Well, I finished the last three books in the seven book series finally. I have to say that their appeal to me went down after book three as I got into books four, and especially five, six, and seven. I will say why just below, but in case you have not read them, my reasons could be seen as a SPOILER.

So don’t read any more if you don’t want that. 🙂

So, two major reasons:

1) First, and not as big an issue to me as the next reason, is that King started putting himself as a character into the books (metafiction). Again, not a huge deal, and it actually works in this particular story… But not a favorite technique of mine (unless the books are first person from the git-go).

2) Second, and more important to me, is that the series went from a combo western/epic fantasy book to much more of a horror genre, complete with vampires, a spider/man-child combo, etc. Of course horro is King’s speciality, so it is not surprising; but to me, I prefered it before when it was more western/fantasy.

Of course I continued to read, and was very interested in the outcome. King, as always, is a crafty story teller. So those two items aren’t the end of the world by any means, and I would still recommend the entire series, with caveats, for anyone that has time to read 3000 pages for entertainment and likes such stories. 🙂

Four down, three to go. This is the last one that I had read years ago. For some reason, I remembered much less in this book than the first three.

(These 3 images are not exactly the images on my books — I bought mine all when they were published way back when…)

I had read the 1st four books in this series as they came out back in the 80’s and 90’s, and then stopped reading, deciding I’d wait until King completed the work and read them all together.

With my travel schedule the past few weeks (NYC, Chicago, SFO), I’ve had time to read the 1st 3 books in the series and have started the fourth…

Not many quotes from the 1st three — these are just “fun reads,” but there is this one:

“The prosaic fact of the universe’s existence single-handely defeats the pragmatist and the cynic…”

All in all, good reads, lots of action and excitement, etc.

It felt good to read fiction again. It has been too long. 🙂 And it felt good to read Heinlein again. I went through a stage where I read a ton of his stuff, but his is one (I think) I missed.

This story has been mentioned as a classic for libetarian politics. Not much to say beyond that, and only a couple of quotes:

• I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free becuase I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.
• Where do you start explaining when a man’s words show there isn’t anything he understands about a subject, instead is loaded with preconceptions that don’t fit facts and doesn’teven know he has?

For the 1st quote, I have been comparing that to “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” (Janis Joplin)

Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise

This is another book for the school, but also for personal use. It is geared towards home-schooling using the classical method, but I got it to help me better understand the curriculum our school will have, but also for some ideas we can do at home both now and in the future to supplement the school. I only read K-4 but will read the other sections more later when our kids are older and the school adds additional grades beyond K-4.

‘ve been really bad about posting anything on the books I’ve read recently, so I’m going to do a very quick mass post to catch up, which means I won’t be writing much about any of them at this point…

We are working on opening a Classical Christian School, so I’ve been doing a lot of reading in tht area. Wilson is one of the founders of Logos, and that is the real 1st school that started off this style of educaiton… Harsh Truth is a bit sensationalist and goes on and on in some areas where just a little info would have been plenty:

We have looked at various real estate for investment purposes. The following is a good beginners book, to at least get an overview. But depending on what you want to do, you will likely want to read more in depth books on specific areas.

Yes, I did read this again… After reading the Guidebook a few months back, I really wanted to read it again. Always a classic! 🙂