups her reading into mystery, romance, and self help. Unfortunately Tyler fits into none of these. The best I could offer was “Life.”

I find Tyler’s work to be so completely honest. I find myself shaking my head and thinking, “Yeh, I’d do that, or she would, or he would.” It is so completely realistic. Sometimes I need the outrageous, the I am never going to be like that life. A lot of time though I find myself enjoying the total fantastic way she brings our ordinary lives to such heights.

We can’t all be Lara Croft or Martin Riggs. We can however be Beck or Matthew, or Zeb, or Jack. We probably are in fact.

John writes travelogs for the local paper, he has an interior decorator for a wife and lives in a basement apartment in a house owned by his computer engineer of a brother Mike. Sound familar? We all know this person or some one like him and it sounds awfully close to the main character in Accidental Tourist. It’s not by the way.

I have several kids, my husband died after we had been married only three years. I was left to raise all these kids alone, and for fifteen year, I did. I eventually had love return to my life. This is also strikingly close, “Back when we were grownups.”

I could go on and tell you that every book has some relevance in my life, most of them do. I could give you detailed descriptions and events. I could not give you the flavor that she does and make you feel these works in your own life. It’s something you’d have to experience for yourself.

I admire most the way the author brings even the most mundane things in our lives to , well for lack of a better expression, life. When it rains, you smell the water in the air and the lightning causes your hair to stand on end. You can taste that awful pie in your mouth and the flavor stays with you, even long after you’ve put the book down. You cry with the characters, laugh with them and even think, ‘He or she is such an ass.” Then you look in the mirror and he or she stares back. Not just into your eyes, but into your dreams and your very soul.

I have no doubt as to why she won the Pulitzer Prize and come in close running for at least two others. She well deserves it. She creates great memories as well as stories and I for one will keep on reading and enjoying her work for years to come

His name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, conjure it if you dare.

I first became acquainted with Harry Dresden from the TV series of the same name. So, as is my habit, I went out and bought the first book, then the second and I now can say I am an earnest fan.

Jim Butcher has done a marvelous job. Giving grown ups their very own version of Harry Potter. He’s a wizard, but he’s oh so human. He is a good guy , but like us all, he has his dark side. He wants to do what is right, ut sometimes it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

I have used some of the same phrases Harry does. He talks like a person I could probably get along with. He has all the same problems we all do. Being a wizard does not get you out of paying your bills, being hungry, cold, or hurting. In Jim’s books, being a wizard makes you all the more conscious of the consequences of coulda, woulda, shoulda.

I like the fact that Harry enjoys the simple things like a steak and ale at his favorite haunt (no pun intended). I like the fact he has laundry day, a cat as big as a dog, a dog as big as a horse and a brother that is a vampire (Makes my relatives look awfully damned good).

Romance has it’s place too, but Jim does not focus on it a lot, just a fact of life, or lack there of. There are damed few curse words the worse being hell’s bells. That is really a baddie, right? Right! His characters come off as being very real, after all we don’t all use the f_word all the time, though shit does come out of my mouth a whole lot more often than pooh, which by the way is my personal favorite.

I can’t recommend Jim Butcher’s books strong enough. I love them all, read them till they fall apart, then buy new ones.

His name is Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden, magic has come to town!!!!!

On Reading Stephen King!!!!

    * By marell moore
  

I am a wife, mother, grandmother, great grandmother, a sister, and a daughter. I have worked in the manufacturing world for fifteen years. It is, however my writing, my poems and my art that truly define who I am. All the rest are just hats I have worn and names I have answered to.
Ok, so I have a question. I frequent the book stores a lot. Meaning that my idea of a treat is new reading material. I lived in Maine for several years and my late husband was a native. He enjoyed Stephen Kings books and we owned them all.

Now for my question. Ann Rice writes fairly horrific novels, I’ve read them all and enjoy them, but let’s face it, Lestat is a vampire and blood sucking, no matter how you word it is  horror. So why is Ann Rice’s Vampire series in the Literature department and Stephen King in the Horror department.  Is this simply PR? Am I missing something here?

I admit, I enjoy Rice’s books. I also admit that Stephen King is one of the few author’s that truly scares the bejesus out of me. I know why he scares me. I have lived in Orrington, Maine. The house I lived in was a dead ringer (excuse the pun) for the house in Pet Semetary. I have driven over the bridge featured in the Hitchhiker, and been to a lake that is damned close to the Raft. The water tower in Bangor looks like the one in IT. I have also been in the Bangor library, multiple times. Maybe it’s just close proximity, but somehow, I don’t think so.

I was in Mr. Paperback at one time, looking for a new read and ran into a man. I looked up and almost fainted. It was him. All I could do was stammer “Excuse me Mr. King.” and go outside and make a total fool out of myself by jumping up and down and telling my daughter. “Guess who’s in the store?” We actually waited outside till he left. Wimp that she is, she wouldn’t go inside. (Like I could talk)

Stephen King is a normal person. Husband, father, grandfather.  Alright, so he has a not so normal imagination. We are both of the same generation (baby boomers) and grew up watching a lot of the same stuff(Lon Chaney, Christopher Lee, and Bela  himself). I have to admit though I was more into Tarzan than the Fifty Foot Woman. Gender stuff, you understand (Johnny Weismuller in a loin
cloth).

Edgar Allen Poe, one of King’s favorites was one of my favorites too. He scared the crap out of me. Poe’s stuff though is definitely a work of fiction. King’s writing could describe the guy next door. Who, just happens to be a werewolf, vampire, zombie, ghost, take your pick.

His characters are normal neighborhood folks, that’s why they give us such fright. We’re all afraid of the dark, the unknown. We tend to lean more to the “those that bump back” crowd. In real life though that isn’t always true. Take 9/11 as an example.

Sometimes the bad guys do get away with some outrageous shit. Sometimes innocents suffer, sometimes the hero dies. I think Stephen King awakens the true nature of the beast in all of us. As a race, humanity is capable of some truly nasty  things. Most of us tend to sweep that under the rug and use the universal  “they” did it.

Didn’t WE?  The great United States of America drop not one but two bombs on Japan in 1945? Instantly reducing the populations of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki to burning dust. Not military installations, not bases, but entire innocent populations. Women, children, elderly. Whole families wiped out forever, gone from the face of the earth.

Stephen King’s the Stand, gives us a different view of this type of catastrophe but within our own borders caused by our own people. The results being ultimately, intimately, the same. Death, destruction, decay. Of course civilization survives.

We always have an out. We always survive. If no one survived what would be the point. We are never saddled with more than we can bear. Sometimes that seems outrageous. It is true though.  Even though we don’t always see it, it’s there. In the Stand I just knew the whole entire world was going to go to the dogs, literally. Man dies, dog eats man, dog dies, cats inherit the earth, kind of thing. He pulled it off though and I do believe I have read the entire thing at least four or five times. Believe me if you’ve never read it, it’s a monster.

Stephen King’s writing is horror, it is also damned fine reading.