The Dark Tower by Stephen King

 I’ve written here before about my longstanding love of the books of Stephen King. I started reading them in the late eighties triggered by my love of Anthrax and film. I was already well into Isaac Asimov and I had read a lot of Philip K Dick and King was a natural progression.  The first books I read included The Dark Half and The Shining and I saw many of the film adaptations.

I used to pick up his books in the local library and some I remember stating to read but for some reason they didn’t really click. These included The Eyes of the Dragon and The Drawing of the Three. I think I also tried that eras iteration of The Gunslinger but I couldn’t get into them.

Roughly 36 years later I’m finally enjoying these stories as part of the complete Dark Tower series. It did take some effort as the introduction to The Drawing of the Three is hard going but it does get better. I have vague memories of struggling with the first 100 pages as a teenager but memory is often unreliable. As the character of Eddie solidifies King’s writing warms up and the story starts to flow.

This is a fantasy series but with post apocalyptic magical cowboy elements too. It beats Lord of the Rings hands down. King is a much better writer and his ferocious output highlights that compare to the unreadable intellectual fundament gazing that makes up the majority of Tolkien’s work. King has written a hell of a lot of  popular bestsellers that people like to read beyond the Dark Tower series. And many of his greatest hits are are tangentially linked to the central cycle. You do not need to read The Dark Tower to enjoy ‘Salem’s Lot or Insomnia but The Dark Tower adds to these books retrospectively.

The seven central books are a long read or listen. There are laugh out loud funny bits and almost crying sad bits.  If you buy in enough to read the whole thing you will probably come to care about some of the characters and be moved when bad things happen to them. King also takes pot shots at book collectors who never read their books and himself. 

I still have some of the tangential tie in books to read.  There is a King Universe that links up and I will work through them all. F Paul Wilson does something similar with his Repairman Jack/Adversary cycle and is also worth checking out.

King has written a lot of books and I have read a lot of them. I am thankful that I have not yet read them all. I am currently working on The Talisman, another book that I failed to get into as a teenager as well as Bag of Bones. After that I’m aiming for The Black House and then Other Worlds Than These.  I am thankful that King is prodigious. I am also thankful that Joe Hill is almost as good. 

Asterix and Obelix

 I think I learned to read with Asterix.  Certainly, Asterix was the first thing that I can remember reading for fun. The books were always in the house when I was wee. Looking at the copyright information on these books many of them were printed when I was a baby and I suspect my dad bought them so he could read them himself.  I’m glad he did as I’ve had decades of pleasure from them and now I’ve been able to share them with my own son.

Re-reading the books has been fun.   At the grand old age of 48 with my young son who is 6 I’m picking up new aspects of the stories.  I don’t know if I understood all the names when I was younger or all of the wordplay.  The art improves over the first few books until it achieves a consistent quality. Many of my old books were badly coloured with mistakes and layer editions have corrected much of this.  The newer editions look better and seem more professional. I haven’t checked in detail but I think that some of the text has been edited for modern tastes. 

It’s very difficult to decide on a favourite Asterix book. I could probably pick a top ten in no particular order.  I think Asterix and the secret weapon is probably my least favourite and not one I will rush to reread. Thankfully that one was borrowed from the local library.

The themes in the Asterix books are sometimes fairly adult.  Asterix and the great divide about right wing and left wing politics in the divided village.  With a bit of Romeo and Juliet mixed in.  Obelix and co is about capitalism and marketing.  There are jokes here that are aimed right at the grown-ups whilst the kids just like watching Obelix 'paf' the Romans.

And in this modern world there is a lot of Asterix product for us to consume.  There have been numerous live action and animated films over the past 60 years.  There is a new CGI film due to come out in December.  There have been almost 20 computer games since the 1980s, none of which I had heard of.  There have been different toy ranges, most recently some fairly nice Playmobil figures that my son likes to play with.  We live in an Asterix paradise that 8 year old me could only have dreamed of.

It takes me somewhere between 45 minutes and an hour to read one of the books to my son.  This is great quality time and it's encouraging him to read too.  It feels a bit full circle for me as the love of these books led to my own love of reading.  At the moment he likes to draw the Gaulish village, menhirs and Roman helmets in a pile.

While the Asterix books are perhaps not entirely timeless they still hit the mark more than 60 years after their original publication and they let my son travel with his imagination like I did when I was his age. For this, I am glad.

Sugar live at the Glasgow Barrowlands

 I really enjoyed Sugar back in the day. They were all over the radio in the post Nirvana haze of the early 90s and Copper Blue, when it hit, was a monster of an album.  I had a few Husker Du records but I appreciated the new stuff.  Beaster was great too.  Then they just sort of disappeared quietly.

I subsequently saw a few Bob Mould shows and they were great. Sadly, I never saw Husker Du but when Sugar announced a Glasgow dare after 31 years I jumped on tickets. It was great.

They played 24 songs from their 3 albums and quite a few B sides, David Barbe sang lead on a significant number,  He has a nice Teenage Fanclub style voice and it allowed Mould to make it through the 90 minute set. There drummer in now 73 but played like a teenager. Great,

Support was an acoustic set from J Robbins of Jawbox and Burning Airlines, very good.  We all went home happy.