An extremely good movie starring Reese Witherspoon and Matthew Broderick based on this novel was released in 1999. The novel is very similar and yet different in some key ways, and it’s a fast, enjoyable read.

The story is told from the point of view of the key players in a minor drama that mirrors the little dramas we all experience in our own lives, which seem so important at the time – so important that they have the power to change the course of a life – and yet are ultimately so inconsequential. The particular drama chronicled in Election concerns a high school student-body president election, the three candidates and the teacher who fixed the results.

This is the sequel to Rosemary’s Baby, but what a slipshod book! Sentence fragments, overuse of the word “et cetera,” and (SPOILER) it all ends as a dream. It reads like the notes for a first draft. Levin must have dashed it off in a few days. Do yourself a favor and don’t even spend a minute reading it.

I worried about I whether I should recommend this novel. It’s well written with engaging characters, but somehow it doesn’t quite gel. Two terrible car crashes frame the story, and despite the fact that the dead live on and affect the living’s lives in positive ways, the ending still feels hopeless and desperate and cynical. Kind of the way I’m feeling after reading it.

This is a fast-paced novel about a financial journalist who can’t control her own spending and the things she dreams of buying. Sweet and often laugh-out-loud funny, the story follows Becky as she meanders her way through canceled credit cards, overdrawn bank accounts and tempting but overpriced clothes to find a sense of herself and a millionaire boyfriend.

While this novel may seem a bit dated and misogynistic, even a bit naive in its portrayal of a “perfect” communal society where everyone shares the love and nobody gets jealous, it is still a classic and beautiful in its message. Why can’t we all just love one another and communicate mind-to-mind and discorporate when we’re ready? And when are the Martians going to finally decide to destroy us for good and for all?

King wrote this long novel while recuperating from the pedestrian-car accident that nearly killed him and, unfortunately, it does show. The story of an alien fungus invading our minds is not as well plotted and suspenseful as most of King’s books, nor is it as fun. But all of us fans are grateful that the master of the modern horror novel is still churning out entertaining reads, even if they are not up to the standards of his earlier works.

Vera makes up feature stories for a tabloid about Bigfoot stealing cigarettes and discovering the fountain of youth in a suburban lemonade stand. But when she gets fired, she must deal with the unresolved problems of her own life – her relationships with a possibly ex-husband, her daughter, her parents and her oldest friend. This leads her on a quest for her own personal Bigfoot and her own personal happiness.

The framing device for this novel is the brutal rape and murder of a young boy in a suburban neighborhood, which is never solved. But what the book really is about are the fundamental changes our “safe” middle-class world went through in the 1970s, including divorce, senseless crime and the encroachment of the outside world on the suburban cocoons we had built for ourselves. This small, quiet novel paints a portrait of these changes in deft, succinct strokes.

After being dumped for no good reason at the dreaded three-month mark, the novel’s heroine sets out on a pseudo-scientific research study to figure out why men act like they do. She comes up with a theory – the “Old Cow-New Cow” hypothesis – and her observations of her guerilla-dating roommate, her ex and the married man her friend is seeing seem to bear it out. But the story is really about finding the strength to get off the “what will become of me” couch and get on with our lives, even with a damaged heart.

This is a collection of essays and two short stories by King on the art of writing, released to coincide with his memoir On Writing. It was published by and is only available for purchase through the Book-of-the-Month club. Most of the pieces have been previously published, although there are some transcripts of talks and one short story, “In the Deathroom,” that may be new to King fans.