Greetings everyone and welcome to the first ever Wednesday Night Book Club.
I'm your host Andy Rice. This is part of the Fried Rice Podcast group I guess.
And basically, I mean yeah, this is a book club. I'm going to be reviewing different
books that I read each week. I typically get through about a book a week and fair warning
now, you are going to be hearing a lot of Stephen King books because I am trying to
get through all 79 of his books and novellas and short story collections and his Richard
Bachman stuff. So it's a lot. I've gotten through well over half so far over the course
of my life. I do read other things. I mean I would have gotten through this a lot sooner
if I just focused on him to read. But I love sci-fi and there's a few other authors that
I like to follow. John Scalzi and, oh is it John? I think it's John Scalzi. From the
Old Man War series which is one of my absolute favorites and we will cover that at some point.
This today we are going to be talking about a book called Rose Matter and it's a 1995
Stephen King novel that deals with domestic violence. Kind of a bummer to start on. But
it just happened to be the one that I read this week. I'm kind of on a Stephen King domestic
violence kick I guess. I had just read Dolores Clayborne. Well I read Needful Things and
then I read Dolores Clayborne and then I read Rose Matter in that order. I think I maybe
threw Kujo in between two of those books. But regardless all three very much domestic
violence cases. This one being the worst by a lot. So just a little bit before we get
into the book. A little bit about me. If you're not a fan of the podcast and you're wondering
why I took a big fat bong rip before starting a book club it's because that's what I do.
I mean it's Fried Rice Podcast. I'm your host Andy Rice. Let's get fried. You know I like
to smoke weed. I like to read. I wish I had a third thing that rhymed with those two others.
I like Indeed.com. I don't know. I don't. But yeah I love doing the podcast and we talk
about movies and life and other things and we kind of get into sometimes philosophical
things which I love and maybe we'll get into that here. But it is with other people and
sometimes it can get most of the time. All the time it's a little bit too hectic. There's
a lot of us talking. We're working on getting a different set up so that it's a little bit
cleaner audio and we're improving. Season three will be a lot better than what season
two has been. But I did want to kind of just get into something that I'm very passionate
about and that's reading. I also want to preface this because a lot of people I guess I don't
even know. There's not a racist or an ableist or an ist that I can put to these people.
But there's a lot of people that seem to think that when you listen to an audiobook as opposed
to physically reading a book that it's somehow a diminished accomplishment. That somehow
you didn't get the same amount of information that the person reading the book did. I am
a huge proponent. I'm for or against it. Opponent would be against. Proponent would be for audiobooks.
I am a huge fan. I've read of course in the lifetime of my... In my lifetime I've read
dozens of just physical books. You know what I mean? I have a pretty healthy little collection
at home. But I have read hundreds of audiobooks. And I'm going to say read this whole time.
I'm not going to say listen to two because... And you can take that with whatever I guess
however you want to feel. That's up to you. I say read. I can 100% if you finish reading
a book after I've just finished listening to it and you want to sit there and have a
conversation there is nothing that you will know that I don't know. Okay? It's the same
information. It's just this way I can listen to it while driving. And I can actually use
that brain space that I usually allocate to self destruction and harm most likely into
story building or painting the picture of what's going on in the book. So anyway, that's
the pre... That's the warning. The asterisk at the top is I definitely do audiobooks.
And there's going to be a lot of Stephen King. Another thing is these are going to be pretty
spoiler heavy I've decided. I mean this is a book club. This isn't a book recommendation
I guess, channel. I might do that as well. I might do shorter things to try to get people
to read the book before listening to this. But I mean yeah, I'm assuming that you've
read this and I just want to give a few thoughts on it. So, Rose Matter. I didn't actually
take any notes for this one so this is going to be kind of off the top of my head. But
moving forward I'll be a little bit more prepared. It's Wednesday today. I wanted to do the first
little one. Maybe this actually will be more of a recommendation than a review. I mean
moving forward we'll do more review. But Rose Matter is a story about a woman named Rose.
Rosie is what she likes to go by. Living in an extremely abusive relationship. Just for
the fact that I don't want to trigger anyone or bring up anything. It's violent. It's not
just verbally or emotionally violent. It's physically violent to some of the worst degree
that you can read in just a typical novel. Anyway, she one day decides to get out of
the... I love that it's not the time he hit her. It's not right after an abusive fight
or anything like that. She wakes up and she sees a drop of blood on her pillow. It came
from her nose probably. It's a regular occurrence that she would see blood on the sheets. She
knows that if he sees this coming home that he's going to want to talk to her up close.
Which is what he says when he's going to just assault her and hurt her. Punch her in the
kidneys which comes into play later. It's in the morning and he's at work. He's a cop.
She sees this blood and it hits her. What am I doing? Just leave. We've all been through
this where you decide to do something and then that little voice inside your head tells
you to stay in what you think is the right place. The comfortable spot to be in. But
it's not. It's a dangerous situation. You need to get out of there. You need to change
your life. You need to make it better but you stay in that spot. You stay in that job
you don't want. You stay in that relationship that's bad for you. You stay because you...
Just like those that experiment with ticks or fleas. They put these fleas which can jump
super super super high. But they put them in a cup and they put a little wall on it.
Something on top and the fleas start hitting the top of the ceiling. When you take that
off that's as high as they can go from that point on. Because they stay. That's just their
new... They don't want to move forward. They don't want to get better. I'm probably not
explaining this right but she tells that voice to go fuck itself basically. And very scared
she leaves. And she goes on a bus and she goes to a town, like a big sized town 800
miles away and she starts a new life. Meanwhile her husband who is one of the scariest most
well written antagonists that I've ever read in a book. I mean he's sadistic. He's a masochist.
He's a sadist. I think he likes both. He likes pain and giving pain. So he's a biter. He's
frightening. And he deliberately gets the time off from work, does everything right
so that he can track her down. And so in the audiobook here's something that you don't
get from reading it which is kind of cool. When you're reading it's just there. I don't
know how the text would be broken up to differentiate the two character points of view. But when
you're listening to the book you're listening to the female author, sorry the female narrator
who is doing all of Rose's parts but then it cuts to when Norman, the ex-husband cop,
the crazy guy, when he's doing things it's Stephen King reading it himself because he
narrates quite a few of his books. Or at least a few of them. And he's a great audiobook
narrator. He's got a good voice for it. And he's passionate about his own work. That comes
through. Although he really likes his stupid jokes. And he likes his bad slang. If you
read these books he's always got somebody in the... In 1995 he writes this and it still
sounds like people are talking like the 70s. Like, ah, far out man. Like it's just silly
things. But she goes to this town. She gets involved with this battered women's shelter.
And through that she's able to find a place of her own. Now during all of this Norman
is taking his time. He's trolling her is how he puts it. Which is a completely different
connotation than what we use trolling to mean today. In this he uses it to get into the
mind of her. And so that he can pretend to be her and make all the same decisions that
she would make. Like he stops. He doesn't smoke because she doesn't smoke. You know
like those kind of things. Just to get into the mindset. And then when he... So he's tracking
her down. And he gets closer and closer and closer. And he starts doing some bad things.
Which we'll get to in a sec. But she ends up going to this pawn shop and finding two things.
One, a painting of this fierce looking blonde woman with her back turned on a cliff side.
Is the best way that I can kind of think of it. With a temple up front. Kind of buried
in the sand. And a second thing is a man named Bill. Who's handsome. Kind of younger than
her. She thinks he's way younger than her because I think she in her mind thinks that
she's older than she is because of the amount of extra years that she's probably had to
live via abuse. You know like I'm sure if you're living in that kind of situation time
goes by a lot slower. I would imagine. Because like when I'm at work. And it's a boring day
at work. Which is of course not any sort of comparison. But I'm just using what... Like
on a bad day they seem to go a lot slower. So I can imagine if that's the kind of situation
you're in it just seems like a year could feel like a decade. And it's horrific. So
when she meets this man who's really only like a handful of years younger than her she
thinks she's ancient and he's this kid. But he very 1990s rom com situation ends up going
to her work. Not her house. It might have been her house. But anyway knocking on her
door asking her out on a date. She says yes. But that's the beginning of their relationship.
He's got a motorcycle. She's looking forward to going on it. But the painting seems to
keep changing a little bit when she's looking at it. And she's starting to have dreams that
are kind of taking place inside this painting which is interesting. Meanwhile Norman is
just going on at this point the beginning of an extremely unhinged killing spree. He
finds the guy that gave Rose the information for the battered women's shelter and they
don't show what happened. But again he's a biter. They talk about afterwards that he
was bit over 80 something times. And that when you follow Norman the next day his jaw
teeth really really really hurt. So that's fucked up. Other than that so that he's so
he's tracking her down. He finds out that the battered women's shelter is having a
picnic with the is it the indigo girls? Is that a real band? The indigo girls. The indigo
girls. Oh indigo girls. That is a folk rock duo. So just two of them. They're very much
still an active band 40 years later. And they're yeah okay. Well sorry I don't want to Google
too many things but yeah. Melissa Etheridge. I've heard that name. Is that her? No. Oh
no Amy Rae and Emily Sailors are the indigo. Anyway the indigo girls are playing with their
classic hit Closer to Fine. No wait yeah that would have been out by then. Power of Two
would have been out by then. And of course Shame on You. Wait yeah no wait those aren't
even. Anyway fuck what am I doing? Kid Fears is another song. So indigo girls are playing.
He thinks that she's going to be there. And then it gets to probably. I know I'm skipping
around. These aren't going to be super in depth. This is just to be like you know. God
maybe I don't want to ruin this because if you're interested in reading it. You know
what I'm going to get to what I thought was like kind of like an extremely like gripping
point and then I'm going to stop there and if you if this is interested you at all and
it's not too much of a spoiler that I've given you already which I haven't. There's a lot
that I haven't covered that maybe maybe you'd like to go read it but because this actually
is one of Stephen King's few books that he's written that doesn't have a movie or TV show
adaptation. It's got nothing. It's just a book. It's an audio book and it's a book.
Book book. And it's so I mean I think they're going to maybe make a TV show down the line.
It would definitely make for a good one especially in today's climate. You know people want to
see these kind of true crime esque feeling things and in this particular book it's not
too supernatural until the very end. So I mean like it's a it's a grounded kind of you
know story and then it does get a little bit well a lot of bit over the top. But not in
a way that that was jarring or unpleasant. It's just that if I were to start going into
the crazy stuff involving the painting now without the build up that he has going into
it then it would just sound nutty. But if you read the book and you you know it all
adds up. Makes sense. So the day of the picnic I think is one of the best written Stephen
King high adrenaline like edge of your seat sort of I don't know scene is the right word
part. Chapter. But it's so you have Norman. He finally has figured out where the picnic
is. I mean like he's he thinks okay I'm this big dude how do I differentiate myself. So
like they don't know me. He's a cop right. So he knows what people look for. So he shaves
his head. He gets a wheelchair. He puts like a feminist bumper sticker on the back and
he gets this like crazy punk jacket or whatever. Not punk jacket. Like biker jacket. And he
goes to the picnic. The problem is that he gets there too early like Rose isn't there
yet. And then the other problem for him at least is that somebody recognizes him as the
husband right in the middle of the picnic. Now this is a picnic at a fairground with
a ton of people around. And you now have Norman boxed in. This crazy fucking guy. And I think
I'm going to leave it there. Because he gets recognized by one of the women of the battered
women shelter. She's a badass. So and that's not even the end of the book by any means.
There's still quite a bit to come after that. So yeah fuck it. I'll keep this episode around
20 minutes. I mean general thoughts. Let me give this a grade that's not our stupid movie
grade that we have on the podcast which I'm still trying to come up with a way to change.
Let me just think about this for a second. How would I want to grade books? I mean I
might just do a Stephen King based. Okay. Let's do. Oh god this isn't interesting. Let me
pause this while I think about this for a second. Okay I couldn't think of fucking shit.
I paused that for about way longer than I thought. Anyway I'm going to base this on
and this is only not even that funny unless you read the book. But I'm going to base this
on out of five yogurts in the fridge. That's Gertz in the fridge if you get what I'm saying.
Out of five this gets a full five yogurts. Full five Gertz in the fridge for sure. By
the way Rose Matter that's a color. I didn't know if you knew that. It's not the name of
the character. I mean it is the name of a character but Rose Matter is a color. It's
like a pinkish red. So that's kind of cool. I bet you the color of the book is Rose Matter.
It should be. At least the audiobook cover was. So anyway yeah that's the first episode
of Wednesday Night Book Club. I'm going to keep it brief. Maybe I'll go further later.
Maybe I won't. Who knows? Anyway thanks for joining me. Let me know in the comments because
I am going to put this on YouTube if you enjoyed the book. What I should read next. If you
have any thoughts that I didn't cover tell me if this gets you to want to read the book
or if I gave away too much information. Maybe I'll do a little bit less next time. But anyway
let me know. Oh wait wrong one. This is the worst AI song I've come up with. Have a good
night guys.