 Let's start something new. How about I'm gonna ask the first question here, but from here on out, I want you guys down there in the comments below to ask a question and then we're going to get an answer from the literary book of answers by Carol Bolt. Okay? So I'm gonna ask, since we're doing a Joe Lansdale review, should I read The Bottoms Next? Swift Be Thine Approaching Flight from Percy Blish. Bish? Bish. Light Bish. Percy Bish Shelley Tonight. That doesn't make any sense. Let's try and find another one. All right. Push on! Keep moving. Thomas Morton took care for the headache, so I will read The Bottoms Next. Let me know your opinion down there in the doobly-doo. Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. Today we are finally doing ourselves a Joe R Lansdale book, A Fine Dark Line. I have tried, first I want to talk about opinions and taste changes and things like that. It seems like every couple years my tastes just completely changed and completely evolved from what they once were. Sometimes I go back to loving things that I had started to dislike. Sometimes I retry things that I hated before that I never liked and end up enjoying them, which is one of the reasons why I'm going to be taking a crack, another crack at Clyde Barker and Rice, several different authors. Joe Lansdale is an author that never really worked for me up until now. I had never been able to finish any of his stuff. Other than the comic book based on his work, the Bubba Hotep and the Cosmic Bloodsuckers, Josh Jakuba. I can't remember how to pronounce his last name. I apologize. He sent me those comics and I liked them, but my tastes have started to change yet again and I decided to give Lansdale another try, especially since I've chatted with him a bit on Twitter. We follow each other, so I've not really gotten to know the guy, but he's more of a presence. So I went back and tried him again and I'll be damned. I loved it. I couldn't get past like the first 50 pages of anything I tried from him before and this time I finally let myself, I was like, I'm going to finish this book. So I kept plugging and I kept plugging and it wasn't until about page 75, page 100, the humor started working for me. Several things started working for me and I just kind of, I fell in love with the book and that love lasted all the way to the end. One thing I will mention, and I know this makes me sound overly sensitive, especially for a white dude, but I don't care too much for the end word. I don't care for the end word at all. Even in narrative, it kind of comes off. I don't know. I just don't like reading it. I don't like seeing it and it's something that comes up a lot in this book because the book is based in the 50s. So you see that a lot, but I think it's important for this one, for the realistic quality of the work to put it in that time frame and it fit the characters using it, did not, I don't think it was gratuitous other than maybe from the black characters themselves, which I found interesting, especially Buster talking about how much he disliked the word, but he used it constantly. Same with Rosie May, Rosa May. I think it's Rosa May, but I fell in love with these characters and it was one of those things where it just came out of nowhere. I was reading along and all of a sudden everything just started to click and I was there for Stanley's story. I really appreciated the fact that there was no hard plot to this. Most of this book is just scenes of everyday life, just slices of life, things that have happened. There were no big action sequences. There was one really, really, really cool fight, but there was so much going on and so little going on at the same time. It was very nice to sit and listen to the story from Stanley's point of view. The struggles of the time were impressive because you had the way black people were treated back then, but you also have the way Stanley's treated when he goes up the hill. I thought that comparison, that not really juxtaposition, but that seeing all the sides of it, how uppity white people treated maybe lower class white people and how lower class white people treated black people and how everybody treated each other in this small town of Dumont, Texas. I really loved the fact that the main character's family owned a drive-in. I grew up in Southern California in the town that I lived in had a drive-in and that was most of my childhood, man. All of the movies I saw, up until the point I was like 10 or 12, they were all at that one drive-in there on Valley Boulevard. I think nowadays it's a flea market, I'm not sure, but I remember everything about such good times. My first experience with Stephen King was at that drive-in. My mother and her friend, Andrea, went to go see Pat Cemetery. I told the story many times, but I was in the back seat and I listened to most of it, saw some of it, and I just happened to look around the, I was in the footwell behind my mother's chair and I just happened to look around the chair and up on the screen was Zelda and I literally peed myself a little bit. My pants were wet when I got home and I changed everything. Mom to this day doesn't know that it happened. I was very embarrassed at the time of course, but so I have very fond memories of drive-ins. I was one of the last generations as far as drive-ins were concerned. I haven't been to a drive-in in probably 25 years and that breaks my heart man. It's one of those things that if I ever had a whole heap of money just to throw away kind of deal that has no need for, that I have no need for, I would open up a drive-in and I would make it free to the general public and they could do donations if they want to. Those donations would go to charity, but they could do that and I would give popcorn and soda just to keep on the cheap side of things, things, cheap side of things and I would, that's what I would do and we would have a movie like you know every weekend. It'd be something older, it wouldn't be a new release or anything, but it's basically somewhere where you know people could go and hang out and have a good time and just that little slice of life from my own childhood. There are so many scenes in this book that I want to talk about, but I don't want to spoil them for anyone. The fight that I spoke of somewhere in the later half of the novel, that was a highlight. Another highlight is the dog Nub. I love Nub. Another highlight was the house up on the hill, a certain scene that I really loved. I mean we find out later on that it wasn't anything big, but that scene alone was terrific and I would love to get into some more Lansdale, maybe his horror stuff. So if you want to recommend me any Lansdale horror novels, definitely do down there in the doobly-doo and I know people have mentioned over and over again that I needed to try, I need to try his drive-in series, his drive-in one and drive-in two tales from the drive-in, something like that and I will check those out. But are there any horror novels that you guys can think of that I would enjoy, maybe enjoy by Lansdale? Definitely leave those down there because I'd like to experience that side of him because I saw some hints of how good he might be at that here in this book. And I do feel kind of foolish this whole time not being able to finish his work and then really gushing about this one. Does it have something to do with me meeting him and talking to him on Twitter and seeing that he's such a down-to-earth person? Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. Does it have something to do with my taste changing? I'm sure it does. I don't think it has much to do. It's not like me and Joe Lansdale are best friends now, but I don't think so. I don't think it has much to do with me actually meeting him online. There's so much in this book that I'm shocked and embarrassed that I didn't like it before because I've tried this one. This is my third time, third time's a charm. I tried it the first two times. I think I got around 20 pages the second time. I got almost 50 pages the first time, but I just kept on putting it down. This time I took my time with it. I think I read two chapters a day, roughly no more than 30, 30 to 40 pages a day. I really took my time with it, took me 10 days to read, and I really, really enjoyed it. So have you read A Fine Dark Line by Lansdale? Let me know down there in the doobly-doo if you didn't like it. If you read it and you disagree with me, I have no problem with that. Just don't be rude. Let me know exactly what you didn't like about the book down there in the doobly-doo. But until next time, I have been E, you have been U. This has been another book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!