Still no Camera Post, but Random Book Review!!

I haven't touched the camera in days. Please nag me if I don't get around to it in the coming week.

 I am an audiobook addict. I would give up a lot of things before I'd part with my one credit a month Audible subscription. But I am also fairly frugal about how I use my one credit. I like a book that will give me more than 12 hours of listening enjoyment, minimum.

 I'm thrilled by hefty biographies (my favorite era is the American Revolution), and occasionally take on the big fat popular novel.

I am figuring out that I should stick to the big fat biographies.

My first crashing disappointment were the hugely popular Outlander books.  I could NOT get into them at all.  Last month (or was it the month before?) I listened to Stephen King's latest about the Kennedy assassination, and while I didn't abandon it as I did Outlander, I did feel like it could have done with some brutal editing.

But I had positive memories of one of King's early epic novels, The Stand.  It is dark, depressing and apocalyptic, but the characters and plot were gripping, at least, that's how I remembered it from when I first read it, when I was...20.  I read it when it was published in 1978, and couldn't put it down. So, despite my "meh" reaction to his latest novel, when I saw that they'd re-released The Stand in an expanded audio format, with huge sections that the first publisher cut out, and I could now get 48 hours of listening pleasure for one lousy credit, well, how could I pass it up? It was a Costco-sized jar of dog walking and house cleaning audio!  Sold!

I'm about 12 hours in, and I'm not sure I can go on.   Either it didn't age well, or the audio format has just forced me to listen to things my eye would have sped past.  Let's just say King was deeply into the "folksy shitkicker aphorisms" at that time.  Many are cringe worthy.  People think and say things I'm pretty sure nobody ever thought or said - this afternoon something stuck to something like "shit on a blanket."  Really? Is that a folksy saying folksy shitkicker folks actually said, somewhere, sometime? I don't think so, Steve.  I just don't.

He also couldn't use one bit of imagery to create a scene when he had three really gross ones he was dying to share.  I briefly contemplated designing a drinking game for it, but if you took a shot every time  you heard the words "like a...." followed by a wildly imaginative but disgusting word picture, you'd be out cold in 15 minutes.  I'm now thinking that adding back about 150,000 words cut from the original wasn't such a hot idea.   But that's just me, because it has a 5 star rating, and rave reviews.

I have a credit waiting for this month, and I'm thinking I need to abandon Mr. King and cleanse my palate.  I need funny.   I'm thinking crisp, bright, funny, original characters, fun. I'm thinking Carl Hiaasen.  Any other suggestions?