And I will be reading...

Next on my to-read list is another Dean Koontz novel (The Taking ). I saw a sign in the bookstore the other day that said that one of the reasons that Dean Koontz readers keep coming back to him is that ultimately, no matter how horrible the situation he places his characters, in the final analysis it is those with a sense of hope and strength in the fact of adversity that prevail in his books.

I could not agree more with this. I started noticing that his best fiction revolved around life changing events that (in some cases literally as in From the Corner of His Eye) open character's eyes to what's really important in the world. I also noticed in that same book that perhaps Mr. Koontz is afraid that his base won't follow him down this path (what a critic from Publisher's Weekly calls "moral reflection", which I think is a good way to describe some of Koontz's latest works.

I will put up under a separate entry a review of From the Corner of His Eye, but suffice it to say that I think the book would have been better acknowledged by the literary types of Mr. Koontz had dropped the whole "crazed serial killer on the loose" subplot. It would have left him more time to focus on the core, no--the heart, of the book.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here... I'm supposed to be talking about The Taking, and how I ended up with it on my reading list. To be honest, I didn't even read the jacket of this book to see what it was about before I added it to the pile of books to be bought. It was on the cheap rack, it was by Dean Koontz, and I hadn't read it yet. That's all I needed to decide. Having imported it into ReaderWare (a program I love for keeping track of the books I have), and getting ready to write this, I have looked now at the publisher's description of the book and have an idea that I'm going to like it just fine.

I'll let you know.

Err, once I finish The book I'm reading now