Reading On the Eights: 1/30

I divided my reading for the past eight weeks between science-fiction and Stephen King works. And began my first Mary Higgins Clark novel. As for the sci-fi, I finished reading the second of Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, titled The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The mini-series I saw a few years back ended where this book ended. But there are at least three more Hitchhiker books to go, so I should have more fun in the future reading on in this series (not already knowing what is going to happen). I read the next of Isaac Asimov's Robot Novels, titled The Robots of Dawn. It was longer than the others and had some pretty tedious sections, but the knockout ending was worth the reading. And I've just started reading his fourth (and last) of this series: Robots and Empire.

I continued reading Stephen King novels by getting through two of his lengthy works: Needful Things and Bag of Bones. Needful Things was basically a retelling of Ray Bradbury's great Something Wicked This Way Comes in a Maine setting, using some old characters from King stories like Cujo, The Dark Half, and Insomnia. To me, this novel was a great indictment against human nature and how people can become hooked on things to a degree that can lead to delusions and tragedy. Bag of Bones was another "Maine" novel that shifted its emphasis from one theme to a completely different one as the story progressed. Definitely worth the time I put in reading it! I've also begun Stephen King's Dark Tower series, having read The Gunslinger (Volume 1) and being now about two thirds of the way through his second volume (The Drawing of the Three). The Dark Tower started out slow (vaguely resembling Clint Eastwood's old spaghetti westerns), but it has now picked up a lot of steam! My interest in The Dark Tower was stimulated by references to it in two other Stephen King novels (Insomnia and Hearts in Atlantis) and a short story (The Little Sisters of Eluria from his collection Everything's Eventual ). Also, I began reading his early short novel (written as Richard Bachman) The Long Walk. It seems to have a science-fiction flavor to it so far.

And finally, I tried a completely different author with Mary Higgins Clark and her novel Nighttime is My Time. I still haven't reached the halfway point in it, but it's quite clear that Clark has a very different style to her presentation than Stephen King!