This supernatural Dickens provides models of the human spirit at its best

Wow! Dean Koontz. I think you and I are parting company on this one, OGG.

My first and only exposure to Koontz was while working for Literacy America. My “student” [of 50+ years} brought in a battered paperback. Couldn’t even tell you what novel it was, but within the first chapter, I told him we would need find something else. The text was dreadful. And obscene. Vampires, I think, or demented killers doing perverted things to one another.

Now you could say: well, you haven’t given Koontz a chance. Frankly, after that experience, he lost me forever.

I don’t think I’m necessarily a prude but the sexually charged violence totally turned me off. In fact, I found it sickening.

So, I guess I’ll need to wait for #4.

Hey, can’t win them all. Or agree on everything, I guess.

You have made me a happy woman, OGG. I am so sick of intellectuals turning their noses up at the very mention of Dean Kuntz’s name and he just keeps getting better. My favorite is One Door Away From Heaven. I laughed out loud while reading this book and passed it on to my husband. I could almost predict where he was by his laughter. I’ve loaned it out to several people, even my daughter who happens to be a literary snob, and everyone loved it. I like the “Odd” series too.

OGG,

First, thanks very much for yet another thoughtful and cultured contribution. The few passages you read certainly created a ‘movie’ in my mind as I listened. I haven’t read but will explore Koontz on your recommendation. Please do keep fighting the good fight!

Love Dickens, but I’d rather read a Biggles book than Koontz.

I believe some of his earlier writing was not too good, but i have never found any gratuitous “sex ‘n violence” in any of the novels I have read. He is a deeply compassionate writer.

Biggles? To appreciate Biggles you have to be:

a) British (or more specifically English)
b) Male
c) Very young
d) Have lived through World war 11

since c) and d) rule each other out, and since your name suggests you are neither a) or b), I think you are pulling our legs socalannie.

Shame on you!

And have you read any of the books Koontz has written in the last eight years? I bet not.

I rest my case.

Koontz got better as he continued to practice his craft, so concentrate on the books written over the past ten years or so.

Got it. Thanks!

On the contrary, I am

a) born & bred California girl (even used to surf)
b) definitely female
c) early middle-aged (but aging well & I don’t do botox)
d) was alive during the Viet Nam war

…and in spite of these shameful conditions, I have not only read most of the Biggles books, but have bought & sold quite a few on ebay from countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Netherlands, Spain, Ireland, and of course, the United Kingdom. I once sold a Biggles paperback for over $120! You’ll never guess where the buyer lived. Arizona! Put that in your pipe & smoke it, Your Grumpiness!

PS: I did look at a Koontz book a couple of years ago, but didn’t finish it & ended up donating it with a bunch of other contemporary novels to my local library.

What the hell has how you are “aging” got to do with your perceptions of a book or an author? So we know you some kind of un-botoxed hottie?

I am past middle age, and how I am aging is none of anyone’s business and I love Dean Koontz books. Granted he’s not for everyone. Who is?

Hey OGG -

Oh, the joy. The heart soars. To see you doing one of your great videos celebrating on one of my favorite authors. I do have to respectfully disagree.

concentrate on the books written over the past ten years or so.

If I was going to read Koontz for the very first time I would start with
WATCHERS it was published in 1987. It is a book you will never forget. It is riveting as all his works, but for me personally, it is a lesson in compassion that the whole world would do better for reading.

Koontz discusses WATCHERS on his website.

For years after finishing the story of Einstein–the genetically engineered golden retriever with wildly enhanced intelligence–and his friends, I wondered if I would ever write another book that was as personally satisfying to me as this one had been. When I am writing a novel, I experience bleak spells of deep self-doubt about my work, moments of surging confidence, despair followed by joy, although there are usually more dark moments than bright. With Watchers, however, I knew only joy. The desire to write well can never be fulfilled without hard work, and Watchers involved as many hours at the keyboard and as much struggle as any book I’ve done; but in this case, all the time and effort was pure pleasure, because I was aware that I had a grip on a unique idea, special material, and a group of characters whose depth and warmth were greater than those in any book I’d written to that time. For days at a stretch, I found myself in what psychologists call a “flow state,” a condition in which one performs far beyond what previously had seemed to be the peak of one’s abilities, with greater fluency and speed and grace; it is similar to what athletes mean when they say they are “in the zone…
Eventually, I wrote a few books I liked as well as Watchers; but to date, as I compose this essay, I can’t honestly say I’ve written one that I like better.In an annotated bibliography in The Dean Koontz Companion, a book about my work, the bibliographer made the following observation about Watchers. “It embodies all of the major themes with which [Koontz] has been obsessed: the healing power of love and friendship; the struggle to overcome the past and change what we are; the moral superiority of the individual over the workings of the state and large institutions; the wonder of both the natural world and the potential of the human mind; the relationship of mankind to God; transcendence; and how we sustain hope in the face of our awareness that all things die.” Those are, indeed, the fundamental issues in this novel.

You’re right. But generally speaking I think he got better as he progressed.

I did look at a Koontz book a couple of years ago, but didn’t finish it & ended up donating it with a bunch of other contemporary novels to my local library

You might have just struck unlucky. Try reading “Your Heart Belongs to Me” (the one I read from at the end).

Koontz’s characters could be described as dickensian, couldn’t they? Hadn’t thought of that.

Right now I’m reading Jay Winik, and it’s rivetting. I think it should he should be highlighted as part of NQ’s book discussion series, with an advertisement on this site.

Winik is truly a gifted writer and historian.

Now, Winik is not Dean Koontz; who I’ve tapped for great audio books on long car trips, and highly recommend Koontz for that purpose. The time passes so quickly, you look forward to the trips!

No, I’m talking about sustenance for the soul; at least souls like mine constantly searching for historical perspectives to my world, a sense of my place in the bigger picture of time. History can be so very dry, utterly boring under most writers.

Not Jay Winik.

And, not Alan Furst, either, who has written a series of WWII historical fiction novels that had me so obsessed this past year that I read every one of them and became addicted, and since I’ve read them all, I’m going through a very painful withdrawal!

But, I digress.

Jay Winik. Right now, I’m reading his most recent, The Great Upheaval.

http://www.jaywinik.com/

“It embodies all of the major themes with which [Koontz] has been obsessed: the healing power of love and friendship; the struggle to overcome the past and change what we are; the moral superiority of the individual over the workings of the state and large institutions; the wonder of both the natural world and the potential of the human mind; the relationship of mankind to God; transcendence; and how we sustain hope in the face of our awareness that all things die.” Those are, indeed, the fundamental issues in this novel.

I think this is an excellent summary of what Koontz is about.

I agree, his early books (particularly those originally published under other names) were more pulp fiction than novels. The Odd Thomas series is wonderful. The first is still my favorite – so far…I am behind, as I just started Odd Hour.

Jesus. Grumps & I were both joking in our posts. We were talking about books that were supposed to have been written for British boys in the 1st half of the 20th century. He was saying I didn’t fit the profile & I was agreeing. Chill.

Okay, will give it a shot.

I like the readings in this series, good choice of passages: “{C}ynics make false idols of themselves……the meek have no inheritance …surrendered to the idols in return….for the PROMISE of bread.”