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OldSenileGuy posted:Was this (Joyland) any good? I'm looking for something else to read, and I'm torn between something else new (Joyland or Revival) or one of the classics that I never got around to reading (Pet Sematary, The Shining, IT). It was OK. Very quick, summer time beach type of read but no great shakes really. From what I'm hearing, Revivial is better but I'd read the three you listed before any of them.
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Feb 13, 2015 16:13
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ClearAirTurbulence posted:Sometimes people interpret that instinctual fear as just a thrilling tingle and it is alluring. Also, every actual government here in the real world does abjectly evil poo poo on a regular basis; this has so far not led to mass refusals to participate. Just a random example: quote:Let me introduce you to the world’s most powerful terrorist recruiting sergeant: a US federal agency called the office of the comptroller of the currency. Its decision to cause a humanitarian catastrophe in one of the poorest, most troubled places on Earth could resonate around the world for decades. Is this crucifying people by the roadside or burning them alive? No. But it's still condemning them to suffering and death, and it's morally indefensible. And yet how many Americans know this is happening? Of those who know it's happening, how many of them are taking action to stop it? Compare to the number who are going about their business and worrying about matters of far more proximate concern, like keeping their jobs and feeding their kids. History is replete with examples of people willfully averting their eyes from horrific moral crimes, and seizing any excuse to pretend even to themselves that they don't know what's going on behind the barbed wire at that work camp over the hill. Oh, sure, they've heard *rumors*, but they don't really know, and it's not their place to interfere in that kind of thing. Besides, winter's coming and there's wood to be chopped. The banality of evil is part of the fundamental human condition. It does not strain credulity in the least that Flagg would attract followers.
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Feb 13, 2015 16:48
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Just about done with Revival. Stupidly spoiled myself on Joyland's ending. Is Mr. Mercedes horror or mystery? I cant tell and am afraid of spoiling myself by looking it up
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Feb 13, 2015 18:40
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BiggerBoat posted:It was OK. Very quick, summer time beach type of read but no great shakes really. From what I'm hearing, Revivial is better but I'd read the three you listed before any of them. I started The Shining today. I'm reading everything Jack says in Nicholson's voice and I fear that is going to taint the book. OldSenileGuy fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Feb 13, 2015 |
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Feb 13, 2015 19:47
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the_american_dream posted:Just about done with Revival. Stupidly spoiled myself on Joyland's ending. Is Mr. Mercedes horror or mystery? I cant tell and am afraid of spoiling myself by looking it up The main story of Joyland was never that big of a deal anyway (not a good mystery). It was more about the characters in the short book.
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Feb 13, 2015 20:01
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OldSenileGuy posted:I started The Shining today. I'm reading everything Jack says in Nicholson's voice and I fear that is going to taint the book. It won't. It's a fantastic book as well as fantastic film. I saw the movie before I read the book and nothing was ruined for me. It's just a a tremendous piece of writing.
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Feb 13, 2015 23:17
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OldSenileGuy posted:I started The Shining today. I'm reading everything Jack says in Nicholson's voice and I fear that is going to taint the book. That won't last long. The characters in the movie and the book are so fundamentally different that Nicholson's performance (and Shelly Duvall's, for that matter) might as well be entirely different characters. Because they are. On its own merits, the movie is fantastic. But while it shares a similar story, there's nothing about the movie that has anything to do with the book. Frankly, it's like Kubrick read a summary instead of the novel. I admire what he did, and the atavistic horror he was able to put into his film, but the book is much, much richer. Asbury fucked around with this message at 00:13 on Feb 14, 2015 |
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Feb 14, 2015 00:07
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3Romeo posted:That won't last long. The characters in the movie and the book are so fundamentally different that Nicholson's performance (and Shelly Duvall's, for that matter) might as well be entirely different characters. Because they are. kubrick was good enough a director not to try and fit a 1000-page book into a 2-hour movie.
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Feb 14, 2015 08:56
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Dyna Soar posted:kubrick was good enough a director not to try and fit a 1000-page book into a 2-hour movie. The book is half that length.
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Feb 14, 2015 11:24
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WattsvilleBlues posted:The book is half that length. hah, you're right. my bad, It was the long one.
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Feb 14, 2015 11:27
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Many thanks due to the goon in this thread (can't remember who, was it Nate Fisher?) who mentioned Ticktock by Koontz thereby indirectly inspired this new thread: Wikipedia book trivia: In a fit of rebellion, he eats 2 cheeseburgers http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3700491 You're welcome! I'm going to start Mr. Mercedes soon - but I really need to wait for paperback, I hate carrying around these giant hardcovers.
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Feb 14, 2015 18:27
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The Berzerker posted:You're welcome! Ooops! Thanks, The Berzerker. 
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Feb 15, 2015 13:54
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the_american_dream posted:Just about done with Revival. Stupidly spoiled myself on Joyland's ending. Is Mr. Mercedes horror or mystery? I cant tell and am afraid of spoiling myself by looking it up Spoilers as to your exact question, but nothing at all about the story. Mystery exclusively from what I remember. Ignore the jive and tech talk and it's enjoyable enough. I sat in my car a few times for a while to finish up chapters because I was into it and that's pretty rare for me.
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Feb 15, 2015 23:27
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So I listened to the first couple hours of On Writing and all of Pet Sematary. 1. King's brother sounds like he's loving awesome. 2. I like that King himself is the narrator since the book feels very autobiographical, in spite of what he claims. 3. I totally forgot King was in a band with another favorite writer of mine, Dave Barry. I'll finish the rest of it later. Since it's not a story as such I feel okay with taking breaks from it. As for PS: 1. Very slow beginning but it wasn't all too tedious. I liked Jud. 2. I was very annoyed with Louis for constantly abusing the revived Church. "YOu did this! Don't take it out on the poor cat that hasn't even done anything!" 3 . Of course it would do something later on... Poor Jud. 4. I realize they tried to make Rachel's parents seem more sympathetic later but Louis is totally right, leaving 8-yuar-old Rachel alone with her dying, insane sister? How loving dumb can you be? 5. What a bummer ending. You know none of the King books I've read yet have had such a sad, hopeless finish. Mostly I'm taking away from King's works, from King's Universe and its inner-workings, that people have no real agency or free will of their own. Or if they do, things are leaning on them and compelling them so heavily that they might as well not have it. It all started when I said IT wasn't evil in that it made a conscious choice to be evil, it was made that way. It had no choice but to kill any more than the Losers did when they fought IT. And of course The Stand is rife with this. Both Mother Abagail and Randall Flagg are just pawns in all of this and neither of them really has a clue what they're doing. And now in Pet Sematary, that burial ground and whatever force lies within it manipulated everything just so. It was made clear that the evil presence or whatever it was had done something to the driver of the truck that killed Gage. Just as it had manipulated Jud into showing Louis to the burial ground. Seems to me that people in King's cosmos are puppets being yanked around by forces they don't really understand, let alone can resist.
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Feb 16, 2015 06:31
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NikkolasKing posted:
My ex always referred to black cats as Church cats. It was really weird. And I think you're right about King's characters being swept up by some kind of awful forces. Gods or monsters.
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Feb 16, 2015 08:49
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NikkolasKing posted:"Free Will" That's a pretty interesting take and I'd never given much thought to it in that way, but you're kind of right. Off the cuff, I think that it may have more to with ordinary people saying "gently caress this" and choosing to face the demons that are outside their control, which I guess it was you mean by "having no free will". They HAVE to face the evil, the sadness and the fear. It IS beyond their escape, let alone their control. But that's the essence of horror, isn't it? Thinking of movies and not books for a moment: The Exorcist, Jaws, Halloween, Alien(s), Psycho, The Descent, Night of the Living Dead, The Strangers...the protagonists are always FORCED to ultimately fight back and the extent of their "free will" is determined and forced by external elements of evil. They usually DO resist, but you're right. It's almost always because they have to and they can't run anywhere anymore. Seems about right. The essence of horror and fear is the loss of free will.
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Feb 16, 2015 21:49
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Ariza posted:Spoilers as to your exact question, but nothing at all about the story. Mystery exclusively from what I remember. Ignore the jive and tech talk and it's enjoyable enough. I sat in my car a few times for a while to finish up chapters because I was into it and that's pretty rare for me. Thanks! Glad I checked the thread one last time before my next purchase. I prefer horror but Revival was decent and it had almost none so Mr. Mercedes it is
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Feb 17, 2015 03:46
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And that's Insomnia and The Eyes of the Dragon down. I'm noticing something though and that is I really like King's sense of humor. He's pretty damned funny and yet he always weaves the comedy into his works i such a masterful way that it doesn't derail from the serious or scary atmosphere. Eyes of the Dragon was probably the most tongue-in-cheek work of his I've read as of yet and that was a big reason i liked it. Of course another reason I liked it was Flagg. I'm not sure if I prefer this portrayal or The Stand's but both were great in their own way. So let's see.... The Shining IT The Stand Pet Sematary Insomnia The Eyes of the Dragon I think I'm doing pretty good so far.
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Feb 22, 2015 09:26
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NikkolasKing posted:And that's Insomnia and The Eyes of the Dragon down. Flagg's hardly the same person in Eyes of the Dragon but it's a little bit more of an intimate look at him. Through the eyes of the younger prince, iirc. Doing creepy old timey alchemy and plotting and scheming. 
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Feb 22, 2015 09:54
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I will miss his Two-Headed Evil Parrot. There was a whole chapter recounting his history in Delain where she shows up every few decades or so and just ruins everything because gently caress you. I thought this was an excellent summation of his character: [Flagg] wanted what evil men always want: to have power and use that power to make mischief. Being a King did not interest him because the heads of Kings all too often found their way to spikes on castle walls when things went wrong. But the advisors to Kings... the spinners in the shadows... such people usually melted away like evening shadows at dawning as soon as the headsman's axe started to fall. Flagg was a sickness, a fever looking for a cool brow to heat up. He hooded his as just as he hooded his face. And when the great trouble came-as it always did after a span of years-Flagg always disappeared like shadows at dawn. Later, when the age was over and the fever had passed, when the rebuilding was complete and there was again something worth destroying, Flagg would appear once more. But yes, having him in a more primitive time really did his character wonders for me. He could be as vile as he wanted to be and it was more believable.
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Feb 22, 2015 10:18
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NikkolasKing posted:I will miss his Two-Headed Evil Parrot. Flagg is the Cheney or Rumsfield to Roland's Bush II* Also, I'd never made the connection between the fever in this analogy and Capt Trips. That might be stretching but he was an opportunistic poisoner as well as someone who took advantage of rotten leadership. * edit: I haven't finished Under the Dome and as always in this thread, opinions differ, but I guess it's supposed to be an indictment of the GWB's presidency or something.
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Feb 22, 2015 11:02
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NikkolasKing posted:I will miss his Two-Headed Evil Parrot. Eyes of TheDragon/ Dark Tower spoilers one of the big let downs of the Dark Tower series is that we never found out if Thomas and his butler found Flagg. after Callahan showed up in Wolves I was convinced Thomas would show up eventually. He was my favorite character in Eyes of The Dragon, sad to see King just dropped his plot line completely.
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Feb 23, 2015 13:54
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Wow so yea Mr. Mercedes is a pretty solid read. Was skipping whole paragraphs towards the end due to anticipation of the climax
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Feb 27, 2015 17:54
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This is kinda of a weird thing only tangentially related to King. I know the "culture of smoking" is completely different in my lifetime (was born in '88) than how it used to be but I was still shocked at the fact Bev and the other "good kids" smoked. They were twelve and while they didn't do it in public, Henry and his friends did. Right in front of the school, 12/13-year-olds smoking cigarettes. I mean, I'm no fool, I knew kids growing up who smoked and hosed and did hard drugs at ages 11 or 12 but that was obviously a very....private and secret thing. It was the flagrancy and casualness of them smoking that stuns me. Was it really like that in the 50s? It makes me wonder if King himself smoked when he was really young.
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Mar 2, 2015 05:26
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I think "smoking culture" has changed a lot quicker than you think. When I was in high school (98-02) it was really nothing special to see kids that age smoking outside of the school. Technically we had to smoke on the sidewalk but only certain teachers gave a poo poo. I'm just pulling numbers out of my rear end but it seemed like at least 10% to 15% of the students smoked. I think these days the numbers are around 5%. I have a couple friends who are teachers now and they say people have to cross the street and it's a lot rarer to see a swarm of students rushing out for a smoke on break. King does a great job though of painting the setting of how common and generally accepted smoking was. I thought 11/22/63 did a particularly good job of it.
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Mar 2, 2015 13:03
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johnsonrod posted:I think "smoking culture" has changed a lot quicker than you think. When I was in high school (98-02) it was really nothing special to see kids that age smoking outside of the school. Technically we had to smoke on the sidewalk but only certain teachers gave a poo poo. I'm just pulling numbers out of my rear end but it seemed like at least 10% to 15% of the students smoked. I've never heard of kids under 18 doing that at a school in the 90s. Where the hell did you go to school? We had cops are our school that would give you a $100 ticket if they caught you smoking.
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Mar 2, 2015 13:20
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i smoked at school (not in the school yard though and we did sometimes get detention if a teacher saw us) every day from 13 until i graduated. was in high school a bit before johnsonrod, mid 90s.
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Mar 2, 2015 13:22
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My DARE officer in 6th grade would be ashamed of you all.
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Mar 2, 2015 13:33
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My school had a smoking section outside for students by the cafeteria, and teachers smoked in the teacher's lounge. This was in the late 80's, but by the time I graduated (1990) that stopped allowing students to smoke during school hours (you did see them smoking at football games, etc.). Of course this was in rural East Tennessee, and tobacco was a crop many the kids had to work. Also people during that time many from that area still held unto the belief that smoking wasn't that bad for you. These are same people that now believe climate change isn't real or the earth is only 3,000 years old.
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Mar 2, 2015 13:55
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My high school had a smoking door for the students back in the early 90s. They gave no shits about students smoking. I used to bum smokes off my history teacher.
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Mar 2, 2015 16:28
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Ariza posted:I've never heard of kids under 18 doing that at a school in the 90s. Where the hell did you go to school? We had cops are our school that would give you a $100 ticket if they caught you smoking. Like Nate Fisher said, our high school had a "smoking court" believe it or not. I graduated in 1984 though. Not sure about the 90 because I graduated college in 1990 but from 86-90 you could still smoke inside the buildings there, right in the mezzanine.
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Mar 2, 2015 17:44
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Ariza posted:I've never heard of kids under 18 doing that at a school in the 90s. Where the hell did you go to school? We had cops are our school that would give you a $100 ticket if they caught you smoking. I graduated high school in 1992 and my school had a designated smoking area for students right outside the cafeteria. Probably under the logic that they're going to do it anyway so better outside than in the bathrooms.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:26
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I graduated in 2006, and nobody ever smoked at school that you could tell. There sure wasn't any smoke smell in the bathrooms, you didn't have any sort of permission to leave the school at any time of day before school ended, unless an adult was picking you up for a doctor's appointment or you were going on a field trip, and there was always someone watching the doors that woulda caught you trying to sneak out. On top of that smoking inside or within a few dozen feet of any entrance was a state crime no matter your age.
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Mar 2, 2015 18:43
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Jesus. Kids these days. We had open campus. It was a sliding scale of privilege. The actual written policy was that for your first semester as a freshman, free periods were spent in study hall. Second semester, you could spend them in the library. Sophomore year, you could leave school for your lunch period. Junior year, if your first or last period of the day was free, you could arrive late or leave early. And as a senior, any period you didn't have class was a period you didn't have to be in school. And of course you were always supposed to sign out and in. In practice, what happened was that from sophomore year onwards you'd leave school whenever you had a free period with whatever friend had a car and was going somewhere. Of course, this was before zero tolerance policies and treating 18-year-olds like children became fashionable. 
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Mar 2, 2015 19:27
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Aw crap, I started a re-read of 11/22/63 and have stalled out at the EXACT spot that I did four years ago when it came out. I love the book so much until it the part where Jake is spying on the Oswalds. It's boring, boring, boring - nothing has happened for what feels like 50 pages and I'm not even excited to resume reading this thing on my commute. How much more of this do I have to slog through before it picks up again? I'm at the part where Sadie has just come back from Reno and she and Jake are talking again.
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Mar 2, 2015 20:44
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Transistor Rhythm posted:11/22/63 It was a pretty good book but I agree that it was too long and that I skimmed through a good portion of it.
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Mar 2, 2015 21:03
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Phanatic posted:Jesus. Kids these days. Well around there, you couldn't drive by yourself until you were at least 17 (state law, and that's assuming you passed your road test on your birthday) and the amount of available parking spots for students was way less than the amount of seniors (there were about 180 spots and my graduating year had 350 seniors), so even if you could just leave, most of us wouldn't be able to get far, you'd basically have to walk. And the nearest place worth going to for lunch would be over a mile away from the school so not exactly a fun walk to manage before you'd have your lunch and study hall period up (it was about 80 minutes combined). Plus there wasn't empty periods, seems weird to schedule school that way. The school day was under 7 hours long to begin with. The only people who regularly got to leave school early/arrive late were those doing internship/co-op programs. How long were you "supposed to be" in school if you didn't leave for empty periods?
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Mar 2, 2015 21:22
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King has a piece of short fiction in the March 9 edition of The New Yorker: A Death
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Mar 3, 2015 05:50
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Zamboni_Rodeo posted:King has a piece of short fiction in the March 9 edition of The New Yorker: Pretty good story but the most interesting thing is at the very bottom of the story where it mentions he has a new novel called Finders Keepers coming out in June!
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Mar 7, 2015 13:45
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Just finished The Dark Tower III can't believe it ended on a cliffhanger like that. Imagine if you read it in 1991 and had to wait 6 years for the next book. I would not be pleased. For so long I avoided the Dark Tower series because it didn't sound like something I'd like but I'm loving it so far
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Mar 8, 2015 15:11
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