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cheerfullydrab posted:Ah, crud. I hated, hated, hated Cell. I haven't heard anything about Lisey's Story except what I've read from the back of the copy I just bought and vague things in this thread and elsewhere about how bad it is. I've tried to ignore people talking about it up till now. Seriously, I thought it sucks. Like parts of the book were stop reading and roll my eyes at some of the dialogue. And I'm a fan of King's.
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Apr 5, 2010 01:34
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iostream.h posted:It loving sucks. Worse than Cell. Worse than anything. Man, you got to read Duma Key. It's basically the most early-King-ish book he's written since the accident.
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Apr 5, 2010 04:25
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If you have not read Lisey's Story pick it up cheap and just read the parts about Scotts childhood. I wasn't a fan of the book but the story about his brother was creepy as hell and worth the rest of the novel I thought. Certainly read Duma Key though, but I would give the Dome a miss. I know a lot of people love the Dome but it really showcased the problems in Kings fiction for me. Lisey's Story is better on the second read through though I will say that.
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Apr 5, 2010 04:56
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fishmech posted:Man, you got to read Duma Key. It's basically the most early-King-ish book he's written since the accident. I actually read the Dome, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I bought Duma Key almost immediately after buying (before reading) Lisey's Story and every time I pull it off the shelf I just get disgusted and put it back (I actually posted this same thing a few months ago). Totally unreasonable, I know, but I can't help it. Sooner or later I'll read it, I'm sure.
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Apr 5, 2010 05:35
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iostream.h posted:I actually read the Dome, and I enjoyed it quite a bit, but I bought Duma Key almost immediately after buying (before reading) Lisey's Story and every time I pull it off the shelf I just get disgusted and put it back (I actually posted this same thing a few months ago). Chiming in to say that you shouldn't hesitate on Duma Key, its fantastic, right up there with King's best.
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Apr 5, 2010 05:59
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cheerfullydrab posted:Ah, crud. I hated, hated, hated Cell. I haven't heard anything about Lisey's Story except what I've read from the back of the copy I just bought and vague things in this thread and elsewhere about how bad it is. I've tried to ignore people talking about it up till now. There are a lot of his stupid writing "tics" and character hokiness, but I thought the actual story itself wasn't terrible. I read it on a beach vacation though, so mindless retardation didn't bother me. Duma Key is way, way better. Like, it could have been written by a different author better.
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Apr 5, 2010 15:52
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fishmech posted:Man, you got to read Duma Key. It's basically the most early-King-ish book he's written since the accident. Eh, I'm a Constant Reader and I couldn't finish Duma Key. By the time he started going to the widow's house on a regular basis, I glazed over. Sorry, he lost me at that point.
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Apr 6, 2010 01:57
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Wolves of the Callah. So we have the village of Calla bryn Sturgis, where every generation mysterious strangers come and wordlessly steal their children, and this time, the villagers have desperately reached out to the Gunslinger and his posse for help. Exciting! Awesome! Can't wait to see the mystery unfold and the villagers sturggle to accept these dangerous outsiders and finally work together! OH WAIT Let's spend literally 1/3 of the book writing about some drunk's experiences bumming around a soup kitchen. That's what the readers came to see, after all. Jesus christ Stephen just reprint the first three books of the Dark tower series again after the fourth one as books five through seven and say it's time looping. I'd buy them all gladly.
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Apr 6, 2010 23:56
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NosmoKing posted:Eh, I'm a Constant Reader and I couldn't finish Duma Key. By the time he started going to the widow's house on a regular basis, I glazed over. Sorry, he lost me at that point. I love King's ridiculously long characterization portions. They make me care about the characters once poo poo actually starts to hit the fan.
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Apr 7, 2010 04:30
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Epicurus posted:Let's spend literally 1/3 of the book writing about some drunk's experiences bumming around a soup kitchen. That's what the readers came to see, after all. Father Callahan was awesome and so was his story 
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Apr 7, 2010 04:55
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Chairman Capone posted:Father Callahan was awesome and so was his story And then Dr. Doom clones show up with exploding Harry Potter toys?? Callahan was awesome because 'Salem's Lot was awesome.
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Apr 7, 2010 14:00
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I've said it before and I'll say it again, Lisey's Story would have been much better if it weren't for "smucking" 
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Apr 7, 2010 14:50
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I just started Under the Dome and it's pretty good so far. I'm about 150 pages in, though, and I do have one small problem. The character of Big Jim seems more like a laundry list of things King hates in people instead of a believable character. Does he ever become more than that?
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Apr 7, 2010 18:10
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If you can find the Under The Dome thread, you'll see that Under The Dome could have easily been re-titled BOY! DO I EVER HATE BUSH AND CHENEY!!. Big Jim is Cheney, rather obviously.
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Apr 7, 2010 21:35
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Glad I'm not the only one, I thought maybe I was being ridiculous. It's actually distracting me. King's villains are usually pretty good, but Big Jim seems like the kind of parody a kid who just got out of freshman political science would write.
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Apr 7, 2010 22:09
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Lisey's Story Progress Report, page 44/653: Smuck, smuck, smuck.
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Apr 8, 2010 05:49
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Epicurus there is no way in hell Wolves of the Calla was worse than Song of Susannah or The Dark Tower. It is the last halfway-decent book in the series.
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Apr 8, 2010 06:44
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I was a longtime fan of King's. I read pretty much everything he had written (minus Christine and Tommyknockers which I couldn't get through) and loved it until 1998. Around that time, I began to feel that his tone changed drastically in his work. The first novel that I hated was Bag of Bones. I kept buying his stuff because I kept hoping it would get better again, but it just got worse. Anyway, I think the worst was the Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. I could point out redeeming parts in all of his other post 1998 work, but that one is just completely salvageable. Dreamcatchers is pretty terrible, also. I think I read up until the poo poo weasels and then put the book down in disgust. I actually liked the rest of the Dark Tower and thought Under the Dome was great. I haven't read Duma Key yet, but I'm going to check it out after the praise it's getting here.
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Apr 8, 2010 08:09
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Did you like Rose Madder? From memory that book was between Insomnia and Bag of Bones and felt like it was a Mike Noonan novel itself. Rose Madder is one of his books I never re-read because the plot was so implausible. It's interesting to me that King can make me believe that there is a clown under the streets of Derry, that a town of good people could vote to give away a child to a monster and that a little girl might be a walking atomic bomb because her parents met during a drug trial and yet every single time Rose starts to find the dead crickets in the back of the painting she swapped her wedding ring for I roll my eyes. That book should have been called deus ex machina. A victim of spousal abuse runs from the abuser and within three months, even though she has lived in total isolation, is re-decorating her new apartment, working as an audio book reader and ho-hum, stepping into a painting to lead a very persistent one dimensional character to his death because she feels so empowered by the way she changed her hairstyle. Compared to that I totally fell in love with Bag of Bones, it felt gothic and the characters were at least fleshed out and the backstory of what happened and was still happening on the TR blew me away. That long shadow of names still creeps me out. Can you elaborate on what turned you off in Bag of Bones? Hate to break it to you, but Duma Key is very much like it to a certain extent which is why I loved it, but you might not.
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Apr 8, 2010 08:32
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Bag of Bones was awesome, creepy, surreal atmosphere that oozed personality. For me, the turning point with King was Gerald's Game. Godamn I hated that book.
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Apr 8, 2010 15:48
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I think the one I couldn't loving stand was The Regulators. I should explain a little more- when I was younger, like 13 or 14, I loved Stephen King, because they were like the first 'adult' books I had read and they had descriptions of sex and dudes getting their guts ripped out and being eaten by clowns and poo poo like that. So obviously I totally went for all that, especially the sex scenes (which I now find cringe inducing but c'mon I was a retarded teenager). Anyway, this love of Stephen King was aided by the fact that I somehow managed to buy all of his best novels one after the other. I don't know how, I guess I just had an eye for the good ones. I got Desperation (which I adored), The Stand (even better), Salem's Lot (gently caress yeah it's dracula but modern), IT (evil clown omg), Insomnia, The first three Dark Towers and some of the older short story collections, like Nightmares/Dreamscapes and Skeleton Crew. Obviously I was in heaven, he was my favorite writer. Then I read The Regulators, and I hated it. I hated how it just used the same characters and stuff from Desperation, but in a shittier way. I didn't understand how it even got published. After that I was just on a downwards spiral- I bought Dark Tower 4 which I hated, Cujo, Rose Madder and Bag of Bones and didn't even finish the latter two. From a Buick 8 and Christine I found similarly uninteresting, and I pretty much stopped buying his books. The Regulators killed my interest in his stuff, which is quite an achievement for a novel you have to admit. It basically ruined a writer for me. After a couple of years I came back to SK, I finished the Dark Tower (quite liked it, not as good as the early ones though) and re-read some of his other stuff. I still love IT and the early Dark Tower stuff. I'm also a huge fan of the short stories still, I now think they are his strongest work. Stuff like The Mist, The Moving Finger and Room 1408 give me a book-boner to this day. I also think Survivor Type is one of the most disgusting things I've ever read, even though the set up is so ludicrous (oh really, mr surgeon turned drug smuggler, how convenient that you were stranded on a tiny island with no food but plenty of heroin and surgical tools.) But yeah The Regulators is my vote for the worst King novel.
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Apr 8, 2010 17:43
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Goreld posted:There's a lot of authors who write about locations around the globe and everything comes out sounding like a loving tourist guide, complete with cheesy over-the-top dialects. You can't really understand a location well unless you really live there, or have a very good eye for detail and a shitload of patience. Very true. S. M. Stirling is absolutely horrible about this with regard to the UK for example.
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Apr 8, 2010 21:09
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I don't know what's worse. The ones I refuse to finish because they're boring (Lisey's Story, Dreamcatcher) Or the ones I refuse to read because they LOOK boring (Buick 8, Rose Madder)
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Apr 8, 2010 21:30
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The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is the worst because he picked a pitcher that eventually went to the loving Yankees. Good call, Steve.
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Apr 9, 2010 02:38
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I actually didn't mind Rose Madder when I read it. I was about 14, I think, so that probably had something to do with it. I absolutely love the Regulators, though. I enjoy how wacky it is.
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Apr 9, 2010 19:16
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I still haven't finished Cell. And I love zombie books. It isn't necessarily bad, I just keep dreading the part when the novel starts to suck. I keep expecting it. So I'm only like 5 pages in. ha
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Apr 10, 2010 00:07
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bengraven posted:I still haven't finished Cell. And I love zombie books. It isn't necessarily bad, I just keep dreading the part when the novel starts to suck. I keep expecting it. So I'm only like 5 pages in. ha "Young fool... Only now, at the end, do you understand... "
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Apr 10, 2010 03:06
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bengraven posted:I still haven't finished Cell. And I love zombie books. It isn't necessarily bad, I just keep dreading the part when the novel starts to suck. I keep expecting it. So I'm only like 5 pages in. ha I mean yeah, the floating zombies/hive-mind/psychic poo poo... I can see how that comes off as goofy. But gently caress it, I like the book.
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Apr 11, 2010 02:53
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Lisey's Story Progress Report, page 323/653 Words I am entirely sick of: bool smuck bad-gunky Other than that, I don't think this is so bad. Not good, but not by any means awful. I've just reached the scene where Jim Dooley has her in his clutches and I hope to hell this is going somewhere. Don't burst my bubble if it isn't.
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Apr 13, 2010 21:22
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Lisey's Story is a smucking bad-gunky pile of bool.
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Apr 13, 2010 22:15
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The Saddest Robot posted:Lisey's Story is a smucking bad-gunky pile of bool. 
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Apr 14, 2010 00:50
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If there's anyone still not decided on reading Duma Key, for the love of god read it! It's fantastic, it reads nothing like any other recent King novel, apart from the character being in an accident at the start. It's pretty drat scary too.Local Group Bus posted:that a town of good people could vote to give away a child to a monster I need to rewatch this, it was awesome. cheerfullydrab posted:Lisey's Story Progress Report, page 323/653 Any Stephen King novel Report Words I am entirely sick of: (insert list of around 3-10 made up words that King uses in this book)
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Apr 14, 2010 12:24
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To be fair, the man has a gift for creating new and fun ways to curse. I remember reading his books in middle school and becoming excited as soon as he threw out something like "poo poo on a shingle."
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Apr 14, 2010 21:30
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Chamberk posted:To be fair, the man has a gift for creating new and fun ways to curse. I remember reading his books in middle school and becoming excited as soon as he threw out something like "poo poo on a shingle." That isn't really his invention or anything. It has been around for a while, though it might be regional, I guess? I've also heard it used to reference sausage or beef gravy on toast. But, I have terrible taste in King's books, I guess. Lisey's story was okay, I think it made me cry a little.
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Apr 15, 2010 06:33
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Just got through the first section of IT again, haven't read it since I was a teen. There's a lot of clever foreshadowing. Some of it clearly marks some characters for death (Richie Tozier's whole chapter in particular), but some of it is a great call-forward to minor events that may be missed. Each operates at a few different levels, but are above-all an enjoyable read. Between the 7 main characters, there's a lot of good distinction between word choices for each character, and their outlook on life in general. The thematic choices each character has made in their life is also apparent. Most have made it as far as wealth goes, be that personal choice or top-ending in their natural talents. Each shows that they've enjoyed life until middle age but were unfulfilled in a shitload of ways. On the downsides, the vernacular shows its age. As kids the fifties, a lot of "Jeezum Crow!". As adults in the 80s, a lot of "goddamn how are ya!". Another downside is because there are 7 characters, each has to be painted with very broad.strokes. Each character has a broad personality and archetype to play, but there's no overlap between them and it ends up feeling artificial. Anyone got any insight into what I might be missing? I read until the first major break for the book, and my analysis only includes what King might find important, so no really fuckin' deep subtext. Olaf The Stout fucked around with this message at 08:42 on Apr 15, 2010 |
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Apr 15, 2010 08:40
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Olaf The Stout posted:Just got through the first section of IT again, haven't read it since I was a teen. Hmm... quote:but some of it is a great call-forward to minor events that may be missed. Each operates at a few different levels, but are above-all an enjoyable read. Very true, though.
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Apr 16, 2010 02:23
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I'm 150 pages into Under the Dome. I put it down about 6 weeks and haven't felt inclined to pick it up again. I miss the old coked up Stephen King of my youth. Sometimes They Come Back, Strawberry Spring now they were good stories!
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Apr 16, 2010 05:56
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We actually read Strawberry Spring for an English class in middle school - that was before I got into King, so years later when I read the story again in Night Shift I gained a sudden new respect for my old English teacher.
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Apr 16, 2010 06:07
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You guys are depressing. I read the first 4 of the Dark Tower series, but stopped. I was going to pick up the last few to finish, but there seems to be universal hate... To me, his worst was Dreamcatcher. I'd like my 3 weeks back, please.
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Apr 16, 2010 17:55
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commish posted:You guys are depressing. I read the first 4 of the Dark Tower series, but stopped. I was going to pick up the last few to finish, but there seems to be universal hate... The fifth book has a huge chunk of story not really related to Roland's quest, so thats a big turn-off for some people. Other than that, which IS a deal-breaker for many, I liked the rest of the book. I like the Old West setting and the characters and there's a nice sense of foreboding built up for the Wolves. The end starts to veer into the fantastic, though. The sixth is, in a word, ahugefuckingwasteoftime. I really didn't like it reading it and now can barely remember lots of the book. In fact, I don't know a single person who professes to liking the book. I think this is where self-insertion came into play heavily. And the seventh seems to be a love or hate deal with many of the readers. It's the end of a 30-year journey for the books and King, so naturally its not gonna live up to expectation but some people really hate it and some people think it concludes the series perfectly. I won't spoil the major stuff, but some major King characters, including ones from other books and all through the "King Universe", show up and have their fates decided.
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Apr 16, 2010 20:15
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