Duma Key

Duma Key is one hell of a story. Edgar Freemantle has it all, a loving wife, two pretty daughters and a successful construction company that has made him millions. One fateful day, his car is crushed by an incoming crane and Edgar is severely injured, losing an arm and apparently some of his sanity. After attacking his wife, she files for divorce and Edgar retreats to Florida to heal and lick his wounds. On lonely Duma Key, Edgar returns to his childhood pasttime of painting and finds that his t...more Duma Key is one hell of a story. Edgar Freemantle has it all, a loving wife, two pretty daughters and a successful construction company that has made him millions. One fateful day, his car is crushed by an incoming crane and Edgar is severely injured, losing an arm and apparently some of his sanity. After attacking his wife, she files for divorce and Edgar retreats to Florida to heal and lick his wounds. On lonely Duma Key, Edgar returns to his childhood pasttime of painting and finds that his talent is both limitless and awe-inspiring. He meets some friends who eventually become some of the most important people he'll ever meet in his life. When things start to get- for lack of a better word- weird, those friends carry him through the worst part of it.

Oh Stephen King...you have rocked my world for well over a decade. As an ardent admirer of SK's work, I have been privy to how his writing has matured over the years. Not to say his earlier works such as "It" or "Pet Sematary" aren't great...it's just that clearly SK has refined his brand of "horror" so that in truth, his writing has become an exploration of human emotion. I noticed this in Lisey's Story, but much more so in Duma Key. Edgar's journey to both physical and mental recovery was oftentimes difficult to read about but I found myself so drawn to his character, that I rooted for him every step of the way.

SK's especial talent is how clearly he exposes the roots of relationships. Whether it's a relationship between friends or lovers or relatives, SK has this knack for bringing out the idiosyncracies in a bond between two people...and it's those idiosyncracies that truly bring a relationship to life.

Duma Key now ranks up there with The Stand and Hearts in Atlantis. Lastly, in SK's acknowledgements, he ends by thanking "you, Constant Reader, always you."As if I wasn't already crying hard enough by the end of the book..

oh my...

This cover of the latest New York magazine makes me blush. I had to turn the magazine face down because he was actually making me nervous. (??) Can't wait for the Open next weekend!!

wordplay

A Star War's wiki site: Wookiepedia.com

A diner in NH: "The Live Free or Diner"

A 24-hr seafood restaurant called "Cod-All-Nightie"

A: "He showed up with a big black eye!"
B: "Wait, what?? He showed up with a big black guy??"

MPPA

So I was introduced to Matt Pond PA a few years ago...not personally (I wish!)...and I've discovered over the years that he puts out consistently good and polished music. Yeah some of it can be a bit too poppy but songs like "New Hampshire," "Honestly," "Summer is Coming," and "People Have a Way" are just so compulsively listenable. (that's not a real word but I like it so deal). He's an incredibly prolific musician and he's able to employ a wide variety of tempos and instruments in his songs, which is pretty impressive. Some of the songs from my favorite bands, deathcab, rhcp, etc. all tend to sound alike after awhile. But not Matt Pond PA. At least not to me.

Perhaps another reason I'm so taken with mppa is because his music reminds me of new england. Specifically new england summers. Driving through quiet countryside, the hot, sticky air humming by, glimmers of lakes promising cool dips...nighttime providing a faint chill, tanned happy faces around a bonfire, mosquitoes by the hundreds, inside jokes, laughter, skin still warm from the day's sun...

The Sparrow

Wow. What an unexpected find. While this is, in essence, a science fiction novel, the true heart of the story lies in its main characters and the questions of morality they face in the most unusual of situations. A scientist, Jimmy Quinn, at a space telescope station discovers radio signals from a planet in the Alpha Centauri system that turn out to be the ethereal strains of alien music. Jimmy and a crew of his fellow friends: a physicist, her engineer husband, a child prostitute turned computer genius, and four Jesuit priests, including the enigmatic and intense Father Emilio Sandoz, are all sent on a mission to discover and explore this mysterious planet. You learn at the beginning of the book (fifty years after the mission has taken place) that Father Sandoz is apparently the only survivor of the mission. He has been tortured and is near death...as the story progresses, you learn more of what has happened to this poor man and his team.

It was difficult for me to get into the first fifty or so pages of this book. But once Jimmy discovered the music from Rakhat, I was hooked. Without a doubt, the best part of this novel were the characters. The humor and pathos in their dialogue and the love they developed for each other during this exhilarating yet horrifying mission was beautiful to behold. And I say behold because the characters literally jumped out of the pages for me. Imagine facing an entirely new species somewhere that is unfathomably far from home...adapting to the new culture and lifestyle and diet...yet retaining what makes you, in essence, human. And that is faith. I don't mean only religious faith, but faith in yourself, faith in others, faith in that when the bottom seems to drop out of your world, that there's always a bright side, a future.

Beautiful, rich, heartfelt story. Kudos to MDR.

What I'm doing right now

Lyrics

Well you started off, you were flying in the air
Drunk without a care, on the love of somebody out there
And your heart did pound, every time you’d hear the sound
Of your true love queened and crowned, and the flowers were smelling like heaven
There were walks in the park, there were kisses in the dark
And proverbial sparks, that always precede failure
And your heart did fly, and your soul was telling lies
And you never asked why, this couldn’t all last, forever

And there were, granted wishes and heartbreaking bitches
And a world too inanimate to grab you by your britches and say
That you don’t ever want to be in love, again

There were days in the sand, we just kissed and held hands
Dreamt utopic foreign lands, where we’d live together, forever
And time was a blur, punctuated with a stir
It was always cause of her, and always was never enough
You start thinking about, all the times you’ve spent without
It begets a seed of doubt, in the clockwork peach in your soul
And your memories bleed, and your pulse is gaining speed
All these thoughts are a disease, and poetry’s one of the flesh

And there were, granted wishes and heartbreaking bitches
And a world too inanimate to grab you by your britches and say
That you don’t ever want to be in love, again

Now the world seems strange, all your thoughts are rearranged
And you’re feeling quite estranged, oh I hate remembering vacation
Now you’re distorting pictures and dislodging fixtures
And creating mixtures of truth and reality
And your heart’s palpitating, as your world’s disintegrating
You begin to start hating, the things that make life life

And every time you dream of better
All you end up getting is worse
And the ability to truly see the changes in your life
Could be the ultimate encompassing curse
But intrinsically humanity cannot end on such tragedy
So here it is the silvery verse, oh I must sing

That there are prom night dresses and fairytale princesses
And a world too inanimate to openly confess all its sins
Love’s the...

*speechwritersLLC*