Welcome to my blog. If you're addicted to books, like I am, then you've come to the right place. I mostly write about books and my experiences reading them. These are very personal book reviews. (If you can even call them book reviews...) I’m a true believer that none of us lives in a vacuum. When you read a book, watch a movie, listen to a song, etc., you absorb that art form into your life experience, and it changes you. But you also change it, because no two people see anything the same way. The way I interpret a novel may be totally different from the way you will. It’s still the same novel, but the meaning for each of us is unique. Once you express that meaning, it changes the art. So these posts are about how these books fit into my life. I’d love to hear how they fit into yours. Please make comment and share your experience.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Review of Blockade Billy by Stephen King: A Mini Review for a Mini Book

I’ve been debating the purchase of a Kindle or a Nook for a while.  My Dad & Uncle have Kindles and they love them.  My co-workers have Nooks and they love them.  While I agree that an e-book reader would offer many conveniences, I love borrowing books from the library so I don’t have to pay for them, and I don’t have to store them afterwards.  Imagine my elation when I found out that I can download e-books from the library for FREE onto my iPod.  So I’ve been experimenting with it.  One of my first downloads was Blockade Billy, a novella by Stephen King. Aside from his non-fiction book On Writing, I’ve never read any Stephen King before, although I have seen a few movies based on his books.  I stress a few here, because I’m not really a horror flick fan, but I did love Shawshank Redemption and the Green Mile.  A friend of mine was recently telling me that she and her husband were both big Stephen King fans, and so I thought I needed to give Mr. King a chance.  Enter Blockade Billy…the only Stephen King novel available on the library e-book list when I logged on the other night. 
  Blockade Billy [Book]
It is a novella, so very short, as will be the review.  It is told as a narrative, as if an old-timey baseball manager is telling Stephen King the story first hand.  The narrator even addresses him as “Mr. King” throughout the story.  I loved the narrator’s vernacular and his perspective on the story being told, and I enjoyed the narrative structure in itself.  A little foreshadowing lets you know that something dreadful is going to happen with the rookie known as “Blockade Billy.”  I enjoyed the story up until you find out what that dreadful thing was.  And then once you know that to which they’ve been alluding this whole time, I thought…What?  Seriously?  This is it?  It just felt forced to me.  In all fairness, it could just be that I didn’t like what happened, so I only felt like it was forced for that reason.  Either way, I’m torn as to whether I liked or disliked this book.  I guess overall, I enjoyed it, even if I wasn’t thrilled with the way the story turned in the end.  It was a fun quick read, but I’m glad I got it for free from the library rather than paying $8.99 to download it to a Kindle on Amazon.
And I promise I’ll give Mr. King another chance.  J

2 comments:

  1. I keep commenting on books I haven't read! But I will definitely be looking for this one. You may want to check out (or borrow from me) The Gunslinger - first book in the The Dark Tower series. The book and the series are still of the horror genre, butmore sci-fi/dystopian future/cowboy adventure than his other stuff. Intrigued?
    [Christine]

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hey Christine---Thanks for the comments. I'll definitely add The Gunslinger to my list. It sounds kind of like the new movie 'Cowboys and Aliens.' I'm totally intrigued...

    ReplyDelete