To promote the latest Dean Koontz book, the site deankoontz.com started a contest that had people upload home-made trailers for the new book to YouTube. A total of sixty videos were uploaded.

This is an interesting idea. A great way to get your readers involved in the process, to promote the new book. Going by the number of videos, I'd say people like this type of contest. Not only to participate in, but also to watch the end results. An additional benefit: if the book ever gets turned into a movie, there is already a teaser trailer for it. I haven't seen all the videos, but most of the ones I have seen are quite impressive.

I see Koontz has been active in Second Life as well. I wonder if this was his idea or that of his publisher.

Over the past years I have been reading the Dark Tower fantasy epos/series by Stephen King. A western/fantasy crossbreed story about a gunslinger in a parallel world on a mission to save the universe. Characters from different versions of our reality are drawn into the parallel world to help the gunslinger and travel between worlds is also part of the story.

The first three books of the series were published many years ago and I enjoyed reading them. That's all I remember from those books though, I really liked them and wondered when King would continue his story. It took many years, but then finally books 4-7 were published in fairly rapid succession. The entire story comprises not only these seven books, but in a sense it involves most of King's complete works. Many of his “normal” books involve aspects that are part of the Dark Tower series.

The entire Dark Tower series is one that I really recommend those who like King's writing style and who are really willing to suspend reality and read a story about a cowboy-like character in a universe that combines middle ages, westerns and modern-day settings.

At the end of the very last book, Stephen King takes an interesting approach, by addressing the reader. He asks the reader to really reconsider reading any further. Instead, the reader should consider leaving the story unfinished, so he can make up his own ending. I won't give away the ending, but I'll just say I was stubborn and decided to read the end as written by the author, after pausing for a bit to consider my own ending of the story. I was not disappointed at all. King's ending was even more powerful than my own. I guess that's why he is a famous author

Buy Stephen King's Dark Tower books

Last Friday, I read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. I was on the road (or, more precisely, in the air) most of that day, and besides watching some inflight movies, there was little else to do. The fact that I finished this book in a couple of hours, had little to do with me being couped up in a small confined area though. It was simply due to the story itself. A very entertaining read.

I am not in the habit of scouting bookstores for the latest bestsellers. On the contrary, there are times when I feel certain bestsellers are probably no good at all. I still haven't read The Secret History by Donna Tart, to name an old one. I came across The Da Vinci Code at the airport and figured I would give it a go. The blurb on the back made it sound like my kind of book. And it is. It's filled with nice riddles and talk about secret societies. I won't give away anything about the story itself. What I liked in particular, were the small mentions of detailed stuff nobody usually cares about. In particular, the part where the main character visits a library. Yes, a library was mentioned. Mentioning retrieval speeds and data transfer speeds like it's just an every-day thing was a nice touch.

The library mention is one thing that has been on my mind though. Something about it I don't quite understand. This will be a spoiler to those who haven't read the book yet, so I'm putting it in the extended text for this entry.

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