I’m currently listening to Salem’s Lot. Once again, a Stephen King book. I think I’m on a King bender at the moment.
I think this book had quite some influence on the original Twin Peaks. The (first?) funeral scene gave me a lot of the same vibes as Laura’s funeral, and the towns of Twin Peaks and of Salem’s Lot doesn’t appear to be that different.
@MrHenko Oh, I haven’t read that book in about 35 years (before Twin Peaks), I didn’t make the connection back then, but maybe I would now. I haven’t read King/Backman books in decades, but now and then I think about them. Have a handful of ones that I haven’t started on yet.
@odd To be clear, I don’t think Lynch and Frost knowingly took parts of it, but maybe one or both of them had read it and it was simmering in that back of their mind. Or maybe it’s some sort of shared American horror, some ideas of small towns and their secrets.
I’m currently reading ”Maratonmarschen” by Richard Backman. It’s the first book I’m actually reading (as opposed to listening to) in a long while and it’s hard to get into the habit of reading. I’ve only gotten a few pages in but it’s really good.
We’ve lost so much routine for the mornings and evenings during the summer holiday. Tonight Iris didn’t get to bed until 11 pm and Ebbe was up even later. We need to do something about this, but I’m not sure what.
Today the kids and I took a trip to Rättvik and hung out with my father for a few hours, had Rättvik’s Ice-Cream and strolled on the boardwalk. Then we took an extended drive for the way home just to keep us busy for a while. The kids are really easy to go on long car trips with. They love to be in the car.
Linn has been doing a lot of cleaning and picking up an order of groceries and together we’ve mowed the lawn.
Tomorrow is Linn’s birthday, so I’ll need to get to bed soon.
Earlier today I started listening to The Martian by Andy Weir. I wasn’t really sure what I was in for but so far I love it. I see a lot of similarities to Seveneves actually. Space, dire situation, people desperately trying to solve problems both big and small with whatever they’ve got at hand.
They say sharks must keep swimming to stay alive. I wonder if children believes the same applies to themselves and making sounds – talking, screaming, singing, clicking their tongues, anything – with their mouths?
I was just listening to the last few chapters of The Stand and thought about how the ending of the 2020 TV show was better than the novel because it didn’t drag on so much. It ended nice and clean after the stand in Vegas.
Boy was I wrong. There’s apparently an entire episode that we missed.
It’s quite an interesting contrast to read Seveneves and The Stand directly after one another. How do we solve impending doom? Do we work hard and apply our best science and minds to the problem, or do we have faith in a god and blindly follow directions that we suppose are given by it?
@MrHenko certainly an intriguing combination. But both of these books also have a lot in common, I think now. Both are slow starting behemoths and then take unexpected turns all along.
@V_ Yes indeed, they have a lot in common. Which makes the contrast in approach by their respective characters even more different.
Another thing they have in common is that I could make a compelling argument why both of them should be shortened to almost half their length, while I could make just as compelling an argument why both should be twice as long.
One more interesting difference between them is the authors approach to the science involved. If King were Stephenson, the parts about winding the coils at the power plant would include a lot of infodumps about the relation between the width of the coil, the length and gauge of the wire and the power they can pass. :)
@MrHenko, I can follow your argument to shorten both books – whereas I would shorten the Stand more than Seveneves. The latter, I would actually like to have more of the last part. The new age felt quite rushed compared to the beginning.
And the part about the wire gauges and lengths is so true :-D
@V_ I agree, if I could add length to just one of them it would be Seveneves. I’d happily have read a ”Book 4: Another 1000 years later”.
And I just finished The Stand and realized that I’d missed an entire episode of the tv adaptation that I watched earlier this year but I liked how I thought the show ended, just after the big thing in Vegas. I don’t need to know about the rest, really, so the book could end there as well.
Still, I wouldn’t have minded it being another 200 pages longer and full of Stephenson-esque digressions.
I drove to pick up groceries today and listened more to The Stand and realized that I’d only written about things in the tv series favor yesterday and two things that are much better in the book came to mind.
First, Las Vegas. At least thus far in the book (Chapter 81) it’s far from the depraved sex party of the tv show. The shows depiction of the city of Flagg seems like ”bait” for the modern tv audience who expects som T&A in their shows. It’s more appealing, and frightening, when it’s more similar to Boulder.
Secondly, Larry Underwood. That character remains fairly undeveloped in the show, at least to my recollection. He is a much more interesting character in the novel.
Replies and comments
odd
3 september, 2021 11:01@MrHenko Oh, I haven’t read that book in about 35 years (before Twin Peaks), I didn’t make the connection back then, but maybe I would now. I haven’t read King/Backman books in decades, but now and then I think about them. Have a handful of ones that I haven’t started on yet.
MrHenko
5 september, 2021 08:31@odd To be clear, I don’t think Lynch and Frost knowingly took parts of it, but maybe one or both of them had read it and it was simmering in that back of their mind. Or maybe it’s some sort of shared American horror, some ideas of small towns and their secrets.