Monday, May 07, 2007

who here has read Dean Koontz?

should i?

13 comments:

-kaplan said...

I read lots of his books in junior high and possibly high school. I remember one book, _The Bad Place_, about three siblings with supernatural abilities. Two of the siblings could teleport, one was superstrong, and one could talk to animals. One of the teleporters was a murderer, and the other could teleport only when he was in imminent danger. He would then flicker through multiple locations at once, including a planet on the other side of the galaxy. He accidentally brought back an alien cockroach-like creature that pooped red diamonds.

Logan Ryan Smith said...

i read a bajillion of his books in high school.

if you're not in high school, you shouldn't read his books.

judy j said...

instead i recommend the original frankenstein. i hadn't read it before now, have you? shelley's so good at evoking dread without dwelling on it. besides, she conveys staunch convictions against the death penalty and colonial genocide, as well as for a feminism that surpasses fundamentalist strictures, all without being as categorical about it as i am right now. sure, she's still mired in some of the racist presuppositions we might expect of a european writer at the start of the nineteenth century, but her work does show evidence of resistance to that very prejudice.
besides, the monster speaks!

Flip Dixon said...

Read him. He's a great writer, and not just for high school kids. Try Watchers and Odd Thomas.

Flip Dixon said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
kathryn l. pringle said...

-k: wow... pooping red diamonds.... wow.

lrs: you have a point

jj: i have read frankenstein... a few times... it is one of my favorite books... i'm thinking along the lines of ... i don't know... cheese factor? w/ mr. koontz.

pw: have you read the new one? the husband?

amber said...

I have been lurking.

I can actually talk on this subject. I started reading Koontz in elementary school. It's fun to read. Great, formulaic stories. If you like sci-fi/horror stories it's a great read. Not brilliant prose or anything, but fun. I turn to it every once in while for a quick, mindless read.

kathryn l. pringle said...

amber: aha! lurker!

maybe we should have a dean koontz reading group. we can all read the husband in a day. & then chat.

Flip Dixon said...

I read The Husband, and I thought it was entertaining. But not one of his best ones.

kathryn l. pringle said...

pamela... what was not his best about it? the plot? the prose? do you like any of his newer books?

kathryn l. pringle said...

judy - i'd especially like for you to be in the dean koontz reading group.

Flip Dixon said...

I liked The Husband. It's a fast-moving thriller involving a kidnapping. I just felt the plot moved so fast that the characters didn't come quite to life.

I like Koontz's recent work very much, most notably Odd Thomas and Life Expectancy. But I think his best novel is Watchers, that's one of my favorite novels of all time.

amber said...

ooh. dean koontz reading group. I'm in. My fave is Lightning, but I think mostly b/c it's the first one I ever read. And then Watchers. Probably actually his best. But I haven't been able to get into his recent stuff as much. But I'd try. I have Odd Thomas on my book shelves...or I did...until I started packing up for the move