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Just finished Everything's Eventual, bringing the total to: Salem's Lot, Cujo, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Needful Things, Carrie, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, 11/22/63, The Stand, It, Misery, Pet Semetary, Full Dark No Stars, Under the Dome, and Doctor Sleep. What's next? I didn't particularly care for the Dark Tower short story in EE (something about the setting just doesn't do it for me), so I'm not sure if I want to dive into those at the moment. In the meantime, add my name it the It reread list. 
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Dec 26, 2013 17:39
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Franchescanado posted:For anyone who hasn't read Doctor Sleep yet, or is on the fence about it, it's available on Kindle today for $1.99.
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Dec 26, 2013 19:38
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IT BURNS posted:Just finished Everything's Eventual, bringing the total to: Salem's Lot, Cujo, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Needful Things, Carrie, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, 11/22/63, The Stand, It, Misery, Pet Semetary, Full Dark No Stars, Under the Dome, and Doctor Sleep. What's next? I didn't particularly care for the Dark Tower short story in EE (something about the setting just doesn't do it for me), so I'm not sure if I want to dive into those at the moment. I vote for the Dead Zone or Misery. You need to go back to older King after a dose of newer, but you also need something with less of a buildup over hundreds of pages, so that knocks out The Stand and The Shining. Also, too many short stories in a row, at least for me, makes them feel like they're running together and nondistinct.
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Dec 26, 2013 20:52
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No, I meant I've read all of those already.  There aren't too many options left. How is The Talisman?
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Dec 26, 2013 21:00
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IT BURNS posted:No, I meant I've read all of those already. loving superb. I would have said read Duma Key (semi-seriously) but no, read The Talisman.
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Dec 26, 2013 21:03
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IT BURNS posted:No, I meant I've read all of those already. The Talisman is one of my favorite King novels.
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Dec 26, 2013 21:08
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IT BURNS posted:No, I meant I've read all of those already. Definitely Firestarter edit: I mean you should read the Talisman too, but Firestarter is one of my favorite early books of his. also, I know there are mixed feelings here on this, but I think Tommyknockers is worth the read for its sheer King-like weirdness. Pheeets fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Dec 26, 2013 |
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Dec 26, 2013 22:00
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Pheeets posted:Definitely Firestarter I was worried you were going against The Book of Good Farming but then you edited your post and it was good.
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Dec 26, 2013 23:04
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Franchescanado posted:For anyone who hasn't read Doctor Sleep yet, or is on the fence about it, it's available on Kindle today for $1.99. Looks like The Shining is also $1.99 on the Kindle right now.
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Dec 26, 2013 23:50
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Gary the Llama posted:Looks like The Shining is also $1.99 on the Kindle right now. I think that's been a month long deal, because it's been up there for a while. I would have mentioned it, but the Doctor Sleep chat kinda ended a month ago and everyone's on IT, so I figured why bother. Also, there's now an Amazon page for his new book Mr. Mercedes. Sounds like a Dean Koontz novel. I dunno how I feel about it.
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Dec 26, 2013 23:58
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The Berzerker posted:I finished my re-read last night. Once again, I kept coming across parts of the book that I had completely forgotten existed.
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Dec 27, 2013 02:11
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IT seems a rarity among King novels because not only do we get a viewpoint from Evil, we get a relatively happy ending. The bad thing is killed, two of the protagonists find love, and Audra's recovery is so goddamn hopeful.
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Dec 27, 2013 05:17
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IT also seems somewhat unusual in that the main characters very actively try to confront and exorcise the evil force. Usually it seems like in a King book the characters will simply be trapped in a setting or situation and then they'll have to deal with the evil as best they can, often without all that much success. In IT the characters all reach a point early in the narrative where they consciously choose to confront Pennywise in the hopes of destroying him. That's a bit unusual. Sure there are other King books where at some point the surviving characters decide to fight back around the end of the novel but I can't think of many other King books I've read outside the Dark Tower series where right from the beginning the focus of the book is on the characters consciously trying to defeat an evil force rather than merely be victimized by it.
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Dec 27, 2013 06:47
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The main dude from Christine is pretty much trying to stop it from the start I'd argue.
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Dec 27, 2013 08:16
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Christine is so great. It totally captures that feeling of you and your best childhood friend growing apart as you become adults, only you're growing apart because of an evil mind-controlling car that kills people.
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Dec 27, 2013 13:00
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...of SCIENCE! posted:Christine is so great. It totally captures that feeling of you and your best childhood friend growing apart as you become adults, only you're growing apart because of an evil mind-controlling car that kills people. Spoilers, the car is an allegory for a woman. IT is an early example of women who are strong being connected to physical and sexual abuse. It moved away from some of the more overt sexism of his earlier work, but this new angle I find even more problematic
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Dec 27, 2013 13:47
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^burtle posted:The main dude from Christine is pretty much trying to stop it from the start I'd argue. Interestingly enough isn't there actually a cameo from Christine in IT?
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Dec 27, 2013 14:16
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Is there a list somewhere of all the monsters IT appears as? Cuz its a shitload of monsters but it never seems like overkill, like "oh another monster gimme a break  "e:^^^^ Yes when Belch picks up Henry
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Dec 27, 2013 14:26
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Cross-posting from the DIY Christmas Thread:Dienes posted:I made a Stephen King charm bracelet for my mom, who has an unhealthy obsession with the author.
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Dec 27, 2013 14:51
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rypakal posted:Spoilers, the car is an allegory for a woman. The avant beating sex-scene with Bev and chubby hubby was horrifying on so many levels. Does it mean King is being misogynist, or am I? Did she have multiple orgasms after being "put in her place" and why was it rude for him to ask how many times? That darn guy (King) is breaking all the bounds of propriety, politeness and political correctness. After all, women sometimes climax while being raped. That book is just nasty on so many levels. I say this having known a couple of women who were torn apart by IT. Self-destructive but also very empowered later on, but also still filled with love for their dads. This terrible post is dedicated to redacted and redacted. How did you learn to forgive being forced onto the streets by daddy fiddler or being beaten and tied to a tree and then repeatedly raped?  I'm waiting for your call, Mike.
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Dec 27, 2013 15:08
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Dienes posted:Cross-posting from the DIY Christmas Thread: That is amazing and I must have one.
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Dec 27, 2013 15:08
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syscall girl posted:The avant beating sex-scene with Bev and chubby hubby was horrifying on so many levels. Does it mean King is being misogynist, or am I? Did she have multiple orgasms after being "put in her place" and why was it rude for him to ask how many times? That darn guy (King) is breaking all the bounds of propriety, politeness and political correctness. After all, women sometimes climax while being raped. Thing is, that scene sort of paints Tom as an unreliable narrator. As someone pointed out upthread, notice how Bev regains her agency as soon as the narrative flips around to her point of view. It's difficult to tell how much Tom is making up to justify to himself what he's doing.
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Dec 27, 2013 16:21
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Bev regains her agency, but she's still a victim, which is an uncomfortably common theme in King's work. One day I'm going to make a list, but the number of strong, capable women in his fiction who are not victims of rape is incredibly small. But to be fair to Stephen King, Joss Whedon has the same problem.
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Dec 27, 2013 16:41
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IT is about people strengthened via adversity to defeat the devil, only to make a deal with the devil, with a catch. The Devil granted them fame and wealth to leave him alone, but the caveat was that they would naturally be drawn to the same lives that they had before and have to deal with the same adversity from that point on. Bev got strength from overcoming her abuse, but the catch was that she was drawn to that same abuse in a husband (the sexual attraction to it being the key to actually making him her husband), Bill was haunted by the same nightmares of his brother and expressed it through his novels over and over again. Eddie married his mom. Ben may have replaced gluttony with alcoholism. It took them rescinding that deal and going to face the devil again that allowed them to break free of their demons once and for all.
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Dec 27, 2013 16:50
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Venusian Weasel posted:Thing is, that scene sort of paints Tom as an unreliable narrator. As someone pointed out upthread, notice how Bev regains her agency as soon as the narrative flips around to her point of view. It's difficult to tell how much Tom is making up to justify to himself what he's doing. Yeah that post was brilliant. Hence my interrogatives. I could go on about these subjects but e/n.
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Dec 27, 2013 16:52
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Hmmm. It's funny - I never really much bother to psychoanalyze King's work that much, probably for a number of reasons. I would no more think of psychoanalyzing a good Stephen King Novel from the '80s than I would.... I don't know, the Evil Dead movies, or something. You can do it if you want to, but to some degree it strikes me as missing the point. The first Evil Dead movie especially always struck me as the filmic equivalent of early Stephen King in a lot of ways - and I believe King was an early champion of that movie. (I like the first Evil Dead a lot more than the next two). Maybe I am wrong though, certainly plenty of King's work is worthy of psychoanalysis, but plenty of it isn't, too. Anyway! I just sort of feel like a book like IT works best on visceral terms, read as pulp and enjoyed as such. I don't read it closely because I don't expect it to stand up to very close scrutiny through and through and I don't want to see the cracks, so to speak. The Bev and Tom stuff is a really great example - that entire subplot makes me so uncomfortable and I don't want to read it or hear it because I don't like the implications, even the "point" that King is making seems icky. The whole thing feels icky, through and through, moreso than the rest; and this is a book about a monster that terrorizes and mutilates and murders small children! King is great at a lot of things, and I've always felt his books were best read at a bit of a run, so to speak, because it hides his flaws and accentuates his strengths - even in his best novels. Perhaps especially in his best novels. I always felt that this was one of the foremost reasons why his work adapts so drat well to film. edit: vvv sorry I fiddle with my posts too long and you caught me mid-fiddling!! The funny thing is I also stuttered as a kid, like Bill. So maybe you're right! kaworu fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Dec 27, 2013 |
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Dec 27, 2013 17:09
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kaworu posted:Hmmm. It's funny - I never really much bother to psychoanalyze King's work that much, probably for a number of reasons. I would no more think of psychoanalyzing a good Stephen King Novel from the '80s than I would.... I don't know, the Evil Dead movies, or something. You can do it if you want to, but to some degree it strikes me as missing the point. The first Evil Dead movie especially always struck me as the filmic equivalent of early Stephen King in a lot of ways - and I believe King was an early champion of that movie. (I like the first Evil Dead a lot more than the next two). Are you quoting Bill talking about his college writing course?
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Dec 27, 2013 17:16
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I'm not trying to psychoanalyze King. I flat out think he believes women have to be raped to gain power. I would never dare to try to find out why. Bill's whole college creative writing experience is so hilariously bad. I've always assumed that it's something King wishes he had done in his creative writing courses when the bullshit got too deep (which it does. That part is right). I think King is like most good writers: the deep meaning and allegory are side effects of good storytelling, not the intent. "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done so since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence. I much prefer history – true or feigned– with its varied applicability to the thought and experience of readers. I think that many confuse applicability with allegory, but the one resides in the freedom of the reader, and the other in the purposed domination of the author." - J. R. R. Tolkien
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Dec 27, 2013 20:05
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I don't really think you need to 'psychoanalyze' King to recognize that IT is a book that deals with childhood trauma and the way that our childhood experiences exert a huge influence over our adult lives long after we've forgotten the specific experiences themselves. I agree that King's primary purpose in writing IT was just to tell a good yarn, and he makes that very explicit by having an early passage in the book where Bill makes says "Why does a story have to be socio-anything?Politics... culture... history... aren't those natural ingredients in any story, if it's told well? ... can't you guys just let a story be a story?" All the same I think its very clear that in the case of IT the dialectical relationship between childhood and adulthood, and the particular role that imagination plays, are obviously crucial ingredients to the story. We don't need to agonize over the question of what the exact "meaning" of this or that passage might be but on the whole this is clearly a book that deals with those themes and which has a great deal to say about them.
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Dec 27, 2013 20:31
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Helsing posted:I don't really think you need to 'psychoanalyze' King to recognize that IT is a book that deals with childhood trauma and the way that our childhood experiences exert a huge influence over our adult lives long after we've forgotten the specific experiences themselves. I agree that King's primary purpose in writing IT was just to tell a good yarn, and he makes that very explicit by having an early passage in the book where Bill makes says "Why does a story have to be socio-anything?Politics... culture... history... aren't those natural ingredients in any story, if it's told well? ... can't you guys just let a story be a story?" All the same I think its very clear that in the case of IT the dialectical relationship between childhood and adulthood, and the particular role that imagination plays, are obviously crucial ingredients to the story. We don't need to agonize over the question of what the exact "meaning" of this or that passage might be but on the whole this is clearly a book that deals with those themes and which has a great deal to say about them. Right! Very well put. Much better and more sensitively put than I managed. All the tasty stuff so to speak when it comes to analyzing what's going on and looking at the themes and motifs is right there on the surface of IT, and King makes no secret of hiding any of it.
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Dec 27, 2013 20:47
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rypakal posted:I flat out think he believes women have to be raped to gain power. I would never dare to try to find out why. That's kind of reductive, I think. In Beverly's case, it isn't so much about being raped as it is about having an attraction to childhood experiences, both good and bad, and defining herself through them. All of the Losers do that to some extent, like Darko pointed out. While I'll agree that some of King's female characters define themselves through their abuse (Rose Madder; Gerald's Game), and their stories are about overcoming the anguish of that abuse--not so different from any Lifetime movie--the majority of King's women don't level up by taking the D.
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Dec 27, 2013 21:40
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3Romeo posted:That's kind of reductive, I think. In Beverly's case, it isn't so much about being raped as it is about having an attraction to childhood experiences, both good and bad, and defining herself through them. All of the Losers do that to some extent, like Darko pointed out. Taking the D?
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Dec 27, 2013 23:37
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WattsvilleBlues posted:Taking the D? Slang for dick, much the same as 'It' was slang for 'doing It' aka loving.
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Dec 27, 2013 23:53
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syscall girl posted:Slang for dick, much the same as 'It' was slang for 'doing It' aka loving. Heh, I think you're just a bunch of perverts. I kid. A few weeks back I posted which scenes I thought should be in the (?TV)movie - anyone got anything in particular they'd want to see in a new adaptation? The Wrongness of Derry has been thrown about a lot, but I'm talking more of events than feel or atmosphere.
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Dec 27, 2013 23:56
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IT BURNS posted:Just finished Everything's Eventual, bringing the total to: Salem's Lot, Cujo, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Needful Things, Carrie, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, 11/22/63, The Stand, It, Misery, Pet Semetary, Full Dark No Stars, Under the Dome, and Doctor Sleep. What's next? I didn't particularly care for the Dark Tower short story in EE (something about the setting just doesn't do it for me), so I'm not sure if I want to dive into those at the moment. 
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Dec 28, 2013 00:00
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Ive tried IT,Salem's Lot,Under the Dome and given up on all of them for being slow to wind up and not being creepy in audiobook format, but finally I found a Stephen King book thats somewhat spooky and interesting right from the get go, Dr.Sleep. Nicely done, SK.
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Dec 28, 2013 01:44
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Nf3 posted:Ive tried IT,Salem's Lot,Under the Dome and given up on all of them for being slow to wind up and not being creepy in audiobook format, but finally I found a Stephen King book thats somewhat spooky and interesting right from the get go, Dr.Sleep. Nicely done, SK. Spooky? Dr. Sleep is probably the least scary "horror" book King's written in 20 years or more. Pet Sematary and It are much scarier, and Under The Dome isn't even a horror book (just because Stephen King wrote it does not mean it's a horror book). I enjoyed Dr. Sleep, but there's no real tension or fear in the book.
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Dec 28, 2013 02:16
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I think the proportion of rape and general child abuse in King's books is roughly equal to that found in society at large. Both are a lot more pervasive than most people would think. Also, someone probably already mentioned this, but the fact that IT comes back every 27 or 28 years or so mirrors the generational, cyclical nature of abuse found in families. I like the idea that King may not be making explicitly allegorical stories. As a writer, I'm all for having readers find meaning on their own that the writer may not even know is there.
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Dec 28, 2013 04:32
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IT BURNS posted:Just finished Everything's Eventual, bringing the total to: Salem's Lot, Cujo, The Shining, The Dead Zone, Needful Things, Carrie, Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, 11/22/63, The Stand, It, Misery, Pet Semetary, Full Dark No Stars, Under the Dome, and Doctor Sleep. What's next? I didn't particularly care for the Dark Tower short story in EE (something about the setting just doesn't do it for me), so I'm not sure if I want to dive into those at the moment. I'm not sure what the general opinion on Little Sisters of Eluria is, but I didn't care for it at all myself and I enjoyed the Dark Tower books themselves quite a bit. If you liked Everything's Eventual I'd recommend Hearts in Atlantis. If you find yourself unengaged by the first story in the book then skip it, but the other stories in Hearts in Atlantis are some of King's best writing.
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Dec 28, 2013 08:00
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I just wanted to say I liked how Stan's phone call chapter in It is from his wife's point of view: he's dead as an adult, so his wife has to handle that chapter.
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Dec 28, 2013 08:00
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