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Emily A. Stanton posted:I also think I'm the only person who likes Rose Madder. Viva Ze Bull. Someone earlier in this thread, I think, said something like they enjoyed Lisey's Storey the first time that they read it, when it was called Rose Madder. I enjoyed Rose Madder too, but it's been a while since I read it. I think Stephen King writes female leads well.
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Apr 28, 2013 18:51
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I think I've read most of this thread, over the year, and enjoyed it greatly, thank you. I'm half-way through Mr Mercedes, and I'm enjoying it - it's not vintage King (of course - he's not vintage King any more), but there's enough there to keep me going. But I think I've spotted a simple, silly error in it. Anyone else? (Spoilering bits here, but it's nothing major.) It's to do with King's damned habit of foreshadowing. Into the middle section, Poison Bait. Chapter 6 ends with Hodges leaving his house and "He leaves his house with no premonition that he won't be back." Then same part of the book, Chapter 22 begins with "Hodges grabs lunch at a nearby deli ... and goes home" Have I missed something? Is there another way to read that first bit? Because King's foreshadowing bothers the poo poo out of me, and if he's doing it and then changing his mind, I am going to get pissed at him.
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Sep 19, 2014 16:41
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Reading Finders Keepers at the moment, and enjoying it while realising that it's quite forgettable. But this bit popped out at me - the conversation between the antagonist and his mother. She's saying out loud what King himself has said a couple of times, I think - maybe in On Writing, maybe Danse Macabre.  That seemed a pretty concise description of King's own writing (and often a good reason for his endings being weak) - no plotting, let's see where this goes.
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Sep 8, 2015 08:30
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 I was in my favourite second-hand book shop over the Christmas break and I picked up a copy of Cycle Of The Werewolf. I've read most of King's books, but this was one that I'd never got round to/bought/seen in the library/whatever. Grabbed it this morning on the way to the gym, and by the end of 30 minutes on the exercise bike I was 9 months through the 12 chapters. The thing is short! Finished it just now sat at my desk. It was fun, and diverting, but it feels like it was written in a real hurry - without the illustrations it would be a good short story. And the whole thing felt like it needed a good fleshing out. Characters were sketched, then eaten. Fat virgins were mildly ridiculed, then eaten. Handicapped boy saved the day. Typical King. Odd to read a King where the 'Also by this author' list is just seven books...
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Jan 21, 2016 08:49
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fishmech posted:Originally the Cycle of the Werewolf was going to be written as very short stories accompanying illustrations for a 12 month calendar. Didn't know that - thanks. Also, previous poster (phone posting, can't see ) The Long Walk ends with chapter 18 and the words '... found the strength to run.' At least, in my UK paperback version.
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Jan 21, 2016 16:27
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BiggerBoat posted:How is the art? I love Bernie Wrightson. I have his Frankenstein hard cover. Perfectly in keeping with the book. I'll have a look again this afternoon with a critical eye, but I remember there being colour plates, and b&w illustrations. The colour plates can be a bit... gruesome isn't the word. It's a book about werewolves, illustrating werewolf attacks. The colour plates can be a little clumsy and obvious. I'll have a think, and have another look this afternoon. His Frankenstein stuff is much, much more mature.
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Jan 25, 2016 05:59
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Here you go.  
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Apr 19, 2016 12:42
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:if you ain't read A Head Full of Ghosts I can't even look at you I liked that, but much prefered Cabin At The End Of The World. yikes, that book.
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Sep 23, 2019 12:39
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nate fisher posted:Just curious does book Cabin at The End of The World play with is it supernatural or not to keep you guessing? I will say I do believe A Head Full of Ghosts would make a good movie. Cabin... is absolutely unambiguous at the end. I far preferred it to Head Full of Ghosts. FWIT. I'm a King fan and have been for over 30 years, but dammit I'm having trouble getting through End Of Watch. It's just... not good. The tech that the villain is using feels dumb and unlikely (and I know King has written about zombies and vampires, I know). And I read the first two of that trilogy and liked them, and I liked The Outsider. But I just can't get enthusiastic about End of Watch. Someone tell me that it ends well, please.
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Sep 24, 2019 07:05
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I'm p.sure that what Cell needed was either a) an ending, or b) and editor strong enough tp go, enough of the bullshit, Steve-O, get this finished. Or, you know, both. Finally ploughed through the end of End of Watch - I can't remember a King that I had such difficulty finishing. I've got Revival on the bookshelf, waiting for me, but all this vintage King chat has got me looking to my broken-paperbacked Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. ooh poo poo just checked and Night Shift has both Jerusalem's Lot and One For The Road. That cinches it.
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Nov 8, 2019 15:07
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Yeah, I like that one a lot. Is that the same collection as That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French? That story gave me the shits.
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Nov 27, 2019 15:58
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Krispy Wafer posted:Finally got a chance to watch Dr Sleep. So much better than the book. I particularly liked how it was a sequel to the movie and not the book. OK, that might persuade me to watch it, thank you. I'm in a funny place with King at the moment and have been for a while. I will still tell people that I've had more reading pleasure from King than from any other author, but... I really liked The Outsider, but hated End Of Watch, and almost skimmed that drat thing. (OK, OK, I skimmed the last 50%.) Revival has been sitting on my bookshelf for a couple of years, unread, and that's meant to be a good one, isn't it? I don't know - I just find myself reading more... I don't want to say inventive, but go on - inventive authors at the moment. (Part of the trouble is that I don't have much time to read right now.) So, Ted Chaing, Jeff VanderMeer. Plus a lot of non-fiction. Sorry, Steve. I used to be such a constant reader.
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Jan 30, 2020 06:25
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I've got a weekend to myself coming up - I might double-feature The Shining and Dr. Sleep. In fact, I think that's an excellent idea.
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Jan 30, 2020 07:00
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Best bit of the second movie was that everyone was always ragging on Bill Denbrough (including Stephen King in his cameo) for not being able to write endings.
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May 4, 2020 06:26
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I came across this podcast this week - it's recently started, and only the intro and the first episode are available. It's got some pedigree, in terms of the presenters, and while the intro episode is a bit "This is me!", I'm looking forward to the first episode, on The Running Man. The hook is that each episode a guest picks a King story and the film adaptation, and discusses them both in relation. Might be good!  Which would you choose? I'd do the film Cat's Eye and the related stories, just to be different.
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May 16, 2020 12:47
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Yikes, really? It's been day on my shelf for ages. I'll promote it to the top of the pile.
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May 24, 2020 18:17
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Changing the subject, late to the party, probably been said before, etc, but I had a moment last night, watching Doctor Sleep. I'm just over an hour in (it's long film), and there's a scene near the start (not really a spoiler I don't think) when Danny Torrance is being interviewed for a job. (Photos snagged right from the telly, sorry.)   And I knew the scene looked familiar So I checked this morning, on YouTube...  
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Jul 1, 2020 08:02
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Abra's family live at number 1980.
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Jul 1, 2020 19:54
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Oh, cool. Just read an article about the extended cut, and it turns out that's the version I watched. I liked it, as a fan of both The Shining, and Kubrick's film. We'll worth my time. Now to watch 1408.
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Jul 6, 2020 09:34
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What I'm getting from the thread is hat I should read Revival?
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Jul 8, 2020 15:21
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It's taking me a lot of willpower not to mouse-over the spoilers here. Revival is at the top of my to read pile.
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Aug 31, 2020 13:47
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Yeah, the forshadowing was very strong in Duma Key, but it didn't spoil the book for me - it's one of my favourite modern Kings. In other news, I think I'll be going back the UK (from the desert) in 6 or 7 months. When I left the UK, 20 years ago, I stored about 6-8 boxes of books in a family member's attic. And I can';t for the life of me remember what. There are certainly some King 1st eds there, and some interesting other bits (I think there's a copy of Nightmares In The Sky there, for example.) Looking forward to getting home, and sorting out all my fiction. Sorting it all by spine colour.
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Sep 22, 2020 18:39
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Krispy Wafer posted:At this stage you could probably make a Netflix or Hulu series that's just Stephen King short stories every week and it'd run for 5 seasons easy. Make Catseye again, cowards. This is your regular reminder that The Kingcast podcast exists, and a recent discussion was about A Good marriage with Kate Seigel, and it was a really good listen.
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Oct 19, 2020 15:47
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I've not tried The Losers' Club, but each Kingcast is a tight one hour. And (IMHO) it doesn't drag. They have had a good roster of guests on - mainly people involved in the film world, including Alex Winter, Elijah Wood and Mike Flanagan (Gerald's Game, Dr Sleep, director.)
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Oct 19, 2020 16:02
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I think that it's interesting to hear how other people came to King, what their origin story with him was. I also thought that the gay reading of 'Salems Lot (and some of the other classic monster films) was fascinating, and made me look at the book in a new way. The hour flies, you're right.
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Oct 20, 2020 15:35
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Darko posted:we had Nightmares and Dreamscapes which did an excellent adaptation of The End of the Whole Mess and a good Battleground (and mixed results from the other 6 adaptations). The KingCast podcast (which I've shilled before) just had a great episode discussion Battleground with Fed Raskin, Tarantino's film editor. It made me go yesterday to YouTube and watch the adaptation of Battleground. It's very good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_9TrvNzxWA Help me, thread. I've been thinking about The Dead Zone, and there's a bit in it, whether the book, or the film, I can't remember, but there's a bit where Johnny Smith is talking (about literature? To his literature class?) about a book that they're reading, and it's about someone who disappears, and it's about being a normal man who owed no one any money, and how no one would miss him. Does that ring bells? Can anyone find me the passage? I can't find it on the Amazon Look Inside feature.  Thank you!
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Jan 27, 2021 10:51
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oldpainless posted:This is from IMDb quotes That's it, of course - thank you.
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Jan 28, 2021 08:29
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Be a nice touch if the line I was thinking of was from the film and was not from the book. But that's certainly the bit I was thinking about. And my copy of The Dead Zone is 3000 miles away, in a box, in an attic. (I knew the thread would come through for me.)
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Jan 28, 2021 10:49
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Also, male violence, etc. (What was the name of the student whose arm Torrence broke?) Started Joe Hill's NOS4A2 last night and the first 80 pages flew by. Really enjoying it.
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Apr 20, 2021 11:24
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mdemone posted:but his themes have shifted toward humanism and away from nihilism (again this is a general statement and individual works do buck that trend, e.g Revival) I'll disagree with this a bit, I think. (Disclaimer - I'm having trouble finishing books at the moment, even King, and have not read all of his recent stuff.) There are bits towards the end of Under The Dome that I'm thinking of, in particular, where dammit Stevie, you didn't have to kill that character. Same for The Institute, perhaps - I think a younger King might have left the hero's parents alive. (Again, that's a book that I haven't finished.) And these bits of bleakness seem in keeping with Cujo, or Pet Sematary, for example. Duma Key chews its way through characters, doesn't it? The Outsider was a bit wrenching, after establishing the little league coach.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:29
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If people are interested, there's a good interview with Stevie on the BBC Sounds website/app, where he's interviewed by Archbishop Justin Welby. Some of the anecdotes (esp. the first one) will be familiar to most, but it mainly covers King's religious and spiritual views. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0015tpd
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Mar 31, 2022 12:29
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It's a tale of what happens to the bat.
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May 29, 2022 18:34
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Started Midnight Mass on Netflix last night, and am enjoying it so far. Will update with my vital opinions as and when.
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May 30, 2022 14:19
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For what it's worth, I enjoyed Finders Keepers, but I found End Of Watch a slog, and (whisper it) skimmed a little towards the end.
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Jun 29, 2022 10:13
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I can remember very little about Insomnia - just a few bits that might be spoilers. I certainly can't remember anything like a fraction of its overall length - on a shelf dominated by thick SK hardbacks, Insomnia is a biggie. 
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Jul 31, 2022 14:43
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I should give it another go - I'm sure it's been 20 years since I read it. When I moved abroad to teach in 2000, the school library had one (1) King, and it was Hearts in Atlantis. I can't remember that there's anything awful in it, but it felt like an odd choice for a school library in a Muslim country!
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Aug 1, 2022 16:03
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I have a friend in another country, and when we're together, we binge telly series, and then when we're apart, we have a little two-person book club, or whatever the TV equivalent is, and we talk about what we watch. We worked through (and loved) the recent TV series Watchmen, then read the graphic novel, and we both loved it. Our next thing is Salem's Lot, and I am more than a little excited. I've not read it for decades, and am really looking forward to it! There's a good Kingcast about it, I think - a queer reading of the book, a small town invaded by Europeans with their frilly furniture and antiques. I should have another listen.
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Oct 12, 2022 21:32
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Toast King posted:I think it's one of those things where you can appreciate it plenty without the context, but I'm sure knowing more adds levels to it. My partner and I watched the show (being big Lindelof fans) and loved it all. Never read any of it before or saw the Snyder movie beforehand and don't particularly feel the need to still. Last week I re-watched the Snyder movie, and it was a curate's egg - bits of it were very good. Bits were terrible. But yes, my friend (and you and yours, Toast King) would have had an unusual experience in watching the show without having read the book. My friend loved the book, so it might be worth your time, and the show and the novel really do support each other/reflect each other/echo each other. It was a great experience. And yeah, we're going to be reading Salem's Lot for Halloween. Yay!
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Oct 13, 2022 11:08
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But both of those things are (at least) partially explained in the show. But my friend loved going to the book, and seeing (off the top of my head) - the parallels between Looking Glass and Rorschach - the reasons for LG's paranoid and mental distress - the whole Hooded Justice thing - the compare and contrast between Veidt and Lady Trieu - that Veidt really does talk too much Anyway, I'll lurk again, and come back when we're reading Salem's Lot!
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Oct 13, 2022 17:59
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Dave Angel posted:What does everyone think is the best King story (novel/novellla/short story or otherwise) that hasn't been adapted for film/TV? I'd like to see A Good Marriage, from Full Dark, No Stars. I've recommended that story to a few women I know, and they have, to a man, been blown away.
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Nov 19, 2022 22:05
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