Book Review: Cell by Stephen King

When I read Cell, it reminded me very much about another end-of-the world Stephen King novel, The Stand. Don't get me wrong, they are very different books...however I couldn't stop comparing the two as I read them. So I guess this review will end up being a compare/constrast review.

The Stand:

• Population killed off by a biological agent which has become known as Captain Tripps Disease
  
• Very long novel. Complete and Uncut Version comes in at 1,152 pages.
  
• Follows the viewpoints of a number of characters on both sides of the battle which ensues.
  
• Character flaws lead to conflicts later in the novel.

Cell:

• Population turned into zombies by a pulse whenever a cellphone is used.
  
• Shorter novel, only 350 pages.
  
• Follows the viewpoints of one main character.
  
• It seems like none of the main characters can make any mistakes at all.

You can probably tell that I definitely preferred The Stand. Here's why:

• The kill-off scenario is much more realistic. I think that it is a lot more plausible for the world to be affected by some biological agent than by some pulse which turns into zombies. It makes for a much more disturbing book if you have "this might really happen" in the back of your head while you're reading. While there is a bunch of mysticism in The Stand which definitely takes it out of reality, it still makes for a much better read than Cell.
  
• The length of The Stand allows for much more character development. There are probably a lot of people out there who thought The Stand was much too long, I'm definitely not one of them. I really felt that I knew the characters and it affected me a lot more when some of them died. I had no such connection with the characters in Cell.
  
• The different viewpoints approach in The Stand definitely led to me having a closer connection with the characters. I also liked how Mr. King showed that the people on the "evil" side of the conflict weren't pure evil. Cell was very one sided in this regard. I know, I know, zombies aren't supposed to think so how are we supposed to see their point of view. But think of what might have come if we did see the zombie point of view. If he had explored that path, it might have made for a very interesting book indeed.
  
• Finally, the thing that really bugged me about Cell was that it seemed that none of the main characters could make any mistakes...at all. The teenagers were too smart and centered, the adults were too reasonable, even the cat did what cat's are supposed to do. It really got to me after a while, especially the uber-awesome teenagers. While The Stand had it's fair number of characters that didn't have their flaws (Tom Cullen comes immediately to mind) there were a number who had there flaws. This made them more believable in my eyes.

I'm not saying that Cell is a terrible book. The first couple of chapters really had me on the edge of my seat. I even had to force myself to stop reading during the last couple of chapters so that I wouldn't stay up all night finishing the book. These qualities in themselves definitely put the book in the "decent" to "good" categories. However, after a couple of days of digesting the book and comparing it to The Stand, it really doesn't hold it's own when the two books are put side by side. I really consider The Stand to be one of King's masterworks that will stay with me for a long time while Cell is another one of his books which I've read and will soon forget.

Next Books:
Learning the World by Ken MacLeod
The Android's Dream by John Scalzi

Gotta Love Colorado Weather

We had a blizzard yesterday. I think we ended up getting somewhere close to 14" of snow. The wind caused a lot of drifting snow which made it much higher in some places. I probably should have taken some pictures after shoveling the driveway...that really would have shown how high the snow had gotten. Below are some pics that we took at 9:00 AM. It continued snowing for the rest of the day and we had substantially more snow by the time it was all over.



Now, here are some pics from 9:00 PM today...



It got up to about 60 degrees today and the sun was shining all day. In just 36 hours the weather went from "you can't see 15 feet in front of you...only go outside if you dare" to "beautiful fall day...I should put on some shorts and enjoy the weather". I'm not sure if I will ever get used to the weather around here.

Local Politics

Last week I listened to a debate between Jay Fawcett and Doug Lamborn who are running for the US House of Representatives 5th District in Colorado. In case you don't know, the 5th district is considered a republican stronghold which includes such organizations as Focus on the Family. I was quite surprised to hear that the Democrat, Jay Fawcett, is actually in a close race with Doug Lamborn. I think the reason is quite clear if you listen to the debate: Fawcett-Lamborn Debate.

I don't think that I have ever heard a debate where one of the candidates absolutely destroys the other candidate before. This is worse than the first John Kerry vs. George W. Bush debate during the last presidential election. While President Bush came off looking angry and uncomfortable at times, he at least addressed all of the issues and rebutted when he got the chance. Lamborn just stood there and refused to answer point blank questions about how he would do his job. Even mediocre politicians have some kind of answer when asked about what they would do, even if their whole answer is an avoidance of an actual answer (Bill Clinton is the King of this). While I don't agree with all of Fawcett's viewpoints, he has definitely gained my vote. I would much rather have a strong leader representing me in the House than the guy who answers a question with "Next question, please".

Book Reviews for October

I had to stop reading The Count of Monte Cristo. It's a great book and I was thoroughly enjoying it. The only problem is that school work was getting in the way and it was taking way too long to get through the book. I suggest saving off the book until you have the time to read a 1,000+ page book.

The next book that I read was Spin by Robert Charles Wilson. It was the Hugo Award winner for this year and I wanted to see how it stacked up against Old Man's War (which was nominated for the Hugo as well). While I thought that this was good sci-fi, I really didn't enjoy it as much as OMW. I don't know, I guess I'm much more of a military sci-fi dweeb and can't get as much into the hard sci-fi that is found in Spin. It's a very good book and is definitely worth the read. I just enjoyed OMW much more. In fact, I re-read OMW just to make sure I could do a really fresh comparison between the two. In my eyes OMW still wins.

After that, I read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Wifey recomended it so I decided to give it a try. For some reason, this book seemed very similar to a lot of other coming of age books that I've read in the past. The only difference was that it was set in Afghanistan. There's something that I now call The Sixth Sense Effect. Here's how it goes: After watching The Sixth Sense you come to expect that M. Night Shyamalan's movies will have a huge plot twist somewhere near the end of the movie. As a result, any more M. Night Shyamalan movies that you watch will not surprise you if and when the plot twist occurs. You're expecting it and it's not going to surprise you when it happens. I found that to be the case when I watched The Village. I have a feeling that more people would have enjoyed the movie a lot more if they didn't know that it was directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The Kite Runner suffers from The Sixth Sense Effect since I've read coming of age books before and I know that some huge revelation would be coming. I guessed what the plot twist would be within the first couple of chapters and the rest of the book was a slog once I knew what was going to happen. It's a well written book, but I don't think that it deserves all the hoopla that has surrounded it.

Next Book: Cell by Stephen King

Oh no, not the knees again

I've taken about a 3 week hiatus from running. Unfortunately after the Nielson Challenge, I started pushing myself to run faster during my training runs. As a result, my left knee started hurting again (a recurring injury that I've had since highschool) and I backed off to only running once a week for a couple of weeks. Even then, my knee was still hurting, so I stopped running completely to see if that would help. I haven't felt any twinges in a couple of weeks, so it may be time to start slow jogs again. Back to building that aerobic base...

Obligatory Kid Pics

I just realized that I haven't yet posted any pictures of the kids. What blog is complete without the inevitable kid pictures. Here are some of my favorite of the most recent pictures...