Terry Hayes: The Year of the Locust

Terry Hayes' The Year of the Locust (affiliate link) is 900 pages long. Literally a really heavy book.

I waited a long time for this book. It was postponed for several years.

And all this time I thought that The Year of the Locust is a sequel to I Am Pilgrim. But it's not. If I had known this, I wouldn't have wanted to read it. I wouldn't have been waiting for it. I wouldn't have bothered dragging this heavy load home from the library.

Reading the book was slow only because I didn't want to pick it up because of its massive size. Too heavy, especially in the summer heat.

So what happens in the book? Again, some CIA agent does some dangerous work, wandering through remote areas and deserts.

But once again I ended up getting interested, and the book and the plot took me with it.

Towards the end, The Year of the Locust changes its genre to something completely different, sci-fi and dystopian. This sudden change in plot and style has angered readers, to say the least.

 

 

Stephen King: You Like It Darker

I'm no longer keeping up with Stephen King's works. It's bad if the translation comes out before I have read the book.

You Like It Darker (affiliate link) is a collection of short stories. King has produced numerous wonderful short story collections, so my expectations were high.

King just can't win. I think it's embarrassing if he tries to write about today's youth. And if he writes about himself, or about old writers, that's not good enough for me either.

 

Two Talented Bastids

Yet another story about a writer, boring. And how is this different from The Tommyknockers (affiliate link)? 

 

The Fifth Step

Nice short story with a good twist.

 

Willie the Wierdo

This reminds me of the distressing movie The Skeleton Key (affiliate link), which I would want to dare to watch again, but I don't think I can.

 

Danny Coughlin’s Bad Dream

Long, boring and useless story about a man who sees in a dream where a body is hidden, and ends up being the main suspect of the murder. 

 

Finn

Man of bad luck is mistaken for another man and kidnapped as innocent. 

 

On Slide Inn Road

An old man saves the day, what else?

 

Red Screen

Help, my wife is an alien? 

 

The Turbulence Expert

This story is not suitable for those who have fear of flying. I happen to have it too, but it doesn't matter one bit because I have never been on a plane. There's no reason to go there.

 

Laurie

Laurie is a dog who encounters a crocodile. Or an alligator, what's the difference?

 

Rattlesnakes

This is a "sequel" to Cujo (affiliate link). Perhaps I don't want to know how certain characters are doing decades later.

 

The Dreamers

For me this was perhaps the most interesting story in this collection. This could make a person to be afraid of sleeping.

 

The Answer Man

This was also an intriguing story. If you could get answers about your life beforehand, what would you ask? And would you be able to handle the answers?

 

 

 

Robin Cook: Night Shift

Night Shift (affiliate link) is the 13th book in Robin Cook's Jack Stapleton & Laurie Montgomery series

 

Laurie's good friend, Dr. Susan Passero, is killed, although only the reader knows this. Jack tries to find out the cause of death, which seems mysterious. Sue suspected that a serial killer was rampaging in the hospital. Soon, other lives will be in danger.

Some of the things about the main couple in the series were new and strange to me, and I only realized afterwards that I had not read the previous book in the series, Genesis, because it is not in the library.

 

Cons of the book

-constant forcing of the Covid vaccination

-crap dialogue, especially the constantly repeated same and corny "swear" words

 

Has Robin Cook always been such a bad writer? No, I recently read my favorite by him, Mutation.

 

 

Miranda July: All Fours

My fault is that I rarely leave a book unfinished. Miranda July's All Fours (affiliate link) is another popular and controversial book that I should have skipped.

A middle-aged woman goes on a road trip, but immediately stops in a nearby town. How crazy does a person have to be to hire an interior designer for her motel room for $20,000?

A middle-aged artist writes a book about a middle-aged artist. So should we assume that this is auto-fiction or an autobiography? I don't understand people's desire to write about themselves.

You can write about sex beautifully and arousingly, but the sex scenes in this book just made me nauseated. And I'm not even the only one who feels this way.

What was the purpose and point of this whole story? I guess I'm too stupid to understand it. At least there is no proper ending or resolution in the book. I read to the end in vain.

 

 

James Patterson: Honeymoon

James Patterson is a very prolific and popular author. I've had some of his books on my library list for years, but Honeymoon (affiliate link) is the first book of his I've read.

Why did Honeymoon catch my attention? There's just something so captivating about a Black Widow.

Nora Sinclair is a beauty who turns men's heads. But Nora is only interested in rich men, and there's a murderous reason for that.