Riddle Me This

I finished the 3rd book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series - The Waste Lands.

It ended very strangely. Not to give too much away but the 4 adventurers are in a machine and they've struck a deal with the machine. If the travelers can answer all the machine's riddles, they get to live.

The end.

Seriously. The end. No riddles, no drama, just... done. He has an Author's Note at the end that says the books he writes take on a life of their own and they say where they need to end. And I've heard other writers say the same thing. The book ended at around 400 pages and from the beginning of Book One, King said there were going to be 3+ books so it's not like it's a huge surprise. Just a bit odd.

My husband would cry Bullshit. He would say it's just a ploy to make people buy the next book and just on principle, he would never read another Dark Tower (or probably any more Stephen King at all) again.

I have no such principles and Dave's not really a fan of SK anyway so I don't think it'll ever come up.

I'm looking forward to Book 4 but I'm taking a little detour to read Shutter Island. I told y'all I saw the preview for the movie at the theater and thought I had it figured out but comments on that post told me I was wrong (yay!) and also let me know it was a book. A friend in my knitting group lent me the book and I've started reading it. So far, it's still background setup but the writer's style has already got me anticipating a very good read. He's very visual. I like that.

But, back to the Dark Tower. The Waste Lands has an underlying, running theme of riddles. It becomes very important at the end of the book. I love riddles! I'm not a very logical thinker so they are usually quite difficult for me. One of my favorite parts of The Hobbit is the riddles between Bilbo and the Golem.

Several years ago, Dave and I were in a bookstore and we were looking at these odd little books shaped like toilets. They were logic and quiz bathroom books. We flipped one open to a random page and we saw a riddle. We couldn't get the answer so we flipped to the back of the book and there were no answers! We were cracking up saying that if we couldn't even find the answers to the logic book, we should probably just put it down before we hurt ourselves.

We eventually did find the answer and more hilarity ensued but I'll tell you about that next time. Here's the riddle...

Hoarse, Mousse, Guerrilla, Links, Bare

What do these words have in common?

I guess it's more of a word problem then an actual riddle but whatever.

If you know the answer, don't say in the comments, just raise your hand.

Happy Holidays One and All, Ruth!