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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3294 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 17, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Red Dynamite.

John Grisham – The Testament. The thing about Grisham is that everything he writes is inevetably good, but he hasn't written one great book in his life, even by the standards of popular fiction. Like, Stephen King, he has a problem with endings, but where King's endings actively piss you off, Grisham's just sort of exist, and you move on with your life. I gave up on King around 2001 when I tried reading The Tommyknockers, which was just one long King ending. Grisham was the first "adult" author I read, starting in middle school, when my idea of adult books was the kind of thick mass-market paperbacks my parents always carried around with them. Grisham was the hottest author at the time, and my parents happened to have a copy of The Runaway Jury, and I was captivated. I read most of what he put out until some time around when I graduated from high school, when I quit for some reason and didn't pick it back up until the pandemic, when I was looking for a book I could get into without trying. I have no idea why I slept on Grisham for all those years while I kept reading plenty of other authors of questionable literary value.

The Tommyknockers is an absolutely absurd book but there are some wild and memorable images in that book including the scene where the refrigerator turns into a levitating one-ton sledgehammer that zips around smashing into people. There's another scene where a person has created a self-sorting mail device and reading it gave me the same feeling as railing a line of cocaine. Even in the worst of King's earlier books there is always something magical to take away. After around 2003, he lost a bit of that sparkle. I blame it on his car accident and decision to get sober.

After around 2003, he lost a bit of that sparkle.

I thought it was even earlier. The first 3 Dark Tower novels are quite the ride, but then I found Wizard and Glass (to say nothing of the even worse 3 books that followed) to be weak. In hindsight, all the people talking about it being great was a warning that a certain segment of fandom will go gaga over "lore" even when it's terrible.

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