King rings up the horrors of cellphone creeps

By Carol Memmott, USA Today:

Sick and tired of having to endure other people's dreary, long-winded, one-sided cellphone calls?

Stephen King has a text message for you, and he's sending it through "the devil's intercom."

Cell, the horror master's latest tale of a world gone wrong, is for anyone who has ever wished that the person standing next to him or her, droning into a cellphone, would spontaneously combust or, at the very least, get disconnected.

King, who says he doesn't own a cellphone, has dialed up his own fantasy about the best thing that can happen to these incessant, mindless yakkers.

On a seemingly typical afternoon, anyone who is talking on a cellphone becomes a victim of "The Pulse." This worldwide act of terrorism turns cellphone users into zombie-like, bloodthirsty "phone-crazies."

Crazies kill other crazies as well as "normies" (i.e.: people who don't use cellphones or at least weren't on their phones when The Pulse struck). Children kill their parents. Husbands kill their wives. There seems to be no rhyme or reason - or is there?

Told mostly from the perspective of a small "cell" of unaffected normies, Cell is a gratifying tribute to George Romero, the crown prince of zombie movies, to whom King, in part, dedicates the book. Near the beginning of Cell, a Boston police officer compares the phone crazies to Night of the Living Dead "except these people aren't dead."In another scene, a teenage girl says, "To me it looks like a special effect in some big summer movie."

And indeed King's descriptions of the gore-soaked, mutilated crazies is worthy of any R-rated horror film fest.

But Cell is more than a litany of spilled intestines, oozing wounds and eyes dangling from sockets. It's a soothing balm to the world's technophobes and a disturbing send-up of what the world can be reduced to in an "us against them" situation. You get the feeling that King sees the world as just one big community of alienated factions waiting for their personal "pulse."

It also may be that King is poking a finger into a personal sore spot when a normie starts ranting about Lucifer and "the great Tribulation." The proselytizing normie gets a punch in the nose and a warning: "The lions are out of their cages, and you very well may find that they'll eat the mouthy Christians first."

In a world gone mad, King lets some characters hold on to an indefatigable pursuit of survival, solutions and family ties. It's just that they seem to be in the minority as herds of normies begin to cross over to the dark side.

Whether you are a Luddite or a mannerless cretin who can't leave home without a headset and a phone charger, King wants you to know he has your number.

Whitbread Award Winner

From Yahoo News:

LONDON - Biographer Hilary Spurling was the surprise winner in Britain's lucrative Whitbread Book Awards Tuesday.

Spurling, 65, came out on top for her book, "Matisse the Master," the second volume of a biography she had written about the great painter.

The Whitbread's top prize goes to one of the winners of prizes already awarded in five categories — novel, first novel, poetry, biography and children's book. Each category winner receives $8,700, while Spurling receives the $43,000 Whitbread Book of the Year Award.

Born in Stockport, northwest England, Oxford graduate Spurling spent 15 years writing the two volume work. She had unprecedented and unrestricted access to voluminous family correspondence and other new material in private archives.

A book I really enjoyed was Gladstone by Roy Jenkins, which won the 1995 Whitbread Award for Biography. I have read it three times, and learned something new every time.

New King book a distraction?

From The Associated Press, via Canadian Online Explorer:

ATLANTA (AP) -- On the eve of what would have been Martin Luther King Jr.'s 77th birthday, his legacy is under attack and its greatest defender is unable to speak.

King's widow, Coretta Scott King, is recovering from a stroke that partially paralyzed her, and on Saturday made only her first public appearance since last year's King holiday observance, smiling from a wheelchair at the Salute to Greatness Dinner.

The couple's four children are divided over whether to sell the family-run center that promotes King's teachings.

And the spotlight is again hitting King's more human side in a new book that alleges extramarital affairs and a nasty split with a civil rights colleague, the Rev. Jesse Jackson - a story that threatened to overshadow King's humanitarian contributions on the 20th anniversary of the King National Holiday.

Despite all the distractions, those who stood by King's side as soldiers in the civil rights movement say the memory of the self-named "Drum Major for Justice" is untouchable.

To view the entire article, click here.

Quote of the day

"Veni, vidi, vici". (Julius Caesar)

"I came, I saw, I conquered".

Hemingway's bar razed to the ground

From Reuters, via Yahoo News:

A fire destroyed the Ernest Hemingway museum and The Compleat Angler bar on Friday on the Bahamian island of Bimini, one of the American novelist's 1930s haunts during the days he stalked big game fish.

The early morning blaze leveled the wooden inn in Alicetown and destroyed photographs and Hemingway memorabilia, police said.

Hemingway drank at The Compleat Angler between fishing trips in his vessel Pilar in search of marlin, wahoo and sailfish in the pristine waters around Bimini. His novel "The Old Man and The Sea" was said to be inspired by his fishing exploits in the Bahamas and Cuba, and he worked on "To Have and Have Not" in Bimini.

The Hemingway legend became a major draw and The Compleat Angler created a museum which included hundreds of photographs and artifacts of the author.

[To the tune of Audioslave, "Doesn't Remind Me", from the album "Out of Exile".]

Quote of the day

"Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong." (Ayn Rand)

[To the tune of The Arcade Fire, "Rebellion (Lies)", from the album "Funeral".]

A million little pieces

From Yahoo News:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Random House is offering refunds to readers who bought James Frey's drug and alcohol memoir "A Million Little Pieces" directly from the publisher, following accusations the author exaggerated his story.

Readers calling Random House's customer service line to complain on Wednesday were told that if the book was bought directly from the publisher it could be returned for a full refund. Those who bought the book at a bookstore were told to try and return it to the store where it was bought.

Frey’s memoir sold 1.77 million copies last year after being chosen by Oprah Winfrey’s book club in September, making it the best-selling nonfiction book of 2005. Oprah has spoken out about the memoir, dismissing accusations of falsehood leveled at the author.

Since the controversy, “A Million Little Pieces” has remained the No. 1 selling book on Amazon.com.

Top ten hardcover fiction in Canada

From Quill & Quire:

1. The Da Vinci Code: Special Illustrated Edition by Dan Brown
2. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
3. The Time in Between by David Bergen
4. The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
5. Knife of Dreams by Robert Jordan
6. Dave Cooks the Turkey by Stuart McLean
7. A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon
8. A Perfect Night to Go to China by David Gilmour
9. The Eagle by Jack Whyte
10. A Feast for Crows by George R. R. Martin

For the week ending January 07, 2006