Quick book tip: “Phantoms,” by Dean Koontz

I can’t resist plugging a certain excellent Dean Koontz novel here, as I know a few friends in particular who would love “Phantoms.”  I’ve only read a tiny fraction of Koontz’ novels.  (Dear Lord, that guy writes a lot.)  But I’ve always loved the ones that I have read.  They’re quickly paced, they’ve got fun, creative horror-sci-fi premises, and I like stories where the good guys have guns and guts and just fight right the hell back.

“Phantoms,” in my humble opinion, is the scariest Koontz book I’ve ever read.  I think my favorite will always be “Lightning,” with its terrific surprise plot device.  But “Phantoms” is the Koontz novel that best amped up the fear factor.

I can’t describe the story’s antagonist … or even its overall plot, for fear of spoilers.  Suffice to say, a small Colorado town goes off the grid, and investigators arrive to find that something horrible and mysterious has happened there.  Despite that cliche’ setup, the reveal is darkly inventive, detailed, and wickedly illustrated.

The book might also induce smiles because it is such a right-leaning Cold War period novel.  (It was written in 1983.)  Upon discovering Very Bad Things, our Middle American heroes wonder if it’s the work of “the Russians.”  (Terrorism isn’t mentioned, if I recall.)

It’s damn fun.

[UPDATE:  Blog correspondent Len Ornstein just told me he was unhappy with my recent recommendation after he read this book!  Your mileage may vary, I guess.  My rule for this blog is Caveat Reador.]

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“Hey, Girl.”

The new haircut worked out for once.  Take your victories where you can, right?

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Illustration of comet over Florence before the plague, by Conrad Lycosthenes, 1340

L0005342 C. Lycosthenes, 1340 comet in sky and plague at Florence Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Comet seen in the sky: 1340 and plague at Florence in which 16,000 people died Printed Text with Illustration Prodigiorum ac ostentorum Chronicon Lycosthenes, Conradus Published: 1557 Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Throwback Thursday: Brown Bag Book Covers

Why the hell were the public schools so zealous back in the day about requiring book covers?  In the Longwood School District, you actually got in trouble if your invaluable, publicly issued tome was without one.

Seriously, why?  Hardcover textbooks were sturdy; they weren’t the frikkin’ Dead Sea Scrolls.  Nor did the average student throw them off of overpasses or in front of passing trains or whatever.  (In college, I threw my “Statistics of Psychology” textbook out of a second story window once, but that was a political statement.)

In retrospect, the practice of converting brown paper grocery bags to book covers seems a little ghetto.  But you know what?  I think most of the kids I knew did it, instead of using store-bought book covers.  (We WERE the 99 Percent.)

My Longwood High School Alum Tim Gatto posted on Facebook recently about how a bunch of the guys wrote their favorite quotes and song lyrics on their books.  (I picked up on that trend from him.)  As Tim pointed out, it was Facebook before there was Facebook.

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“ISIS Rising” (2013) might be the stupidest documentary ever.

“ISIS Rising” (2013) is a film with no educational value, and I can’t believe anyone could find it helpful in understanding the terrifying events connected with ISIS in Iraq and Syria.  Throughout this film’s entire running length, it yields no genuine insight into the international crisis.  Indeed, it doesn’t even provide the viewer with any information whatsoever!  I’d rate it at a 0 out of 10.

The filmmakers here made a truly bizarre major creative decision in trying to inform the viewer via … metaphor?  We are actually introduced early on to a character name “ISIS.”  She is, inexplicably, a buxom female mummy.  No … you read that right.  ISIS is represented by a major character who is a big-bosomed, female mummy.  She fights a male mummy (presumably representing Western democracies?!).  In fact, the entire film plays out like a low-budget pageant set in ancient Egypt.  Why was that choice made?  How does the pantheon of ancient Egyptian Gods relate to radical Islam in the modern world?  Isn’t that a bit like employing Roman mythology as a metaphor for contemporary Christianity, Judaism, or another modern religion?

There is a preponderance of breasts.  What did they symbolize?  Iraq and Syria?  When ISIS the lady mummy clutches her breasts, does that represent the terrorist army clutching the two countries in its grip?  And what about the barely dressed male mummy?  Should I be offended that the United States and her allies are represented by some guy’s giant schvantz?

Skip this.

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“Footprints.”

“He said that there were no traces upon the ground round the body. He did not observe any. But I did – some little distance off, but fresh and clear.”

“Footprints?”

“Footprints.”

“A man’s or a woman’s?”

Dr. Mortimer looked strangely at us for an instant, and his voice sank almost to a whisper as he answered: “Mr Holmes, they were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”

—  from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Hound of the Baskervilles”

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“The song of mercy is the Devil’s Waltz.”

“The Third Temptation” (Part VIII of “The Quest”), by W.H. Auden

He watched with all his organs of concern
How princes walk, what wives and children say,
Re-opened old graves in his heart to learn
What laws the dead had died to disobey,

And came reluctantly to his conclusion:
“All the arm-chair philosophies are false;
To love another adds to the confusion;
The song of mercy is the Devil’s Waltz.”

All that he put his hand to prospered so
That soon he was the very King of creatures,
Yet, in an autumn nightmare trembled, for,

Approaching down a ruined corridor,
Strode someone with his own distorted features
Who wept, and grew enormous, and cried Woe.

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“The Missal,” by John William Waterhouse, 1902

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Photo credit: John William Waterhouse [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

First footage released for the “Sherlock” Christmas special.

It’s indeed set in Victorian London — I guess this means, of course, that it will have no continuity with the regular program.  (It seems like a show like this wouldn’t resort to something as campy as a dream sequence.)

The clip here is only a minute and a half, but it’s great fun seeing Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman in the classic Sherlock Holmes setting.  The props, costuming and the set look terrific.  I guess they needn’t have altered the building facades on “Baker Street” if they are period buildings?

It’s funny too.  When talking about Watson’s accounts, Sherlock says that he is “hardly in … the dog one.”  If you’ve ever read “The Hound of the Baskervilles,” Holmes actually is absent for much of it, with Watson investigating.

The story doesn’t suffer from Holmes’ lengthy absence — Watson is a great reader surrogate, and the novel still a fun, moody, creepy mystery.  And it made THE MOORS nice and creepy a hell of a long time before “An American Werewolf in London.”  (Stay off them, by the way.)  Read it on a park bench on a late Autumn, gray-clouded day, with a decent overcoat and some strong coffee.  That’s how I did it.

Rest In Peace, Wes Craven.

You brought us “Nightmares” when we were growing up.

Now we hope that easy sleep brings you nothing but gentle dreams.

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Nurse Your Favorite Heresies in Whispers