The Langoliers - Stephen King

Technically, a "short story" for Stephen King, but I'm considering it a whole book for the purposes of this blog because it's longer than whole books I've read and posted about on here.  This isn't a great story, compelling but the ending is kinda..... expected?  Maybe I've been reading too much Stephen King lately because it all seemed very obvious.  I think I need to put King on the shelf for a while and read some other stuff.  I wouldn't recommend this story because I was unimpressed.

Ghost Cadet - Elaine Marie Alphin

This is a children's book. I was home and wondered how astute my taste for literature was when I was a child. This is one of the books I remembered reading when I was.... 10? 11 max.  I read Ender's Game when I was 12 and have clear memories of what I thought about it. When I re-read that book at 23, I understood more of the motivation and actually liked it more, but many of the emotions and logical analysis of the story were still spot-on. So, I thought I'd try that with this book. It is a small, child-sized book so I was ok with the idea that it would likely suck and be childish.  (I did not remember the story at all beyond kid meets civil war ghost and they do something, along with the vague memory that the boy was whiny.)
Well, the book didn't suck! And the end is the best part because you read this whole fictional story only for the author to tell you that the entire story set-up is true. I did, and still do, love stories started with a grain of truth. It's why I like historical fiction and Clive Cussler's books.
It does spend a lot of time on the lead character's issues with self-worth and confidence (where my memories of the character being whiny came from) but it is very appropriate for the target audience.  I didn't like that when I was younger (the age it should have had an impact on) but now as an adult, I would leave it in because I think most kids would benefit from watching the growth of the character. I did not need that as a kid, thus my dislike of it. Today, I'm still less interested about the "personal journey" than the action but I did enjoy watching a kid mature.
Now that the internet exists, I was looking up the author's name for this and saw that this book has very high reviews across the board, so I'm not alone.
In conclusion, I would highly, highly recommend this book to anyone in the age range plus a few year. As for adults, if you're a fast reader it's a one-night read and therefore worth it.

The Stand - Stephen King

It took me a LONG time to get through this book, granted it's huge, but it still took much longer than I thought it would have!
That being said, I REALLY enjoyed this book. It was a little awkward at the beginning because there were so many story lines and they were all over the place.  But once it really got rolling, and by that I mean everyone on the planet dying, it was real good.
I liked how this was a book I could recommend to someone in my family. Instead of some unknown/unexplained evil, there's a very plainly stated God v. Satan explanation for the evil in this book. I know King was on a boatload of drugs when he wrote this, but I liked having an actual explanation for why/where something comes from, even if it is as old as time.
OH, and my favorite character is the dog! King doesn't often have animals in his books (unless they are coming back to life or killing people) but when he writes good pets, he does it very well, endearingly so.

Beware the Babysitter - Francine Pascal (Sweet Valley High, Bk 99)

I'm going back and re-reading a lot of books from when I was younger. This is one I remember kind of enjoying, but not getting into hard, it never made my heart beat faster. Seems the same is still true today. There's a lot of fluff, and pointless banter in this book while the actual story is being set up. It's like the first book with all the boring crap has continued for 4 books by this point. Pascal was never my favorite author, but I can certainly see the appeal for early teen girls (and pre-teens) based on the subject matter.  As an aspiring author, however, I cannot fathom taking the time to WRITE this drivel!