Who Started the Fire?: Firestarter by Stephen King

Firestarter was the next stop on my tour of classic Stephen King novels, partly because I've developed a strange obsession with Stephen King's work in the last few years after hardly reading him at all for 20 years, and partly to get ready for his new one, The Institute, which is supposed to involve The Shop, or something a lot like it (The Shop is also featured in the miniseries Golden Years).  Firestarter is also one of King's more straightforwardly science fictional tales (if psychic powers can be science fiction... I guess some people have them on Star Trek).

So, how'd it go?  I took a few days to kindle a review.  Hopefully I can control the burn.

Hugo 2019 Results: My Ballot versus Reality

Today I watched the 2019 Hugo Award Ceremony, which was streaming on the Hugo Awards website.  (I watched from home in Chattanooga. The ceremony took place in Dublin.)

Last month I wrote some posts about my Hugo ballot (here, here, and here).  So, how did I do picking winners?

Not too great.  You can see the full list of winners here or, if you want the full math nerd version, see here.  Congratulations to all the winners and finalists!

My votes for the #1 spot only matched the actual winners in two cases: Best Novel for The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal and Best Art Book for The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition, illustrated by Charles Vess, written by Ursula K. Le Guin.

Is Toni Morrison's Beloved a Horror Novel?

Every summer I make a point to read one work of "Capital-L Literature" (the kind of thing I would have read if I had taken more English classes).  This summer I had decided to read Beloved, and in one of those coincidences that probably don't mean anything, the very day I was planning to start reading it, the world got the news that Toni Morrison had died.

Castle Rock as a Buddhist Hell Realm: Needful Things by Stephen King

My delightfully tattered used copy of Needful Things.
(Think of this next time you see the opening credits of Stranger Things!)

Needful Things (1991) is not my favorite Stephen King novel, but it's... engrossing and fun and well, Stephen King.  There are obvious Christian overtones about making deals with the devil, not to mention some sort of critique of greed and capitalism or maybe even contemporary resonances about Russian interference in US elections by pitting Americans against each other or how having a lot of guns around makes all of this more deadly.  These are all interesting lenses through which one might look at the novel (feel free to steal any of them if you want to develop them... I won't even charge anything or expect any nefarious favors in return).  But as I read it I started working on another angle.  What if we understand the novel as depicting a kind of Buddhist hell realm where desire, delusion, and suffering roll on in a seemingly infinite feedback loop?

Random Thoughts, Part 5

Made at: https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/

A while back I started posting collections of my random thoughts.  You can see the latest collection, Part 4, here.  You can see Part 5 right here, right now, right below!