I finished Stephen King's Cell a couple of days ago. A fairly entertaining read, though it never quite kept the momentum going after the action packed opening. It suffers in comparison to King's other post-apocalyptic novel The Stand; both depict a group of misfit strangers coming together to make sense of a world gone horribly wrong. At the core though, is a rather sweet story about a man's search for his son. King is very good at exploring the father-son relationship (albeit in pretty gruesome circumstances) - just look at The Shining or Cujo or Pet Sematary. For what is basically a 'zombies ruling the world' novel, it ends in a surprisingly intimate way. I've heard that Eli Roth, director of the nastily entertaining Hostel, is making The Cell into a movie. Should be one hell of a gory movie. Yay!
I'm now two chapters into the John Peel autobiography, The Margrave of the Marshes, which I borrowed from my Dad last week. Peel was a DJ on BBC Radio 1 from 1967 until his death in 2004. He helped boost the careers of everyone from T Rex to the Sex Pistols to Pulp to The White Stripes. Since I'm more interested in the 'music' part of his life, I thought I'd find his memories of his earlier life pretty boring. I needn't have worried though - it turns out that he's a really funny and entertaining writer.
'I've always imagined I'd die by driving into the back of a truck while trying to read the name on a cassette, and people would say, 'He would have wanted to go that way.' Well, I want them to know that I wouldn't.'
No comments:
Post a Comment