John Dies at the End (Paragin)

The Dream Peddler by Jason Pargin (aka David Wong) (2007)

(Not a review, just some notes to help me remember the things I've read. But written this way because it's the Internet, and some people will stumble across this page.)

This was a Book Club selection. I had never heard of it before, despite the 20-year later commentary added to this version. Honestly, I couldn't tell you which author name was on the cover. It was Jason Pargin on the Good Reads page. Apparently, it was a movie, too.

The fact that this started as a web serial in 2001 was interesting, and also explained the choppy nature of it (even if he did go back and edit it). Back in 2001, something like this was possible. It would be like the folks who pioneered self-publishing for a living on Amazon or who do serials now on their new service. It's something that I would've loved to have done had I had the time and the discipline to keep writing. Granted, I probably would've been lost in the shuffle and never advertised for readers.

Anyway, David Wong is being interviewed about some of the crazy stuff that he's seen, along with his friend John. Most of it defies the laws of physics as well as time and causality. It mostly has to do with this inky black gunk that gets into them and allows them to see things that other people don't notice. There's another dimension that's going to burst into this one and kill everyone. And they have to stop it.

It's strange, really out there, hard to follow (except, oddly, for the parts where people are erased and no one remembers them, including someone who would've been a main character in the beginning of the book, but he was erased in Las Vegas, but someone remembers shouting their name).

Spoiler: John never dies at the end. On the other hand, a lot of other people do. And many of them are replaced with shadows from the other dimension, except that they don't know that they are. The replacements appear to be exactly who the person looking at them expects them to be -- but if that person had never seen them before, their head fills in their own details. These may not match what others see, so that's one way to detect them.

This isn't a book I would've picked up. And if I had, I probably would've nave stayed with it if it weren't for the book club meeting ... which I missed because Family Movie Night ran long, and I don't skip out on Family Movie Night. That's me.

The next book was creepy, but I blew through it pretty quickly.

The Darwin Awards: Intelligent Design (Northcutt)

The Darwin Awards: Intelligent Design, Wendy Northcutt, 2000

While covering for another teacher, I glanced at the books on her shelf, and I spotted this little gem of humor. The Darwin Awards are famous and shouldn't need an explanation. I read posts when they show up on social media, but I've never been to the actual websites where stories are posted, discussed and voted on. Nor have I read an entire book of them before.

THere are some amusing stories within these pages. On the other hand, they are also a bit sad. As you chuckle at others' misfortunes, you remember that these were real people, some of whom did very foolish things. And when they are grouped together by categories, they can get repetitive in nature. Maybe that's why I preferred some of the "Honorable Mentions" -- a person gets one of those, generally, by living through their spectacular lapse of judgment.

In addition to the anecdotes, each section has an actual science article as an introduction. It provides some insight as well as a needed distraction.

A quick read. Glad I read it, but I'm not quickly running out to find another one.