The Hunger Games

My daughter is reading The Hunger Games.  I've only read the first few pages -- on a treadmill!  She pointed out to me today that Stephen King he a quip on the back.  


King wrote that it is "A violent, jarring, speed-rap novel that generates nearly constant suspense. . . I couldn't stop reading." -- Stephen King.  


King's full review is HERE.  He gives the novel a B, noting that it is a trilogy, and he plans to return.


The fact that Hunger Games will remind many of us of certain other novels -- by Mr. Bachman -- isn't lost on King.  King writes,  "Also, readers of Battle Royale (by Koushun Takami), The Running Man, or The Long Walk (those latter two by some guy named Bachman) will quickly realize they have visited these TV badlands before."


I liked Kings short discussion of "Young Adult Novel" as a category.  It does seem to downplay (or downgrade) the book as something other than a real novel.  


Interestingly -- Stephenie Meyer also liked the book and has a quote on the back of the Scholastic paperback edition.  Strange to see the two on the same page with no darts being exchanged!

Keep Walking

Jonathan Comey at SouthCoastTODAY.com has a first person article abotu walking. His introduction is a lot of fun for Constant Readers. I'll quote the King portions and let you check out the whole article. It's worth the read.

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One of my favorite Stephen King pieces is "The Long Walk," one of his first, a near-future novella about a group of 100 boys who try to outlast each other in a walk from Maine to points unknown.
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The winner gets untold riches, the losers get shot. Like I said, it's a Stephen King thing.
What I liked best about the book was the way King described the feeling of walking — the sensations in your body, the feel of the outdoors, the intrusion of the elements, the inner monologue.

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I'm in the middle of my own version of a long walk, one that provides its own story arc every time I strap on my sub-elite sneakers and head out into my neighborhood to put one foot in front of the other.

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The story starts with me deciding that being 40 years old and overweight is not a good idea, and goes through a few notable twists and turns that are far from their conclusion. One of these plot sidebars is me, walking, every day now for two months, around my neighborhood.

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Read the entire article here: http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20101121/LIFE/11210306/-1/rss01

Mystery Of The Long Walk

I've been collecting first edition Richard Bachman books of late. These usually go for anywhere from $50-75. I found an interesting copy of the Long Walk recently. It is a first edition, rebound for school use ($30, ebay). The interior librarians markings indicate that it was entered into the school library in 1981. Of course, it wasn't revealed that King was Bachman until 1985, when he was writing Misery to be released as a Bachman.

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Now this is interesting because:

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1. I didn't know Bachman was popular enough to be appearing in schools.

2. This book is unusually dark, not something I would expect to find in a school..

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Required Reading?

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This is a softcover book that's been turned into a small hardcover. With this kind of binding, it is not the kind of book schools simply drop in its library book shelves. Schools do this (at least my school did) for distribution to students as required reading. They don't have the money to turn every paperback on their shelves into a hardback. But for class required reading, these cheap paperback books were rebound as hardcovers by our school so that they wouldn't get destroyed by students carrying them around in their million pound backpacks. (Remember those?)

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Just causes me to wonder: Was The Long Walk required reading at Memorial High School in Newark, California? That would be irony, wouldn't it! King gets banned from schools, but Bachman slips in as required reading!

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Even if it wasn't required reading, it's still noteworthy that at the very time King was being kicked out of school libraries, Bachman was walking right in the door! And the really nutty thing, I would consider Bachman much less "school" worthy than most King books. However, dark Mr. Bachman seems to strike a chord with high school students. He is, after all, Stephen King "on a really bad day."