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That's why I rank books on a scale of "good" to "ain't". There's no room for comparison to other works, no shades of grey, just is it good or is it ain't.
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Sep 26, 2013 21:30
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rypakal posted:I had a recent massive turnaround in my understanding of The Shining. Earlier I was with King's interpretation, that Jack is a basically good guy corrupted by his addiction and then later by the Overlook. King himself was heavily into drink at this time, so this seems a natural interpretation. But after I had kids I saw Jack in an entirely new light. Now I see him as a basically abusive guy, and all the liquor or hotel do is unlease the shackles on the monster within. (Incidentally, I think this was Kubrick's interpretation, or at least the one he presented in the film.) I think I see it a little differently, I don't think Jack ever comes off as a "good guy". He is a colossal gently caress-up in ever aspect of his life. Yet, you get the impression that while he's still a gently caress up, the job is really his last chance to not be a gently caress up. And, to some degree, he really wants to make a decent go of it. He might not be a good guy, you can see that at some level he's trying to be a little bit better. The novel at least tries to present Jack as having at least some potential to try and turn things around slightly. And it is because of this, the house is able to exploit Jack and turn him into a raging, vengeful tool to secure Danny and his power for the Overlook. Part of his rage is from the fact, "I'm such a gently caress up, the house doesn't even want me," which feeds even more into his rage (Of course, he also manages to gently caress up what the Overlook wanted, which is what saves his family). Part of the horror of the book is watching Jack gently caress up, and lose that hope of ever being something different. The horror of watching every part of your life fall apart in a way that can never be repaired. The perfect example is all the stuff with the Wasp nest. He's doing his job (trying not to be a gently caress up), and uncovers the problem of the nest, which inspires all sorts of rage because it's getting in his way of not being a gently caress up. This leads him down the road of being a worse gently caress up as he starts to rant and rave about suing people and complaining about it to anybody who will listen, and he starts to get in his own way. Then he cools down and tries to do something cool for his kid. He remembers his own wasp nest as a kid and how cool it was, and he tries to bring that to Danny, in the hopes of not looking like a gently caress-up with his family. Of course, it all goes wrong in a horrible and terrifying way (due to the Overlook's meddling). While wasps in your bed is pretty scary stuff, on top of that is the horror from the realization that he's never going to get the chance to change. The horror of the wasps is compounded with the realization of what is being taken from Jack. Every attempt to try and change just a little bit for the better is subverted by the hotel until he breaks. I think Kubrick totally misses out on this entire aspect of things, andthe subtlety of a lot of this. Movie Jack is a simmering rage-monster prick the entire time. Book Jack sees the experience as a chance to prove to himself and his family that he isn't a gently caress-up. (Which he somewhat achieves at the end of the novel by letting it blow up.) Movie Jack sees it as a job that will let him write a book. He doesn't seem the least bit interested in redemption or change. The hotel doesn't take anything from Movie Jack, it just gives him permission to "Be who you are."
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Sep 26, 2013 23:19
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You know how it wouldn't be a Stephen King book without some kind of weird thing about guns that somebody didn't fact check? Like in The Stand, the guy with shooting someone with a fully automatic recoiless rifle firing "gas tipped slugs" in a recording booth? Pleased to say that Doctor Sleep keeps this proud tradition alive. Not quite the mistake conga line that was in The Stand, but within a few pages of each other, someone talks about having a fully automatic Colt .45 from WW II, and someone else has a .22 Glock Pistol. . I don't want to sound like I'm nitpicking, though, at this point looking for his weird gun stuff is like a tradition for me. Also, fairly early in the book, the scene where he helps the leukemia patient pass on was so goddamn good. There was something about the little snippets of his life that Dan saw that hit me right in the gut. It managed to be both sad and...joyful? at the same time without being sappy. ProfessorProf posted:There was also some major event that happened on October 19, 1999, but I forget what it was. Dick Hallorann's death
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Sep 27, 2013 03:42
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Ugly In The Morning posted:someone talks about having a fully automatic Colt .45 from WW II, and someone else has a .22 Glock Pistol. . I don't want to sound like I'm nitpicking, though, at this point looking for his weird gun stuff is like a tradition for me. Meh, it's easy to wank these things away with a simple "different level of the tower". Maybe Dan likes to have Nozz-a-la with his red rum.
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Sep 27, 2013 14:12
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Has anyone else noticed that King has some sort of issue with overweight women? I can think of, off the top of my head, "Gramma", several characters in Needful Things, the example of a gross overweight woman he gives in Danse Macabre, "The Blue Air Compressor" (a short story in which an overweight woman is pissed at an author who wrote a story about her called "The Pig," so he sticks an air compressor in her mouth until she swells and explodes), and other random characters. I also seem to recall him mentioning, somewhere, a babysitter that would sit on his head - maybe she was overweight? It seems like another one of those quirks, and I was just curious if anyone else had noticed this.
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Sep 27, 2013 16:40
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Sharkie posted:Has anyone else noticed that King has some sort of issue with overweight women? I can think of, off the top of my head, "Gramma", several characters in Needful Things, the example of a gross overweight woman he gives in Danse Macabre, "The Blue Air Compressor" (a short story in which an overweight woman is pissed at an author who wrote a story about her called "The Pig," so he sticks an air compressor in her mouth until she swells and explodes), and other random characters. I also seem to recall him mentioning, somewhere, a babysitter that would sit on his head - maybe she was overweight? It seems like another one of those quirks, and I was just curious if anyone else had noticed this. Ugh, and don't forget the preacher woman in The Gunslinger. I'm too lazy to look up her name right now, but she was morbidly obese and not a good person, if I remember correctly. I think that scene might also fall under the "that's not how you're supposed to use a gun, STEPHEN!" category.
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Sep 27, 2013 16:51
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Sharkie posted:I also seem to recall him mentioning, somewhere, a babysitter that would sit on his head - maybe she was overweight? It seems like another one of those quirks, and I was just curious if anyone else had noticed this. It was in On Writing where he mentioned that. And yeah, it's another one of his standbys (never made more horrifying than Annie Wilkes). But it's generally fair; the guy writes about the things that horrify him, and I can't blame him for that one.
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Sep 27, 2013 17:26
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Sharkie posted:Has anyone else noticed that King has some sort of issue with overweight women? I can think of, off the top of my head, "Gramma", several characters in Needful Things, the example of a gross overweight woman he gives in Danse Macabre, "The Blue Air Compressor" (a short story in which an overweight woman is pissed at an author who wrote a story about her called "The Pig," so he sticks an air compressor in her mouth until she swells and explodes), and other random characters. I also seem to recall him mentioning, somewhere, a babysitter that would sit on his head - maybe she was overweight? It seems like another one of those quirks, and I was just curious if anyone else had noticed this. King hates fat people, period. On a recent re-read of "It," I noticed that all of his descriptions of Ben Hanscom's size are as insulting and ugly as humanly possible even though he's meant to be a sympathetic character. There's that entire little setup describing Ben going to the candy store in the most dehumanizing, animalistic terms - again, even though King is trying to make it upsetting that he's bullied. Bonus points for how, later in life, Ben loses all of his weight by realizing that he can just eat salad - and as much as he wants! 
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Sep 27, 2013 17:58
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April posted:Ugh, and don't forget the preacher woman in The Gunslinger. I'm too lazy to look up her name right now, but she was morbidly obese and not a good person, if I remember correctly. I think that scene might also fall under the "that's not how you're supposed to use a gun, STEPHEN!" category. Slyvia Pittston. man that bit was awful once I realised what he was doing. He doesn't describe her horribly though, Roland actually feels a strange lust for her.
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Sep 27, 2013 18:03
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Yeah, I'm glad it wasn't just me noticing that. And Transistor Rhythm is right about Ben -- it was really sort of offputting. The entire "fat people are gross and (usually) wicked" thing is kind of weird. I can't help but armchair psychoanalyze it...do we know if his mom was overweight? Or is it all that babysitter's fault? I'm reading Needful Things now, and so far, one of the overweight ladies is the only person that Leland Gaunt has taunted and humiliated before selling them something: he makes her beg for an Elvis picture, keeps upping the price, then tries to make her give him a blowjob before turning her down. It was a real wtf moment. I dunno, I really like King and he does seem, from all I know, to be a decent enough guy. I just really want someone to ask him about that particular quirk.
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Sep 27, 2013 18:32
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ProfessorProf posted:There was also some major event that happened on October 19, 1999, but I forget what it was. It was January, 1/19/1999. Just finished Doctor Sleep last night and I wasn't too thrilled with it. The Shining was just so much better in my opinion. The Shining brings about such a claustrophobic feeling when you read it, which really makes it scary. Doctor Sleep is all over the place and full of stupid silly things. Sierra Nevadan fucked around with this message at 19:28 on Sep 27, 2013 |
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Sep 27, 2013 19:23
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Transistor Rhythm posted:Ben loses all of his weight by realizing that he can just eat salad - and as much as he wants!
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Sep 27, 2013 20:47
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iostream.h posted:You left out the part where he ran EVERYWHERE he went. Boy ran his rear end off and yeah, doing that while eating an assload of salad will make you lose a tom of weight, not sure what the rolleyes were for. And that eating a shitload of salad was his way of getting around his mother's mental hangups about making sure he had enough to eat. I think. I haven't read It in a while. Just finished Doctor Sleep. I really, really liked it. The plot was pretty thin (until the end and the showdown at the Overlook. Holy poo poo, Dan and Abra were goddamn tricky on that one, though I could have gone for another surprise like the ghost ambush), but I really would have read 440 pages of Dan and Abra. The character stuff was some of King's best in a longass while, and I really enjoyed Dan's character growth toward the beginning. Sure, it's King basically writing about himself, but that's what made it the perfect sequel to The Shining, really, and I don't think it would have been possible without that nearly 40 year gap.
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Sep 27, 2013 21:05
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Stephen King has weird hang-ups and keeps writing them into nearly every piece of fiction he produces?! NO!! 
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Sep 27, 2013 21:16
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In Bag of Bones he even goes off on a weird aside about Angry Little Fat Folk (his term). Not to mention the bitchy sister in Tommyknockers.
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Sep 27, 2013 23:45
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Ugly In The Morning posted:And that eating a shitload of salad was his way of getting around his mother's mental hangups about making sure he had enough to eat. I think. I haven't read It in a while. I identified so much with that as a kid, I wasn't 'fat' but I was well on my way and a LOT of it was my mother trying to make sure I wasn't starving away to nothing. It really was a hard thing to fight against and I struggle with it even now, leaving anything on my plate to this day feels utterly wrong. I actually thought that particular bit was very well done.
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Sep 27, 2013 23:48
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:Stephen King has weird hang-ups and keeps writing them into nearly every piece of fiction he produces?! NO!! He also hates queers and bitches who don't put out. Or who put out too much.
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Sep 28, 2013 20:58
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Ugly In The Morning posted:You know how it wouldn't be a Stephen King book without some kind of weird thing about guns <snip> someone talks about having a fully automatic Colt .45 from WW II, . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M1911_pistol
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Sep 29, 2013 15:12
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I just finished Doctor Sleep, as well. I really liked the character development, and I sort of fell into the book. All I could think of whenever they discussed the True Knot's unique vampirism was Dandelo, from The Dark Tower. Plus, the last scene after the confrontation, as they are leaving, when Dan sees Jack's ghostie on the Roof o' the World platform, and they blow each other kisses broke my heart a little bit. King got that part so right.
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Sep 29, 2013 16:34
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It's semi-automatic. Fully automatic would be basically some kind of .45 caliber Uzi with a tiny magaizine. When it comes to guns, King kinda just takes terms he hears and tosses them out there. Like the recoiless rifle thing in The Stand. He heard that somewhere and thought it meant some kind of fancy rifle, not, you know. A bazooka. Edwardian posted:I just finished Doctor Sleep, as well. I really liked the character development, and I sort of fell into the book. drat, I didn't even think about Dandelo. I felt the True Knot were used way better than Dandelo was, because they served as a counterpoint to Dan. He uses his Shining for good, they use theirs for evil. He sees the damage he's done with his addiction and the cost it's had to others, they find ways to rationalize it away and revel in it. Dan ends up being the one that's right in that addiction will take everything you ever had- the True Knot's addiction kills all of them in the end, between the measles and Concetta's cancer. And I agree about the Dan and Jack scene. That was heartbreaking, but I also liked seeing that at least a bit of whatever good was inside Jack survivved the Overlook.
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Sep 29, 2013 20:37
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Ugly In The Morning posted:
In my mind's eye I saw Jack Nicholson flashing his trademark bad-boy grin too. That was fun. (I can't help it, the movie has forever imprinted Nicholson on my mind as Jack)
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Sep 29, 2013 20:47
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I always see Steven Weber in the role, personally.
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Sep 29, 2013 22:25
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I finished Doctor Sleep last night and while I enjoyed it, this quote from King: "a return to balls-to-the-wall, keep-the-lights-on horror" sounds like he is talking about a different book. More of a thriller than a horror novel.
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Sep 30, 2013 08:04
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Did anyone see the Dolan's Caddilac movie? Was it any good?
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Sep 30, 2013 12:50
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Your Gay Uncle posted:Did anyone see the Dolan's Caddilac movie? Was it any good? It wasn't terrible. Worth a watch, especially if you're a King fan and you can pick out the easter eggs.
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Sep 30, 2013 13:30
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I'm nearly done with the audiobook version of Doctor Sleep and I really... don't like it.  I really wanted to, and I'm even one of those people who loves his new stuff. Both Under the Dome and 11/22/63 are soundly in my top 5 King books. Maybe it's the narrator who is ruining it for me, but I hate just about every character except Dan. I wholeheartedly agree with the poster before who said that the echoes he has of Jack's thoughts in his own mind are just chilling, especially with the way that he doesn't even seem conscious of them. In the beginning he even acts like Jack, thinking of himself as a good person but ultimately wronging an innocent little boy. Now that I've written it out like that, I think I am one of the readers who wanted The Shining II: Shining's Revenge. Or maybe I just think psychic battles are dorky
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Oct 2, 2013 22:09
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I looked at Doctor Sleep in Wal-Mart but it was 30 dollars for the drat book. They had it at the library where you could rent if for a quarter a day and I almost got it as I could have read it for a dollar or two at the most. Decided to wait until I can get it for free. Put a request on Under the Dome. I wanted to buy it as it was such a long book but I figure I could finish it in three weeks, or two if it is on hold/requested. I haven't read anything by Stephen King in a long time. I like his books, but sometimes they get a little long winded for me. I enjoyed the Long Walk.
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Oct 2, 2013 23:45
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I just finished Doctor Sleep. I liked it enough to read through it as fast as I could, but I didn't find it particularly scary and it isn't one of my favorites, even of King's recent work. I thought it had a lot of potential but did not deliver. It felt like more of a fantastic adventure novel than a horror novel, although some scenes in the beginning are scary Mrs. Massey in the bath is still scary, though not as scary as the shining, and Rose killing the Baseball Boy was uncomfortable for me to read. I was really thinking that it was foreshadowing that Mrs. Massey was going to come back at some point - maybe released from Dan's mind by Rose or someone else, and it was kind of eh that she just turned into a pile of ashes... and then Horace Dewitt ended up being so helpful in the end? Overall I didn't think that the True Knot were particularly formidable villains. They seemed impotent and on a real downslope since they killed the Baseball Boy. All of their plans seemed to be only mildly effective, and they kept dying so easily. Only Rose and maybe Daddy Crow seemed at all effective in threatening the good characters, and even then, they were easily outwitted for all the talk of the amazing power of the True. Did it ever explain why only now they became susceptible to disease?. Also, the full auto 1911 and Glock .22 were worth an eye roll. I don't understand why King or his editor doesn't take five minutes to fact check. Do those things usually get fixed in subsequent editions?
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Oct 2, 2013 23:58
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Pendergast posted:I looked at Doctor Sleep in Wal-Mart but it was 30 dollars for the drat book. Man, it was so rad when Amazon and Wal-Mart's dick-waving contest meant that Under the Dome retailed for $10 hardcover when it came out. I almost never buy books, let alone hardcover ones, but I was all over that poo poo.
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Oct 2, 2013 23:59
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Pendergast posted:They had it at the library where you could rent if for a quarter a day
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Oct 3, 2013 00:00
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iostream.h posted:Whafuck is this happy horseshit? Some libraries do that on popular new releases. It is to increase turnover so that waiting lists don't become years long at 2 weeks per patron. edit: Now that I think about it, the places that I have seen do this had a few normal free copies (with incredibly long waiting lists) and a few paid copies which turn over a lot faster. withak fucked around with this message at 00:30 on Oct 3, 2013 |
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Oct 3, 2013 00:03
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It's also a great way to raise funds for the library. Same reason why a lot of libraries will let you borrow videos that have been there for 20 years for free but if the library gets in any kind of recent release it'll be in a paid tier for a while.
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Oct 3, 2013 00:25
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Huh, never heard of such a thing which is weird, because my sister is a librarian and we discuss library politics a LOT.
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Oct 3, 2013 00:48
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Four Finger Wu posted:
I got the impression that the process of bringing someone into the True Knot involves giving them a fraction of their power, and as it gets further divided, it gets weaker and weaker. That's just what I was thinking during that scene where they were bringing Andi into the fold, but I haven't re-read it so I'm not sure. It also fits with the nature of it being a corrupted Shining and the opposite of what Dan and Dick did. Each of them educated a pupil, and each one was stronger than the last. The Knot? Every man for themselves, and they grow weaker as time goes on. There's also a mention of less steam to go around, so maybe it's a mix of dividing their power and malnutrution. King sure does love his impotent villains, though.
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Oct 3, 2013 02:48
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Finally finished Salem's Lot, rather unexpectedly because my Kindle told me I was only 80% of the way through. However it has an addition at the end "One for the road", that's the short story right? Anyways on the ending How could Jimmy be so stupid as to go to Eva's without Ben, I just don't get it. What a sad way for him to die though 
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Oct 3, 2013 18:35
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Dr. Sleep talk (spoilers) (sorry for the block): Not bad. Not great, either, and--tonally, at least--not a sequel to The Shining at all. I agree with everyone saying it's more of a thriller than a horror novel. Dan's a good character, and I liked it when the focus was on him--those early chapters, when Dan's hitting rock bottom (Canny), are King at his best: writing about flawed people whose worst enemy is themselves. But everything else I could take or leave. I liked the Abra/Dan - Dan/Hallorann parallels, but the True Knot were a bunch of clowns who were ineffectual at best and comical at worst. My biggest complaint is the soap-opera turn at the end where we learn that Dan and Abra's mom are half-siblings. Jack is one of my favorite characters in all of fiction--he's complex and conflicted and so much more than what Nicholson did with him in the movie version--and to have that strange retcon near the end didn't sit well with me at all, even though King tried to justify it with the "trimming the hedges" line. But it wasn't bad, I guess. Not his worst work, not his best. But it lives in the shadow of the original and doesn't really measure up.
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Oct 4, 2013 12:07
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3Romeo posted:Dr. Sleep talk (spoilers) (sorry for the block): Yeah, I agree with this. I liked the book, but that was totally out of left field and didn't really need to be there. I preferred the dynamic more when it was basically her shining seeking out his, instead of the "BUT THEY'RE RELATED ALL ALONG!". It also defused the tension between Dan and Lucy way, way too quickly.
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Oct 4, 2013 16:46
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I'm over half way through Dr. Sleep and I've really been enjoying it. I recognized almost immediately that it wasn't going to be an actual sequel and that alone let me just enjoy it for what it is. If Black House could have been like this I think I would have been a lot happier reading it and letting go of expectations (The Talisman was my ultimate favorite book as a kid). I really do enjoy King's books the most when they are focused on characters more than happenings. My favorite books of his in the last few years have been Lisey's Story and Duma Key.
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Oct 4, 2013 19:28
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Incredulous Dylan posted:I'm over half way through Dr. Sleep and I've really been enjoying it. I recognized almost immediately that it wasn't going to be an actual sequel and that alone let me just enjoy it for what it is. If Black House could have been like this I think I would have been a lot happier reading it and letting go of expectations (The Talisman was my ultimate favorite book as a kid). I really do enjoy King's books the most when they are focused on characters more than happenings. My favorite books of his in the last few years have been Lisey's Story and Duma Key. I'm about 300 pages in and I'm enjoying it too. I'm actually glad that while it follows Dan's story, its a different story than the Shining. It allows each novel to be its own book. And I've really been enjoying the more character based books as well. The goal is to finish it this weekend.
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Oct 4, 2013 22:34
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Dr. Sleep didn't even feel like a thriller to me, much less a horror story. It was a straight up feel-good story, to make no bones about it. There was never any real threat in the story in my opinion, especially since it's established very early on that even though Rose is an ancient vampire-witch, Abra can slap her around through brute force and her untrained sort of cunning. Don't get me wrong, I liked the book - but the tone is a lot different from most of the rest of King's work.
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Oct 5, 2013 08:08
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