G:fantods (04/01/83)
I'm looking for news and reviews about two new books: the new Stephen King novel, and the new Dick Francis novel. Don't remember the titles at all. I like Francis, he's pretty dependable, a good writer, and makes no bones about it, but King has gotten flabbier and flabbier after "The Shining". In "The Dead Zone" I finally started skipping fifty-page sections, going "Uh-huh, that's what I thought!" every time. 700-page novels should be 700 pages of useful prose, not padding to get the thing to the best seller list. Gah. I must admit that reading "The Stand", his post-holocaust God-and-the-Devil book, was very intriguing, mainly because I was living in Boulder, Colorado at the time. As I read the book at a bustop one day, awaiting transport to somewhere, I realized that the action in the book was heading right past me on that very street! Keen huh? No? Oh well.