The Year-End Roundup

Earlier in the year, I talked about how books are fundamentally different than other forms of media. This is mainly because you can walk into the Borders at Downtown Crossing and have thousands upon thousands of books at your disposal, most of which will take more than two hours to read unless you're in the kid's section. In that case, security will be there to ask you to leave shortly.

My point is that unlike movies that are advertised or bands that go on tour, it's up to the reader to discover what is good and what was a waste of paper and ink. My job was to try and facilitate this process and hopefully get some people reading in the process.

Seeing as this is the last article of my college career, I'd thought I'd try something different. Here is a rundown of several books that

A) I couldn't fit in this year B) Thought they were a little too out there

or C) Thought it was pretty bad, and thus negating the purpose of this column

So I guess I'm gonna treat parts of this article as an excuse to vent about time lost reading some of these literary gems, one in particular which is at the bottom.

Threshold by Caitlin Kiernan I honestly cannot tell you what this book is about but damn it if it isn't creepy as Hell. I really don't know where to begin. There's a geologist, her alcoholic, psychic ex-boyfriend, and an albino girl who shows up with a finger in a mustard jar. There are also monsters made of rusted metal and chunks of meat rain from the sky at one point. It's confusing but there is something genuinely unsettling about it.

The Demonologist by Michael Laimo There is going to be a theme here: most of the dumber books are going to be of the horror genre. The only reason I picked this book up was because the summary on the back cover bore a resemblance to a story I had read in my high school's literary magazine. It's gross, it's gory and it is totally underwhelming. It revolves around a musician who becomes possessed by Lucifer. Lucifer isn't too happy about a ritual that is attempting to unleash Legion, and seeks to stop it. If you like stories about demons, you can do much, much better. However, if you like your books to be praised by sources like Hellnotes and Cemetery Dance, you could still do much, much better.

House Infernal by Edward Lee I figure I'll get the horror books out of the way first. This book, to put it bluntly, is stupid, but I think it's intentional. I bought the book for six dollars new so I think Lee knows he isn't penning Shakespeare. The plot in a nutshell involves a priory that is being renovated and a plot to unleash Hell on Earth by Anti-pope Boniface, who actually existed so the book has that going for it. Portions of the book happen on both Earth and Hell, but the Earth portions are forgettable. My main problem with the book is Lee sets up this rule that everything in Hell is opposite that of Earth, and just runs with it to an absurd degree. This book is the definition of schlock, but I will give credit where credit is due: the portions in Hell are some of the more creative things I've ever read.

Rebel Without a Crew by Robert Rodriguez This is a must-read for any film student. I respected Rodriguez for telling the Director's Guild to go screw just so Frank Miller could get director's credit on Sin City, but the director of From Dusk Till Dawn has earned my undying love for this book. It's basically a diary Rodriguez kept while shooting "El Mariachi" and it's message is basically is that you can shoot a film for nothing if you're willing to work your ass off.

He was the crew. His dolly was a wheelchair. His crane was a ladder. Both pieces of "equipment" were operated by cast members that weren't onscreen at the time. He subjected himself to medical experiments just to finance the thing. How badass is that? He went from a kid in Texas editing on a VCR to shooting the silliness that is Grindhouse with a budget of $53 million and walking around with Rose McGowan on one arm. I believe that is the American Dream in a nutshell.

Suppressed Inventions and Other Discoveries by Jonathan Eisen I'm pretty sure this book should have come wrapped in tinfoil as it's a conspiracy theorist wet dream. Suggested to me during my freshman seminar (World of Energy where I don't think anyone, including the teacher, wanted to be there), it's a pretty hefty book covering everything from Polio and AIDS, the Apollo disaster and everyone's favorite, Nikola Tesla. I'm not sure of the purpose of this book. I feel like those who would genuinely believe it don't need more proof, so it's almost like it's preaching to the converted, but then again it might attract some more readers from those who believe the Loose Change video on Youtube.

I'm surprised that they didn't cover that frozen shrimp contains microchips implanted by the Gorton's Fisherman.

The Nightside Series by Simon Green This book series is the most singularly creative collection of work I've run into. It's a detective noir set in the supernatural center of London, the Nightside. John Taylor has a knack for finding things and is usually employed to do so. John enemies and friends as well as supporting characters are as diverse as they are British, which is to say very. Green's biggest weakness is that John always seems to do something out of left field or be saved by characters that aren't in the scene at the last moment. It's a little off putting when it happens the end of every…single…book but the whole series is so imaginative it's worth a look.

The Stand by Stephen King It's been said that Stephen King can write 90 percent of a good book. This is very clear in "The Girl who loved Tom Gordon" where the evil in the forest turned out to be a case of exposure, but what "The Stand" does is unforgivable. A quick warning as there will be spoilers ahead, but to be fair the book is older than you are. That being said, Rosebud is Kane's sled, Jason's mother kills everyone in the first movie and Kevin Spacey is Kaiser Soze as well as John Doe.

With that out of the way, the first 90 percent of King's book is great. King tends to describe things that really don't need to be described in minute detail so I assume he was being paid by the word. The iconic book is set in a world where most of the U.S. population has been decimated by Captain Tripps, which is basically the flu on crack. Survivors gather in either Boulder, Colorado or Las Vegas where Randall Flagg, the books antagonist and what I assume is the anti-Christ, is stationed. The book follows a lot of characters but it's not too hard to remember various details because they're all pretty varied. You do come to care what happens to the characters, including a dog, so it's insulting how it ends.

Honestly Stephen, you wrote a 1141 page book and you couldn't figure out how to finish the f#!&ing thing? The climax is such a cop out, such an example of deus ex machina, I don't know how to put the frustration experienced into words, so I'll just describe what happens.

God sets off nuclear bomb and kills all the bad guys. I am not joking. A character finds a nuclear weapon and brings it back to Las Vegas only to have God poke it with his finger to set it off, removing all damn conflict. I was getting near the end and trying to figure out how King was going to end a potential full scale massacre and he does it in the worse possible way, especially after a thousand pages. How the hell does this guy keep getting work? Damn it all.

So there we are. My capstone article of my college career ends with a rant bitching out Stephen King. It's not exactly what I planned but I couldn't find a singular book that felt worthy of the last spot so you got a small list of bad book, good books and books whose pages are better off being used as rolling paper. Who knows, the ink might give whatever you're smoking a nice kick.*

*Please don't actually smoke book pages. I assume no responsibility for sending you to the emergency room.