Stephen King: Fairy Tale

Stephen King's Fairy Tale tells the story of Charlie Reade, a teenager who saves his neighbor Howard Bowditch after he hurts himself. The boy ends up taking care of his neighbor and his dog while he recovers.

This is such a boring book. I skipped most of it. It takes forever for anything to start happening. I don't know if it's me or King's fault that I couldn't read this. But even in the past I have had great difficulty accepting King's desperate attempt to write about the lives of today's youth.

The best thing about Fairy Tale is that the center of everything is a dog and attempts to rescue it.

I read this quite late, as the Finnish translation has already been published earlier this year. And a movie adaption of this Fairy Tale is (of course?) coming.

 

 

While reading Fairy Tale the first things that come to mind from King's earlier books are 11.22.63 and The Eyes of the Dragon, both of which are among my favorites. For a long time I have wanted to re-read The Eyes of the Dragon to see if I still like it, and since I'm in the process of re-reading all of King's books in their published order, soon it will be Dragon's turn. Actually, I've dreamed of buying it for myself, but since I have no income I had better not.

Catherine Cookson: The Golden Straw

I have a project going on where I read the books on my bookshelf and try to decide which ones I want to keep and which ones to give up. I must have said before in this book blog that when I was younger I liked Catherine Cookson's romantic books a lot, but nowadays I find them boring.

The Golden Straw begins in 1879, when young Emily Ratcliffe has recently divorced her husband. She inherits the hat business from her employer, but has a nervous breakdown and decides to go on vacation to the French Riviera. There she meets the charming Paul Steerman, and the rest is history.

Most of the book focuses on young Emily's life, and I found it surprisingly interesting. But then we fast-forward several times decades, and I lost interest each time. Especially when there were so many characters that I got confused.

I remembered that in one of Cookson's books, a brother and sister get married, and have children despite being closely related. I thought that the book was this one, but no. Incest flourishes here too, but children are understood to be left out.

Towards the end of The Golden Straw, I started to get annoyed by the fact that a large part of the book was focused on Emily's life, and naturally we were on her side. But in the end, she was made into some nasty and bitter monster, which I think was completely wrong. Besides, you'd think anyone would be bitter when a husband falls in love with his wife's own child...

 

Timothy Ferriss: The 4-Hour Body

Timothy Ferriss is reportedly something of a guru in some circles. I had never heard of him before, but for some reason his book The 4-Hour Body, published in 2010, piqued my interest after it appeared in the selection of the online library.

The book, like its author, has completely divided people's opinions. The 4-hour body focuses on how to get the maximum benefit with as little effort as possible. Too much is too much and wastes time.

Most of the book focuses on losing weight and at the same time increasing muscle mass, as quickly as possible of course. Of course, it was inspiring to notice that a low-carbohydrate diet is also recommended here, of course with its own (strange?) twist.

Many of Timothy Ferriss' instructions and advice are quite extreme, and potentially dangerous. As just one example of a lighter end, he forgets to mention that green tea extract (EGCG) as a dietary supplement can destroy the liver.

The book presents an interesting claim about the connection between cell phone radiation and sperm count and motility. In general, Ferriss thinks that anything aimed at maximizing fertility is healthy.

And in these times when there is a virus that destroys people's immunity and kills t-cells, the question arises, is there any way to increase the number of t-cells? Ferris thinks you can, but whether it's healthy is another matter entirely.

 

Timothy Ferris: The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-loss, Incredible Sex and Becoming Superhuman