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Pope Corky the IX posted:Were King’s issues with alcohol and cocaine as well-known at the time books like the Shining and movies like Maximum Overdrive came out or was it a few years later? I don't think King was a celebrity in the 1970's. It's like, Dan Brown writes best selling novels, but does the average reader care about Dan Brown personally? It wasn't until the mid-80's that King started having a popular public personae that people gave a poo poo about. For instance the book IT had a full jacket sized photo of King on the outside cover instead of the little postage stamp photo on the inside flap. He was the product as much as the book was. So by the time Maximum Overdrive came out ('86), I think it was suspected he had some substance abuse problems. If you watched Maximum Overdrive you'd definitely know he was high on something.
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Aug 29, 2020 14:08
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Krispy Wafer posted:I don't think King was a celebrity in the 1970's. It's like, Dan Brown writes best selling novels, but does the average reader care about Dan Brown personally? It wasn't until the mid-80's that King started having a popular public personae that people gave a poo poo about. For instance the book IT had a full jacket sized photo of King on the outside cover instead of the little postage stamp photo on the inside flap. He was the product as much as the book was. Technically if you want most action horror movies in the 80s somebody was high on something.
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Aug 29, 2020 15:54
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I think the little "Constant Reader" forewords helped build him up as a persona. I read equal parts King and Crichton growing up, but I always felt like King was a real person while Crichton was just a guy who wrote books.
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Aug 29, 2020 18:23
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Finished “Revival” yesterday. Really enjoyed it. Would recommend.
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Aug 29, 2020 19:34
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oldpainless posted:Finished “Revival” yesterday. Really enjoyed it. Would recommend. What’d you think of the ending?
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Aug 29, 2020 20:00
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Ugly In The Morning posted:What’d you think of the ending? i liked it. It was definitely a hopeless ending, just being tortured for eternity but it was also a fitting ending for the book. King has his reputation for poo poo endings but imo this wasn’t one of them. Plus it would be deeply disturbing to know what’s coming when you die but you still have to live out the rest of your life
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Aug 30, 2020 03:10
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oldpainless posted:i liked it. It was definitely a hopeless ending, just being tortured for eternity but it was also a fitting ending for the book. King has his reputation for poo poo endings but imo this wasn’t one of them. Plus it would be deeply disturbing to know what’s coming when you die but you still have to live out the rest of your life I really worry about people who live all healthfully as if they were afraid of dying. Do they know something we don’t? 
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Aug 30, 2020 03:45
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oldpainless posted:i liked it. It was definitely a hopeless ending, just being tortured for eternity but it was also a fitting ending for the book. King has his reputation for poo poo endings but imo this wasn’t one of them. Plus it would be deeply disturbing to know what’s coming when you die but you still have to live out the rest of your life
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Aug 30, 2020 04:49
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Apparently I'm going to have to re-read Revival based on this current discussion. I loved it right up until the end and then I felt like it just devolved into another lovely, slapped-on ending. Guess I need to give it another chance. Unrelated, but I found that I really liked Joyland the first time through, but on re-read the narrator just hit me as a huge Mary Sue and I couldn't even finish it because it pissed me off so much.
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Aug 31, 2020 00:08
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Canuckistan posted:This is why I loved the Wind In the Keyhole. Forgotten technology merged with magic fantasy is really my jam. Anyone think of other books like that? I really enjoyed "The Dead Lands" by Benjamin Percy. King has the cover blurb: "good God, what a tale. Don't miss it!" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22875435-the-dead-lands It is very obviously and earnestly inspired by King, The Dark Tower, The Stand, and fantasy authors. It is a story about a group of post apocalyptic folks traveling doing the Lewis and Clark exploration after the world moves on.
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Aug 31, 2020 01:50
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so this is out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hO49HF9f9A
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Aug 31, 2020 13:00
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I Shot The Serif posted:Apparently I'm going to have to re-read Revival based on this current discussion. I loved it right up until the end and then I felt like it just devolved into another lovely, slapped-on ending. Guess I need to give it another chance. Kinda same. I mean, it wasn't bad or anything, but I felt that once it got going it escalated and was over too quickly. Like he just dropped a couple of pages of exposition on us, look how horrible the afterlife is, boy doesn't that suck for everyone, oh yeah gere is that Mother that I've been building up to for ages and didn't really do anything with it. A great read on the whole for sure, but the ending was just adequate. Which is a win consider it's King I guess.
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Aug 31, 2020 13:33
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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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Eat This Glob posted:I really enjoyed "The Dead Lands" by Benjamin Percy. King has the cover blurb: "good God, what a tale. Don't miss it!" I’m trying to read some new stuff suggested by this thread and just finished North American Lake Monsters and...yeah. That was weird. I’m not sure if I liked it or not. Depressing tales about people dealing with office holiday parties and werewolves all in the same short story.
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Aug 31, 2020 16:32
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:so this is out Hard to judge based on anything here, but I'm glad they're explicitly calling it a "limited series." I was worried they'd try to stretch it out into some never-ending monstrosity.
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Aug 31, 2020 17:07
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Lester Shy posted:Hard to judge based on anything here, but I'm glad they're explicitly calling it a "limited series." I was worried they'd try to stretch it out into some never-ending monstrosity. Yeah I think I took of my drink and missed the entire thing
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Aug 31, 2020 17:11
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Krispy Wafer posted:I’m trying to read some new stuff suggested by this thread and just finished North American Lake Monsters and...yeah. That was weird. I’m not sure if I liked it or not. His Wounds collection is better. It is more like Clive Barker and all the stories are related to hell. It is one of the best short story collections I have read in years.
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Aug 31, 2020 17:15
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Eat This Glob posted:I really enjoyed "The Dead Lands" by Benjamin Percy. King has the cover blurb: "good God, what a tale. Don't miss it!" Thanks for this, and for the others recommended earlier. I've got a few things lined up now on my Good Reads list, so I should be good for a while
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Aug 31, 2020 18:55
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Teach posted: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. I'd say you should start reading it now. Revival is one of his best modern novels, and sometimes feels like one of the older ones. It's a very solid book, and the ending is worth keeping yourself in the dark. That being said, I liked the ending, but I can see why some wouldn't.
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Aug 31, 2020 20:04
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Thinking about it now, maybe I was a bit harsh in my previous post. The ending is good, not just adequate, but I do feel like it escalated very quickly and he could've done more with it. Maybe it was good enough that I just wanted more of it, and that's what left me disappointed.
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Aug 31, 2020 20:33
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In "It", we learn that Pennywise has "influence" over the town of Derry, even when it's hibernating. Do you think it used that influence to keep the folk of Derry from buying and reading Bill's books? You know, just be really, really petty?
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Aug 31, 2020 23:55
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Honestly I wouldn’t be surprised if Pennywise gradually erased the Loser’s Club from everyone’s memories aside for its own purposes, but it is a lot funnier to imagine her(?) doing that to be a colossal petty dick. poo poo, that’s pretty on brand to be honest.
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Sep 1, 2020 08:23
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So, I’m about three quarters of the way through Joyland, and it’s been a surprisingly great read. Strikes me as a poignant story about being a dumb directionless twenty-one-year-old dude trying to do things right, and realistically succeeding in some places and failing in others. There’s something about the choice to go full first person, with the voice of a character who isn’t super-saturated with Kingisms, that’s very refreshing. The only annoying parts are some predictably sexist bits (I mean, you’re writing from the perspective of a horny twenty-one-year-old dude in the early 1970’s, which is fine: write lots of male-gaze and male-think for our protagonist guy, but I think it would have made more sense if the Erin character hadn’t ever reciprocated any sort of attraction with our horndog protagonist. A lot of people have been in that friend-group where there’s the one girl that all the guys have a crush on, but it makes less sense and veers into wish-fulfillment territory when that girl goes around telling each of her admirers “Yeah, I went with Tom in the end, but maybe we could have hosed and then gotten married if he hadn’t been there.” Yick. It was so unnecessary!) Also, I have family on the North Carolina Coast (my grandfather was the captain of a fishing boat out around the outer banks), and Stephen King did an amazing job of capturing the culture and atmosphere of the place. Joyland and the carnies who prop it up remind me a lot of trips to the North Carolina state fare when I was a kid, along with all the cheesy poo poo you can visit down by Myrtle Beach. Feels very authentic. It’s also a relief to read a breezy novel like this after the big brick that was The Stand. I loved the first third of The Stand, and there’s lots of good stuff peppered throughout, but it did get to be a bit of a slog. Blastedhellscape fucked around with this message at 03:51 on Sep 2, 2020 |
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Sep 2, 2020 03:48
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I just started listening to Joyland and at first thought the narrator's voice was all wrong for a King book, but it's exactly on-brand for an aimless college student drifting through Summer. I'm only about 30 minutes in and yeah, it feels like very Outer Banksish. I don't know what it is about King and beaches, but he does a good job describing them. A King take on Jaws would be good, except 2/3rds the way through we find out the shark is a wizard feeding on everyone's Ka. Also Roy Scheider is now a writer with a dark past.
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Sep 2, 2020 12:45
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I spent many summers at OBX (Hatteras Village mostly), and I really enjoyed what Krispy Wafer calls the Outer Banksish of Joyland. I remember I liked almost everything about Joyland except the main plot. I just didn't care for it when I finished the book, but I liked the setting and the characters.
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Sep 2, 2020 13:09
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Krispy Wafer posted:I just started listening to Joyland and at first thought the narrator's voice was all wrong for a King book, but it's exactly on-brand for an aimless college student drifting through Summer. Writer with a dark past who fucks a 21 year old waitress with a messed up life who falls head over heels for him.
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Sep 2, 2020 18:54
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You'd have to turn the shark into a van.
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Sep 2, 2020 19:06
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Krispy Wafer posted:I'm only about 30 minutes in and yeah, it feels like very Outer Banksish is it suddenly full of tourists from Fairfax County and locals with a psychotic obsession with the Audobon Society all of a sudden?
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Sep 2, 2020 23:31
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I've been listening to the audiobook for 11/22/63. I'd read it back when it came out, but didn't remember a lot of the details. How was the mini-series?
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Sep 14, 2020 15:17
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I thought it was decent but didn't really add anything vs the book.
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Sep 14, 2020 22:42
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OctaviusBeaver posted:I thought it was decent but didn't really add anything vs the book. Agreed. I loved the book but gave up on the miniseries about halfway through and then skipped to the last episode. It wasn’t bad but it was one of those adaptations that sticks too close to the source material so I was like “ehhhh why bother”
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Sep 14, 2020 22:57
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I really liked the (audio) book but couldn't get into the miniseries. It relied way too much on the characters being kind of dumb to move the plot along.
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Sep 14, 2020 23:22
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Ugly In The Morning posted:Agreed. I loved the book but gave up on the miniseries about halfway through and then skipped to the last episode. It wasn’t bad but it was one of those adaptations that sticks too close to the source material so I was like “ehhhh why bother” That was me with Mr. Mercedes. It's well acted and well done, but at least the first season was extremely faithful to the original material and didn't really add anything.
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Sep 16, 2020 01:10
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Krispy Wafer posted:It wasn't until the mid-80's that King started having a popular public personae that people gave a poo poo about....He was the product as much as the book was. Unless you count L Ron Hubbard's Dianetics... 
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Sep 17, 2020 12:54
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I believe Danielle Steel had a few commercials in the nineties.
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Sep 17, 2020 13:08
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I think Michael Crichton had commercials too. The 90's were a weird time. Advertising books on TV. I just finished Joyland and I really liked it. I am starting to get tired of all this shine everywhere though.
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Sep 17, 2020 13:19
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I’ve definitely seen commercials for James Patterson https://youtu.be/pjHkyvGxukY https://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/28/business/promoting-books-via-tv-commercials-and-movie-trailers-has-become-affordable.html
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Sep 17, 2020 13:42
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This commercial for Whispers by Dean Koontz is absolutely hilarious to me.
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Sep 17, 2020 13:51
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I definitely remember commercials for like a Stephen King book club where they'll send you a first edition of each book when it comes out. I'm pretty sure the commercial had a ton of clips from the movies as well, I seem to remember a clip of Cujo specifically. edit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6YXZUx99ic
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Sep 17, 2020 14:20
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Baron von Eevl posted:I definitely remember commercials for like a Stephen King book club where they'll send you a first edition of each book when it comes out. I'm pretty sure the commercial had a ton of clips from the movies as well, I seem to remember a clip of Cujo specifically. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uvpq7DDWjBQ
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Sep 17, 2020 16:38
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