Misery by Stephen King

As I mentioned in my review of Finders Keepers, I knew Stephen King had written about an obsessed literature fan before, but I had only seen the movie version of Misery, and had not read the book. It was also referred to in William Goldman's introduction to The Princess Bride, because while Goldman wrote the screenplay, he got to know King as a colleague. Not to mention there's now a Broadway version of the story. So it felt like a good time to finally read this nearly-three-decade-old novel.

At the same time as being a thrilling story, Misery is just as much a look inside the mind of a writer as King's non-fiction guide On Writing. Protagonist Paul Sheldon is the author of the popular Victorian-set books about a woman named Misery, and in the most recent one she has died during childbirth. This does not sit well with Annie Wilkes, who has coincidentally found Paul near her house after a car accident and put him up in her home. As a former nurse, she has all the painkillers he could need, and forces him to start a new book that brings Misery back to life, appropriately titled Misery's Return.

All of Misery is told from Paul's point of view, and we can nearly feel the pain of his crushed legs and his rage and fear towards his captor. Near the middle of the book, we get to see the progress that Paul has made on Misery's Return, complete with the n's tediously filled in by hand to compensate for the broken key on the typewriter Annie provides. I think this device adds to the verisimilitude of the story, since you can see how Paul's typed words deteriorate along with the typewriter (it soon loses its "t" and "e" keys) and his situation at the mercy of Annie. Cut off from the outside world and with seemingly no chance of getting out of the guest bedroom, his writing is the only way he can "escape".

I can tell why this story has endured, and been adapted as multiple forms of media over the years. It's filled with suspense as Annie reveals further layers of her insanity and Paul gets more desperate to find his way out of the house. And although Stephen King has written many stories starring authors, his examination of what drives one to create and sustain fictional worlds (even when not under duress) remains a fascinating and enduring subject.

Kindle.Amazon.com

One of the things I like to do while reading a book is mark it up. And I think this is much more satisfying in the digital age. In 12th grade we were directed to "annotate" our books to search for motifs, themes, and anything you could insert into a discussion to make you sound clever. In an actual book, there are drawbacks: flipping through the pages to get back to the annotation can be tiresome, what if your pen or highlighter craps out in the middle of it, or what if, when you're done, you want to lend your book to someone who hasn't read it?

This is one of the main reasons I really like ebooks. I can highlight and/or make notes in passages and then read all of them on a single page. I can change my mind and delete or change them as I get further into the book. I can easily reference what I've highlighted so I can remind myself of foreshadowing or world information. And this ties into why I prefer Kindle books: go to Kindle.Amazon.com and you'll see all of the highlights and notes you've made in your Kindle books and, from there, you can publish them. So while there are others, like Moon+ Reader, Kindle is the only one I know of that allows you to publish your annotations.

As a user, you can choose to make a book that you've read, are reading, or are considering reading public or private. You can also decide to make notes and highlights in any of those books public or private. Currently, all books are marked private by default so you have to mark them as public if you want other users to see your activity. Personally I think it should be the other way around or the user should define the default. For me, I mainly use it to access what I've highlighted or noted to write my reviews.

The social aspect of this site is that you can view the notes and highlights of other users. The Shared Notes & Highlights section shows what has been marked "public" by the user. As I mentioned, by default highlights and notes are private, so sometimes there aren't that many. Highlights from books you've read or books you want to read will show up in the Daily Review (which I think is misnamed since it is a Daily Highlight).

If you read a lot of Kindle books, you should definitely check this out!

Superman: Birthright by Mark Waid

I became a fan of comic book writer Mark Waid after reading his recent run on Daredevil and the 1996 graphic novel Kingdom Come. In the latter, Waid creates a future version of the Justice League and with Superman: Birthright he was given the opportunity to rewrite the origin story of the last son of Krypton to make it more relevant to the 21st Century.

Waid doesn't reinvent the wheel, but he does attempt to explain and streamline elements of Superman's personality and costume in ways that hadn't been explored before. The story in Birthright moves quickly; after the baby-containing spaceship is sent from the dying planet, we skip over Clark Kent's childhood and catch up to him as a 25-year-old trying to figure out his place on his adopted world.

There are a few elements of this story that were borrowed for Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, ranging from the aforementioned time-jump, to the distrust that Superman encounters about his motivation, to the idea that the S-shield emblem Supes wears is a Kryptonian symbol for hope. However, Waid is much better at expressing that sense of hope and responsibility than Snyder's careless version of the character. Waid's Superman is compassionate toward the human race and constantly gets to prove that he is not their enemy.

Birthright shares the idea with the "Smallville" TV series that Lex Luthor grew up in the rural Kansas town alongside Clark Kent, which had never been part of Luthor's character in past comics. However, when Superman notices Luthor thriving as a scientist in Metropolis, Luthor denies having any knowledge of Smallville or the Kent family who he spent time with in his youth. Lex has become an astrobiologist and yearns to attain more technological secrets from extraterrestrial worlds. When he discovers a wormhole that shows glimpses of Krypton before its destruction, he carries out a plan to discredit the strange visitor in the red cape while gaining the alien tech for himself.

I enjoyed this book a lot, and although it has been written out of DC comics canon a few times over, I think it stands out as a distinguished, accessible version of Superman's origin story. It certainly does better justice to the character than anything depicted in Man of Steel or Batman v. Superman.

Check out the writer's website at markwaid.com, and if you're in the Washington, DC area June 3-5, he'll be appearing at Awesome Con.

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

I picked up this book because I was in the mood for a time travel story, and that's basically all I knew about it going in. The concept of a time-hopping serial killer sounded pretty promising, but unfortunately The Shining Girls doesn't do enough with it, and the various characters and time periods become jumbled.

The book is written in third person but each chapter is from a different point of view; from protagonist Kirby Mazrachi to her friend Dan the detective, to the killer named Harper Curtis, and a few inconsequential side characters, we get their name and what date the chapter takes place on. Sometimes alternating with multiple voices can be beneficial to a story, but in this case it all seemed scattered. I can say that Beukes did admirable research into the details of Chicago's different time periods, but that doesn't make the story great.

All we learn about the Depression-era drifter Harper is that he loves to slice up people with his knife. He has a list of women living in different years who he feels are destined to meet their end, but he also indiscriminately kills anyone who gets in his way, and then jumps to another time before anyone knows how the massacre occured.

Kirby is the one victim who survives Harper's attack because her dog gets in the way of his knife. So she is trying to track Harper down with Dan's help, all while a reporter from the Chicago Sun-Tribune is doing a profile about Kirby and the life-changing assault. Kirby is not a fully dimensional character either, only motivated by wanting justice to be served to the would-be murderer who left ugly scars on her belly.

I'm going to admit my mind wandered while reading this book, because the constantly shifting perspectives and decades became confusing. (This is probably why I'll never be a professional reviewer.) It didn't seem to be clearly explained how Harper was able to time travel other than using a portal somewhere, or why he has the list of victims he calls the "shining girls". (According to Wikipedia, he "must murder the 'shining girls' in order to continue his travels." I didn't pick up on that and I still don't see why continuing to time travel is a good enough reason to become a serial killer.)

So I didn't find much to recommend about The Shining Girls. It felt like it was clumsily building to some greater purpose that never came about, all elaborate table-setting with no feast.