Matthew Dicks

Matthew Dicks is a writer and elementary school teacher. His articles have been published in the Hartford Courant and he has been a featured author at the Books on the Nightstand retreat. He is the author of the novels, Something Missing and Unexpectedly Milo.

Dicks's new novel is Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend.

Recently I asked the author what he was reading.  His reply:

Among the handful of books that I am currently reading is Stephen King’s The Long Walk. I am halfway through the book and have found it exceptionally compelling thus far.

The book was originally written under King’s pseudonym, Richard Bachman, and King opens the novel with a preface explaining the origin and purpose of the Bachman pseudonym that any fan of King’s will find fascinating.

The book is also, in many ways, a precursor to The Hunger Games trilogy, and readers who enjoyed those novels are likely to enjoy this one as well. Like The Hunger Games, The Long Walk is the story of children pitted against one another in a contest to the death while the world looks on in morbid fascination. King spins out the backstory to the contest and the world in which we find these characters slowly, in tiny pieces, which allows for greater suspense, mystery and dread than what Collins’s Hunger Games provides. But the book also has considerably less action than The Hunger Games. The nature of the contest (a long walk) alone all but guarantees this, but it does not make the story any less compelling. Instead, the book takes on an eerie, sinister feel, and I find myself utterly mystified as to how the story might end. As a reader, I cannot ask for more than this from a book.

Visit Matthew Dicks' website and Facebook page.

The Page 69 Test: Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend.

--Marshal Zeringue