Books books books

There were a bunch of other things that I wanted to put in the last entry, but none of them really fit on a post that's about a human tragedy. I write horror, but there's a difference between written horror and real life.

Despite having lived here for nearly a decade, I'm not really familiar with downtown Houston. Like most large cities, it has alternating one way streets, whole sections of city blocks that are set at forty-five degree angles to the rest of the area, and spots that have been under construction since Nixon was in the White House. If you don't know where you're going, you better make sure you have plenty of time to get there and you better not mind taking the scenic route.

Because I didn't want to walk in to some judge's courtroom an hour late with no better excuse than, 'Sorry, yer honor. I got lost in traffic,' I made a couple of practice runs on the weekend before I was supposed to show up. With my able wife playing co-pilot, we followed a set of left-right directions from Google maps and discovered that getting there wasn't as hard as it could have been. We did end up driving around a bit, and one of the places we passed was a business called ¼ Price Books. On the weekends, both of us are in the mood to explore bookstores, so we took a look. They've got a really eclectic mix of everything from old and new science fiction, books on politics, and books in foreign languages. The owner was a nice guy with a sense of humor that he doesn’t mind inflicting on passers-by, and the front door was propped open to let in fresh air.

One of the books I picked up was Demon Seed, by Dean Koontz. I get annoyed with Koontz sometimes, mainly because he comes up with fantastic stories, but them populates them with the exact same sensitive tough guys and smart, strong women. I saw the movie ages ago, and loved it, so I figured I may as well see what they changed from the book. Oh boy did they change some things. It's not just that the focus of the book is between the woman and the computer. Except for a few minor characters, the woman and the computer are the only ones we ever see. Also, the woman is a lot more complicated than we see in the movie, and a hell of a lot more so than the ladies Koontz would later write. When I checked the book's listing on Wikipedia, I discovered that Koontz wrote it in 1973, then in 1997 rewrote it and re-released it. From the one-paragraph synopsis, it seems that the one I picked is the original, and that the rewrite pulls out a lot of the really disturbing elements. The computer seems to get neutered in more than one manner.

That's a pity. I may at some point pick up the newer version, but I'm not looking forward to it. Reading Koontz' entry about the book on his website, he says that one of the things he changed was that he added a dry sense of humor to the story, because his readers appreciated his humor in his other books. Note: Item number 85 on my time-traveling checklist is to go back to the early seventies, convince Dean Koontz to write me a dozen novels that contain complex characters and not a damn bit of humor, and then brainwash him to forget all about the books so he can't rewrite them. It's just me personally, but I like that kind of story. I remember the fragile, beautiful creation that the child is revealed to be at the end of the movie, and when I read the description in the book, I got a cold chill. That thing was Lovecraft minus his inhibitions as filtered through silicon.

Speaking of books, I'm recording here my feeling about a book that I'm not quite halfway done with. I picked up 'We need to talk about Kevin' for my Kindle a while back, and I want to get my feelings down now and see how they compare to when I finish.

I really, really want to be done with this thing. Reading it is like slogging through hip deep mud with razorblades mixed into it. It isn't that it's not well-written. The writing is fantastic, but the main character is such a selfish, self-centered twit that I want to reach into the story and smack her. No one else in it is much better, either. A peek at Lionel Shriver's Wikipedia page claims that she prefers to create characters that are 'hard to love.' If this book is an indication, that's a bit of an understatement. The novel is about a mother whose son has gone on a spree-killing, and how she deals with that fact. But her own negative traits are getting in the way of the story, and the boy himself is simply too evil. He's one of those black and white characters that just aren't human enough to connect with, and (in my opinion) we need to connect with everyone in a story, especially the villain. The hero makes the choices that we like to think we would make under stressful circumstances, and the villain makes the one we're afraid we would make and then regret when it's too late. In this book, the protagonist and all the other 'normal people' are simply weak and shallow, and a few of their characteristics seem to be there simply because the plot couldn't advance without them.

That's how I feel now. I'll compare my thoughts when I'm done.

Still reading, still writing.