[asmb] Book Club discussion

Okay, firat off, I am really sorry about being behind this month. I found myself a job and havent beem apending nearly as much time online as I normally do.

So! To expedite this I'm gonma say the first person to reply to this with a boll will choose our BOTM for May. Maybe after this month we can have member selections for a couple months to make up for it.


Alrighty... So someone pick a title!

Dark Rivers of the heart by Dean Koontz
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15...

oops, wrong link.. anyway description is..
From a master suspense storyteller and mega-bestselling author comes a new action-packed thriller. A man and a woman, both loners and nomads, meet by chance in a bar. Suddenly they are fleeing--first separately, then together--the long arm of a clandestine, illegal, and increasingly powerful government agency.

Well I must confess that Dean Koontz is among my least favorite authors, but I will try my best to enjoy this,
or at least read it and give it a fair shake. I just finished a book about secret government projects actually, and it got pretty terrible at the end, so perhaps this will be a welcome change of pace.

My library has the unabridged CD, so I'll give it a try. I'll borrow my mom's walkman. I'm pretty sure she still has one. It's 19 1/2 hours long so I hope I like the narrator. Here's a couple of reviews I dug up for those who are interested. Since I don't read Koontz I looked them up.

Publishers Weekly Review
In recent years, Koontz's libertarian views have seeped ever more deeply into his thrillers; they wash over the pages of this ambitious, bombastic novel about the desperate flight of a man, woman and dog from a renegade federal policing agency with Big Brother powers. Perhaps Koontz has been emboldened by Michael Crichton's success at cautionary suspense. He certainly seems to be aping Crichton by emphasizing the high-tech means-including online searches and satellite spying-by which the agency tramps on civil liberties. But there are more familiar Koontz elements here, too: the newfound love between the man and the woman; a subplot concerning the fact that the man, who has irked the agency unintentionally, is the son of a serial killer and must return to his father's charnel house to set his mind at rest (the woman belongs to an underground fighting the agency); the charming mutt (though no match for the shaggy hero of Watchers); a pair of superbly twisted villains, agency employees. The scientific lore is always riveting and, at times, as when the fleeing man is caught in a flood, the suspense is electrifying; but far too often, the narrative stops dead as characters turn into ventriloquist dummies mouthing the author's views on the erosion of freedom in the U.S. With the Koontz name attached, though, even a mash of blatant polemic and high-powered action like this will no doubt sell like crazy. 500,000 first printing; Literary Guild main selection; audio rights to Knopf; simultaneous large-print edition from Random House. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review
It's just another chase thriller, and Koontz's style (so to speak) hasn't improved, but this is his most interesting opus in a long while. That's because it's afire with Koontz's indignation over the heavy-handed manners of federal law enforcement in crushing the Branch Davidians, slaughtering the family of hapless white separatist Randy Weaver in 1992, and seizing the assets--all of them--of those merely associated, whether rightly or wrongly, with illegal drug transactions. Koontz thinks federal cops are out of control, and he paints a picture--colorless and two-dimensional, to be sure--of a U.S. only a few weeks in the future in which a secret agency is bent on becoming an invisible government in the service of a moralistic, powermongering, wealthy bureaucrat who did not hesitate in killing his own son when the young man threatened his clandestine empire-building. The actual protagonists here are a cop with a past and the bureaucrat's son's widow, both of whom are physically and technologically intrepid. Their antagonists are a complementary pair: the secret agency's principal hit man and a brainy blond bombshell who secretly monitors Las Vegas for the agency. Intriguingly, Koontz's neofascist villains are not radical right-wingers but "compassionate" liberals. The hit man, for instance, moonlights at helping the "suffering"--a paraplegic and his wife, an upper-middle-class business couple whose enterprises have foundered in a recession--by putting them out of their misery. With lead. This bland-looking sociopath also spouts environmental awareness, patronizes New Age healers and mystics, and memorably receives spiritual restoration from a TV image of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Expect this yarn to be denounced as right-wing alarmist trash by some, hailed as a libertarian warning by others, and, like virtually everything Koontz writes, read by millions. (Reviewed September 15, 1994)0679425241Ray Olson

Excellent. I'll see about getting this today. Not the biggest fan of vanilla cpp stories, but at the same time new stuff is good.

Never read a Koontz in mah life. Growing up, koontz wuz wat u found in tha shed chawin n poopin on stuff. :D You can also get mugged by them - my mom has a litter of the little beasties as pets and they can sense cat kibbles a mile away.

I'll add this to the to-do on Saturday after work since I'm already home and in my pjs for today and tomorrow I don't want to move any further than between the bed and the living room recliner.

I picked this Koontz book specifically because it also the BOTM at Koontzland(one of the other bookclubs I belong too.) So this makes things so much simpler for me. :)

Mary wrote: "Here's a couple of reviews I dug up for those who are interested. Since I don't read Koontz I looked them up...."
Here are a few more reviews.(since the storyline has already been well covered, I skipped that part.)
"As usual, Koontz's writing is flawless....DARK RIVERS OF THE HEART is exciting, entertaining, and thoughtful." —Denver Post
"A believable high-tech thriller." —The New York Times
"A humdinger of a chase novel...DARK RIVERS OF THE HEART deserves to go to no.1 on the bestseller list."—Entertainment Weekly
"A fresh surprise on virtually every page...and a pyrotechnic denouement full of marvelous mayhem." —Washington Post
"Viscerally exciting...An extended, tense tour de force...An expertly crafted, ornate suspenser...Koontz fans will love it." —Publishers Weekly, starred review

I find the contrast between the abbreviated review and the full one(Publisher's Weekly) interesting. But that's nothing unique to Koontz, all the publishers do that. They are trying to sell the book. To be honest, I didn't hurt myself looking for those reviews, I just took the first couple well known agency ones that popped up. I have no idea whether I'll like his writing or not. I get Dark Rivers on Monday. I'll find out soon enough after that.

I did try to read Koontz a very long time ago and didn't finish the book but I can't remember why. It may just have been I had something I wanted to read more at the time.

That's just it with reviews, you never know the motive behind them but honestly with reading any book the only opinion that should matter to you is your own. :)
Oh I didn't spend more than a couple minutes getting those reviews either. lol

I haven't read koontz in ages so I will see if my library has a copy.

Jk no worries chica we all end up getting lives sooner or later. My new job has nearly stopped my reading habits in their tracks that and I haven't been enjoying the books I've been reading as much as usual so I've been rereading old favorites. But I do have several in my on going series that come out with new stuff the next few months yay.

I'm on about chapter 7(audio book, it's what my library had)and so far it's an ok book. I am having a little trouble paying attention to the audio. I never listen to them and it seems odd to me. There was one thing that creeped me out a little. It's when the bad guy is obsessing on the woman's lips. It's ooky, to put it in sophisticated terms. I think it seemed more so because I was hearing it said. I'm sure it was supposed to be creepy, and it worked.

Yeah that would be majorly creepy listening to it

JK wrote: " Not the biggest fan of vanilla cpp stories,."

I feel stupid asking this but what exactly are vanilla cpp stories?

Well, I read it. It wasn't as bad as I though it would be, but it didn't leave me with a lasting impression
of greatness either. Some parts were genuinely creepy,
some parts were genuinely exciting, but overall it just seemed to be drowned out beneath a tide of bat crap crazy Libertarian rantings that would do Ron Paul proud.

When I read a story for recreation, I prefer to find myself invested in the characters, and I just couldn't bring myself to find that level of investment in this story. It wasn't bad, but I
don't know that I would be falling over myself to
get his next book.

I've gotten past the big libertarian rant section now. It does bring the story to a screeching halt. I can ignore that in an author if I like the rest of the book though. This has just made me wish I was reading the book instead of listening so I could skim though that section. It certainly didn't add anything to my enjoyment of the story and that part about the cop and the asset forfeiture was mostly pointless except as a platform for the rant. I know that the author has every right to his beliefs, I just don't want a lecture in the middle of a suspense story.

But the rest of the book is better than I expected it to be. So there is that.

I'm reading this...honest... <.< >.>

I'm actually a little irritated with myself that I don't have the whole thing read by now since I whipped through to chapter 7 in just a couple of days of reading while waiting for the site to load. But I kinda got pulled into another book and then I got a promotion at work which means I'm currently having to learn / re-learn a butt-ton of office and accounting related crap that I haven't had to think about forever. So...still reading...

I like this book but will admit it doesn't have quite the engaging characters as does the Odd Thomas or Christopher Snow series' do. It lacks the intesity of Velocity or the full out suspense of By the Light of the Moon or the velocity of Intensity. At least it didn't have the overly religious tones of The Taking. Anyway, coming from a long line of govt workers I was raised with the theory of Never trust the govt. So there is that basic belief that our govt does not always act in our favor, although not to that level of paranioa. If we weren't also reading Dark Rivers of the Heart at Koontzland(for may) I probably would have gone with either By the Light of the Moon or Dragon Tears. :) Not sure where everyone is at in the story & I suck at realizing if something is a spoiler so I will add more comments later. lol

DuctTapeDiva wrote: "JK wrote: " Not the biggest fan of vanilla cpp stories,."

I feel stupid asking this but what exactly are vanilla cpp stories?"

Oh, that was supposed to say cop, not cpp... and by vanilla I mean with no monsters. :D >_>

Ohh, I shoulda figured that out. lol. but thanks for answering me. :)