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The Zombie Guy posted:I just finished reading The Outsider. I picked it up in almost new condition for $2, which isn't bad at all. I thought it was great up until the protagonist’s death. Then the quality took a nose dive. I still finished it though, so it wasn’t terrible.
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Dec 14, 2019 03:52
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I finished The Stand, and really it's kind of funny how outside of the Boulder Free Zone part the book feels way faster than it's length. I do like how Mother Abigal sends the 4 of them on a seemingly impossible mission only for the Trashcan Man and God to set off a nuke to wipe out Las Vegas instead. I started the very beginning of Salem's Lot, and it had a foreword by King about how the idea came about as a modern version of Dracula using modern society to his advantage, so I think it's kind of funny you could almost completely redo that concept again since technology has been updated so much since 1975.
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Dec 14, 2019 06:52
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bobjr posted:I finished The Stand, and really it's kind of funny how outside of the Boulder Free Zone part the book feels way faster than it's length. I do like how Mother Abigal sends the 4 of them on a seemingly impossible mission only for the Trashcan Man and God to set off a nuke to wipe out Las Vegas instead. The Strain felt very much like an expansion on some of the ideas King was playing around with in Salem’s Lot.
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Dec 14, 2019 07:14
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Hulu's Castle Rock series has been really good for exploring King's works so far. It makes me wanna re-read everything again.
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Dec 14, 2019 21:25
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bobjr posted:I do like how Mother Abigal sends the 4 of them on a seemingly impossible mission only for the Trashcan Man and God to set off a nuke to wipe out Las Vegas instead. The thing is, there is no "instead" and there is no "mission". Remember, Mother Abagail didn't tell the 4 to go assassinate Flagg, they weren't going there to dump a missile down a 2-meter wide reactor exhaust port. She told them to walk. God wanted the 4 of them to walk to confront Flagg as sacrifice. He selected Stu to survive to bear witness to the miracle He was engineering. As much as the residents of Vegas belong to Flagg, so too do they still belong to God. Trashcan Man sabotaged Indian Springs so that Randall Flagg couldn't simply bomb Boulder out of existence before winter. Trashcan Man brought the nuke.
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Dec 14, 2019 22:10
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bobjr posted:I finished The Stand, and really it's kind of funny how outside of the Boulder Free Zone part the book feels way faster than it's length. I've read it probably a dozen times and every time I'm surprised by how quickly civilization goes flush in it
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Dec 15, 2019 03:00
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I really liked the part where they had to go around to dead people’s homes to shut off electronic devices. I can’t remember if it’s a scene from the miniseries or just my imagination, but this image of blenders coming on in rooms with decayed corpses stuck with me. In retrospect it would have probably been easier to shut off power at the neighborhood level.
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Dec 16, 2019 00:28
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iirc they tried to turn the power back on for the city but it blew immediately because of all the poo poo that people had running/plugged in/etc. when they died, so they had to go around disconnecting stuff so that when they tried again they didn't blow it. I don't think it is in the miniseries but it is definitely in the book
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Dec 16, 2019 03:31
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Yeah it's one of the last things done in the book right before the bomb/Mother Abigail's return, which for some reason I thought happened earlier than it did. When Stu/Fran leave at the end everything is running fine and they've even gone to Denver to set up a TV channel to broadcast old movies at night.
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Dec 16, 2019 06:08
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Speaking of the Stand, it's been a while since I read it, but something has always bugged me. Throughout the early part of the book, when Harold is still fat, there's regular mention of his love of Payday candy bars. In fact, it's a chocolate thumbprint on a page that makes Fran certain he had been reading her diary later on. But Paydays are just peanuts and caramel, there's no chocolate at all.
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Jan 17, 2020 18:38
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Maybe it's because he normally eats paydays that he wasn't used to worrying about thumbprints, but that day he had a hershey's?
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Jan 17, 2020 18:47
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Jack B Nimble posted:Maybe it's because he normally eats paydays that he wasn't used to worrying about thumbprints, but that day he had a hershey's? Yeah, but Paydays are mentioned constantly, Larry keeps finding the wrappers as well as the signs Harold left as they head west. But this is all meaningless because there was chocolate-covered Payday at one point, so point and laugh at me.
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Jan 17, 2020 19:07
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King discussing horror with Dick Cavett, George Romero, Peter Straub, and Ira Levin in 1980. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow5LS10NcCo
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Jan 19, 2020 03:02
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Mister Kingdom posted:King discussing horror with Dick Cavett, George Romero, Peter Straub, and Ira Levin in 1980. This is an insanely good video.
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Jan 19, 2020 05:35
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Pope Corky the IX posted:Speaking of the Stand, it's been a while since I read it, but something has always bugged me. He actually mentions this in the preface to the extended edition, IIRC. They did introduce chocolate Paydays eventually, but they're gone again.
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Jan 20, 2020 05:18
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Mister Kingdom posted:King discussing horror with Dick Cavett, George Romero, Peter Straub, and Ira Levin in 1980. absolute king. love that slight mainuh accent presumably dulled by travel and speaking professionally.
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Jan 20, 2020 06:31
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Just finished a reread of Tommy knockers. Actually really enjoyed it, especially the changes to people as they become
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Jan 20, 2020 09:46
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Of all the addicty Stephen King books, that's the most addicty.
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Jan 20, 2020 10:03
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Which makes it funnier that the character bangs out an entire novel in days while in the throes of a binge
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Jan 20, 2020 10:16
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So Mrs Randalor and I watched It Chapter 2 last night... man, I hate to say it, but I would have preferred watching the miniseries again over it (and it would have taken the same amount of time to boot). The good: Pennywise was solid through-and-through. I don't think there wasn't a scene with Pennywise that was bad because of him. The final showdown with Pennywise. Seeing him actively shapeshift while fighting did a lot to amend the "well, at least it's just a 30ft spider" issue with the miniseries. The adult actors actually looked and acted similar to their younger counterparts, which is good. The parts talking about Pennywise's origin and the first nations people dealing with him in the almost stop motion puppet style were solid. The bad: The CGI was bad. I'm not going to lie, my wife and I watched the miniseries around Christmas, and were making jokes about the animatronics in the chinese restaurant scene. I would have preferred the animatronics over this. Plot threads and characters from the novel that should have just been excised from the movie entirely. I don't mind Audrey, because it shows Bill is married and they have some friction, which is fine, but Bev is in an abusive relationship that... well, she's still married to him at the end of the movie. At least in the book and movie he gets eaten by Pennywise. Plus they spent a lot of time on Bill finding his old bike, which amounts to...? Henry Bowers could have been excised completely from the movie and nothing would have changed. Honestly, if they cut out the parts from the movie they honestly seemed like they wanted to excise anyways, they prolly could have gotten the movie down to the 2 hour mark, or added in the stuff from Chapter 1 that they said they wanted to add into Chapter 2. "It can only be killed in it's true form! Its true form are the three deadlights. Oh, wait, turns out we just needed to kill the clown more." And just a personal thing, but when they said that Chapter 2 was going to go into It's origins, I was hoping we would see It interacting with the original Pennywise and why/how it chose Pennywise as its "face".
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Jan 20, 2020 14:27
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:He actually mentions this in the preface to the extended edition, IIRC. They did introduce chocolate Paydays eventually, but they're gone again. My paperback copy of the extended edition is so worn out over the last twenty-five years that it's missing that preface entirely at this point, and my hardcover copy hasn't been taken off the shelf in years. I could have answered my own question.
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Jan 20, 2020 15:05
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Mister Kingdom posted:King discussing horror with Dick Cavett, George Romero, Peter Straub, and Ira Levin in 1980. Thanks for this. Led me to this lecture which I found enjoyable. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNvw0BcO_FM Sorry if it's been posted already
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Jan 20, 2020 16:04
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Just finished a reread of Tommy knockers. Actually really enjoyed it, especially the changes to people as they become I should reread that, I haven't read it since I was in like eight or ninth grade and a lot of stuff probably flew over my head. It did have some cool bits that stuck with me, like the kid who vanished his brother to an asteroid, or the killer coke machine. Mainly I remember not liking the pacing of the book, it felt like it was about twice as long as it needed to be.
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Jan 20, 2020 17:16
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Ben and Bev would have had to deal with more than the others who could just go on as they were for the most part. Unless turtle magic would just make things work and they get a false story in their heads.
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Jan 20, 2020 20:27
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Caught the first episode of the Outsider on hotel room HBO. Pretty good! At least the first episode hews closely to the book. Straightforward, but well executed.
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Jan 21, 2020 01:56
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Pope Corky the IX posted:My paperback copy of the extended edition is so worn out over the last twenty-five years that it's missing that preface entirely at this point, and my hardcover copy hasn't been taken off the shelf in years. I could have answered my own question. huh, I may be misremembering; it's not in my epub. He mentioned it in an interview or two though: quote:I must’ve gotten, over the years, 200 letters about The Stand and the scene where the female character, Frannie Goldsmith, finally realizes that the guy she’s been with, Harold Lauder, has read her diary. Harold eats all these Payday candy bars and she finds a chocolate thumbprint in her diary. I got all these letters saying: ‘Payday doesn’t make a chocolate Payday! So there couldn’t be a thumbprint.’ It’s just one of those things that makes you say, ‘Oh my God! I went out in my underwear!’
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Jan 21, 2020 01:59
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Phanatic posted:Caught the first episode of the Outsider on hotel room HBO. Pretty good! At least the first episode hews closely to the book. Straightforward, but well executed. Is this going to spoil the Mr. Mercedes Trilogy if i I haven't already read it?
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Jan 21, 2020 04:54
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escape artist posted:Is this going to spoil the Mr. Mercedes Trilogy if i I haven't already read it? Yeah, though the even just knowing the fact the two are connected is kind of a spoiler for The Outsider.
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Jan 21, 2020 05:18
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Finished The Outsider. Interesting premise of a horrible murder taking place with overwhelming evidence pointing towards a suspect, but the guy has an airtight alibi placing him far away at the time the crime occurred. This doesn't have a good payoff and meanders over 500 pages and winds up as an excuse for King to bring back dull characters from the Mercedes trilogy. This could easily have been cut down to 200 pages, there is a heckuva lot more compelling content in Dolan's Cadillac or the Mist. Long segments have people driving to buy chicken or eating breakfast. The monster manifesting to menace the detective's wife has no payoff. For a standalone King work, the whole thing is dull and the body count is too low. Instead of planning to impersonate a strip club bouncer (for 300 drat pages), have the monster impersonate the detective's wife and eat the other detective's new baby. The detective has a son at camp that does nothing. Body snatch him and take archery practice in the mess hall. Boom, stakes are raised. The monster is a poor knockoff of It and is boring. It can shapeshift but the process takes too long and leaves it weak, wrecking tension. It has no plan and barely a history, and is happy to give up and wait in a cave for the heroes to show up and kill it, despite having the ability to drive a car and leave town. The cast is stock characters who have little to do and take few risks with plot developments coming a mile away. King has a poor grasp on the modern world and characters repeatedly express wonder at their iPads (as Rcarr pointed out), before making the final confrontation take place somewhere without cell coverage.
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Jan 24, 2020 18:06
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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. It was almost novel to see actors who vaguely looked like original actors from The Shining play those characters rather than use CGI.
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Jan 30, 2020 06:11
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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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It’s definitely worth a watch. There aren’t any digital rentals for it yet, but I got it for  from one of those download code resellers and it was 100% worth the cost. It helps that they nailed the casting.
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Jan 30, 2020 06:40
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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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I bought some Vitalis hair tonic but I haven't tried it yet.
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Jan 30, 2020 07:27
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:Which makes it funnier that the character bangs out an entire novel in days while in the throes of a binge Tommyknockers: The alien gas makes you think you're really really smart when actually you lose any kind of real emotional understanding and just become quick to violence. It causes horrible physical degradation, turning you into something hideous and new. Eventually you actually can't live without it. The only people who you want to be around, the only ones who you think understand you, are other people being exposed to the alien gas. It should be retitled "The Novel That Was Written by an Addict".
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Jan 30, 2020 07:36
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Teriyaki Hairpiece posted:Tommyknockers: Amusing that the only real addict in the book was immune to the gas. fe: Maybe that's unfair really. Wasn't he more of a problem/ binge drinker rather than an addict? I must read it again.
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Jan 30, 2020 14:50
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Teach posted:OK, that might persuade me to watch it, thank you. Revival is really, really good. You should definitely read it at some point.
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Jan 30, 2020 15:14
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tight aspirations posted:Amusing that the only real addict in the book was immune to the gas. Nah the main character is a full on addict, written at a time when King was suffering from addiction. One of my favourite characters that King has ever wrote
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Feb 1, 2020 03:36
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I’m reading Pet Semetary for the first time and the book gets really corny once Gage comes back. Like it would be much creepier to just have a soulless little kid wandering around, than have him be a mean murder zombie. Really disappointing.
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Feb 1, 2020 03:41
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A Typical Goon posted:Nah the main character is a full on addict, written at a time when King was suffering from addiction. One of my favourite characters that King has ever wrote Gard was awesome and deserved a better book. That better book could be Tommyknockers with 200 pages cut out. There was a lot in that book that worked really well but the pacing was completely hosed.
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Feb 1, 2020 11:31
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