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I got halfway through If It Bleeds and figured I should stop to read The Outsider first. I know I sound like a broken record but man what a great first half and what a lame second half. I wasn't expecting a straightforward mystery novel, but once it's clear something supernatural is going on, you're like okay well it has to be a shapeshifter, and then it is, with no real bells or whistles, and you have to spend 200 pages for the characters to come to the same conclusion. Does the TV show do anything interesting with the story?
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Oct 10, 2022 18:39
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There’s a bunch of scary stuff in Salem’s Lot but two parts in particular stand out for me. One is where the big crate is delivered to the house. The other is the extended description of the cemetery worker at Danny Glick’s gravesite, burying him but simultaneously imagining being stared at from inside the coffin.
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Oct 10, 2022 20:52
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Every time I re-read Salem’s Lot I always hope that Mike Royston makes a different decision when digging Danny’s grave. I have to say he also has the creepiest scene in the original movie and that is the rocking chair scene.
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Oct 10, 2022 22:05
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My recollection of Salem's Lot was how well it pulled off the slow burn and very gradual decay of the town. It was like a rat or cockroach infestation only with vampires. Not sure that's the best analogy but just the way the town slowly went "wrong" and how people reacted to it, contributed to it, became victims of it or simply ignored it was some pretty great writing and was a real page turner in spite of the methodical pace. Reminded me of the slow decay of towns where stuff like the old mill closed down, the car maker moved to Texas or the military base was no longer needed so it just kind of wound up dilapidated and empty. Except for the graveyard and the vampires of course. Also, the TV movie is surprisingly good and still holds up.
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Oct 10, 2022 23:59
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Medullah posted:If you're scared just open your bedroom window and get some fresh air, just let that air inside No, thank you, I'll just dash into the basementohshitnostairs
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Oct 11, 2022 00:13
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BiggerBoat posted:My recollection of Salem's Lot was how well it pulled off the slow burn and very gradual decay of the town. It was like a rat or cockroach infestation only with vampires. Not sure that's the best analogy but just the way the town slowly went "wrong" and how people reacted to it, contributed to it, became victims of it or simply ignored it was some pretty great writing and was a real page turner in spite of the methodical pace. You keep saying this but which one? No one is talking about the Andre Braugher* one I expect. quote:Main cast *just saying who made the biggest impression
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Oct 11, 2022 00:30
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BiggerBoat posted:My recollection of Salem's Lot was how well it pulled off the slow burn and very gradual decay of the town. It was like a rat or cockroach infestation only with vampires. Not sure that's the best analogy but just the way the town slowly went "wrong" and how people reacted to it, contributed to it, became victims of it or simply ignored it was some pretty great writing and was a real page turner in spite of the methodical pace. Eagerly awaiting the decaying opioid addicted Rust Belt update. Make Vampirism Great Again
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Oct 11, 2022 00:41
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Zwabu posted:Eagerly awaiting the decaying opioid addicted Rust Belt update. Technically we get that in the Grey vs. Pube vs. Robot sequel. Mr. King doesn't always keep it tight, to say something.
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Oct 11, 2022 00:45
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BaldDwarfOnPCP posted:You keep saying this but which one? The one from the 70's with David Soul
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Oct 11, 2022 11:07
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Lester Shy posted:I got halfway through If It Bleeds and figured I should stop to read The Outsider first. I know I sound like a broken record but man what a great first half and what a lame second half. I wasn't expecting a straightforward mystery novel, but once it's clear something supernatural is going on, you're like okay well it has to be a shapeshifter, and then it is, with no real bells or whistles, and you have to spend 200 pages for the characters to come to the same conclusion. Does the TV show do anything interesting with the story? The tv show also starts stronger than it ends
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Oct 11, 2022 12:10
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I have a friend in another country, and when we're together, we binge telly series, and then when we're apart, we have a little two-person book club, or whatever the TV equivalent is, and we talk about what we watch. We worked through (and loved) the recent TV series Watchmen, then read the graphic novel, and we both loved it. Our next thing is Salem's Lot, and I am more than a little excited. I've not read it for decades, and am really looking forward to it! There's a good Kingcast about it, I think - a queer reading of the book, a small town invaded by Europeans with their frilly furniture and antiques. I should have another listen.
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Oct 12, 2022 21:32
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Teach posted:I have a friend in another country, and when we're together, we binge telly series, and then when we're apart, we have a little two-person book club, or whatever the TV equivalent is, and we talk about what we watch. We worked through (and loved) the recent TV series Watchmen, then read the graphic novel, and we both loved it. That is certainly a take. King has been vocal about violence against gay people, especially in IT. That was not the opening I was expecting but that darn spider clown gets its hate murder on.
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Oct 12, 2022 21:47
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I have just downloaded Salem's Lot on MP3 and look forward to enjoying it on my long commute. I consider myself a big fan of King but have never read this one. I'm only really familiar with it because of Dark Tower.
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Oct 12, 2022 22:38
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Teach posted:I have a friend in another country, and when we're together, we binge telly series, and then when we're apart, we have a little two-person book club, or whatever the TV equivalent is, and we talk about what we watch. We worked through (and loved) the recent TV series Watchmen, then read the graphic novel, and we both loved it. I can't imagine watching the Watchmen (lol) show before reading the book, that's wild.
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Oct 13, 2022 00:18
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Baron von Eevl posted:I can't imagine watching the Watchmen (lol) show before reading the book, that's wild. It's so different but they're both good
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Oct 13, 2022 00:41
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BaldDwarfOnPCP posted:It's so different but they're both good Yeah totally, it's not an issue of one being better, it's just that I can't imagine anything in that show making even the slightest bit of sense if you've never read the book.
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Oct 13, 2022 01:50
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Normally I put a few books between King reads but screw it it’s Halloween time so I’m gonna dive right into pet sematary. Hope it’s scary!
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Oct 13, 2022 03:20
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I'd somehow never read The Long Walk and just picked it up the other day because, why not. Read it over a couple evenings. It's rough around the edges, especially compared to the voice King cemented for himself in the back half of his career, and it's full of King tropes (I think chambray shirts are mentioned like a half-dozen times), but it's also one of his more memorable stories. There's a lot of Shirley Jackson in how he unveils the premise (the Long Walk sounds innocuous at first, with euphemisms like 'buying tickets') that calmly sells the horror of the what the Walk really is. Major spoilers: At first I thought that whoever was left at the end of the Walk, like after X distance, won the prize; it wasn't until that story about the last two boys on the previous year's Walk that I realized there could be only one winner. Of course it had to come down to Garraty and one other, but I didn't expect Stebbins to outlast McVries. I liked the ambiguity of the dark figure. My knee-jerk reaction to it was death (or Garraty hallucinating one of the others who bought their ticket), but it's also the Prize, I think. The Prize is a dark joke because the winner is too far gone to use it, kind of an added layer of cruelty to the display of the Walk. (I think something like that came up early in the story, with McVries arguing with Garraty that the game was rigged.) Aside from that, the ending has a surprising amount in common with The Green Mile, probably best summed up with, "There was still so far to walk" and "sometimes, oh God, the Green Mile is so long". I found myself rereading the little one-off sentences that alluded to the setting. They talk about Germans bombing the east coast and having nukes, which makes it a not especially-original "What if the Germans won WWII?"-type setting, but I think King did the right thing with not making the world any more detailed than he did. Garraty's lash-out fear of being homosexual/bisexual came off out of place at first, but after piecing together the 70's fascist-state America setting I realized that being gay was likely a death sentence in that world. Which also made me realize the Walkers were probably all white. I don't think King mentions race specifically (except for the Italian with the watermelon?*) but it would make sense on account of the setting. This isn't an original idea, but novellas really are where King shines. They're long enough that he can get into some of the psychology of his characters, but not so long that he loses focus of the story and doesn't know how to end it. The Long Walk is up there with some of his best. *I may be misremembering the ethnicity of the man VVVVV Edit: You're right, I forgot about the Native American brothers. Eason the Fifth fucked around with this message at 03:59 on Oct 13, 2022 |
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Oct 13, 2022 03:21
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I think I remember two of the walkers are Native American brothers and another is explicitly described as black. I could be wrong.
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Oct 13, 2022 03:32
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Rolo posted:Normally I put a few books between King reads but screw it it’s Halloween time so I’m gonna dive right into pet sematary. It scared me with the body horror in a scene you won't see coming. The parts you may have absorbed by cultural osmosis are also horrific.
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Oct 13, 2022 03:43
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BaldDwarfOnPCP posted:It scared me with the body horror in a scene you won't see coming. The sound carries. It's funny.
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Oct 13, 2022 04:04
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Baron von Eevl posted:I can't imagine watching the Watchmen (lol) show before reading the book, that's wild. I think it's one of those things where you can appreciate it plenty without the context, but I'm sure knowing more adds levels to it. My partner and I watched the show (being big Lindelof fans) and loved it all. Never read any of it before or saw the Snyder movie beforehand and don't particularly feel the need to still.
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Oct 13, 2022 06:14
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Toast King posted:I think it's one of those things where you can appreciate it plenty without the context, but I'm sure knowing more adds levels to it. My partner and I watched the show (being big Lindelof fans) and loved it all. Never read any of it before or saw the Snyder movie beforehand and don't particularly feel the need to still. Last week I re-watched the Snyder movie, and it was a curate's egg - bits of it were very good. Bits were terrible. But yes, my friend (and you and yours, Toast King) would have had an unusual experience in watching the show without having read the book. My friend loved the book, so it might be worth your time, and the show and the novel really do support each other/reflect each other/echo each other. It was a great experience. And yeah, we're going to be reading Salem's Lot for Halloween. Yay!
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Oct 13, 2022 11:08
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Eason the Fifth posted:I'd somehow never read The Long Walk and just picked it up the other day because, why not. Read it over a couple evenings. I finished that one last year for the first time. Felt good because it was the first ever King book I attempted at like 12 and never finished the second half. I then spent like 20 years wondering who won. But yeah I really liked it. When I start rereading King it’ll be in the list.
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Oct 13, 2022 13:55
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Yeah The Long Walk is one of my favorite king short stories
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Oct 13, 2022 15:43
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Toast King posted:I think it's one of those things where you can appreciate it plenty without the context, but I'm sure knowing more adds levels to it. My partner and I watched the show (being big Lindelof fans) and loved it all. Never read any of it before or saw the Snyder movie beforehand and don't particularly feel the need to still. This is just crazy to me. Did you approach the idea that it was raining squids or "Redfordations" like it was the polar bear or dharma initiative stuff from Lost? Like another mystery box?
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Oct 13, 2022 17:09
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But both of those things are (at least) partially explained in the show. But my friend loved going to the book, and seeing (off the top of my head) - the parallels between Looking Glass and Rorschach - the reasons for LG's paranoid and mental distress - the whole Hooded Justice thing - the compare and contrast between Veidt and Lady Trieu - that Veidt really does talk too much Anyway, I'll lurk again, and come back when we're reading Salem's Lot!
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Oct 13, 2022 17:59
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Baron von Eevl posted:This is just crazy to me. Did you approach the idea that it was raining squids or "Redfordations" like it was the polar bear or dharma initiative stuff from Lost? Like another mystery box? It's been a while since I've seen it so I'm not 100% sure on some details, but the Redfordations were made pretty clear from context and I think made sense fairly early on in the show. With not being American, it took me a little bit to catch on with it being an alternate-America president + reparations but fit pretty easily after I understood what I was actually hearing. The raining squids was just a weird mysterious thing to me that I also think got a bit more explained later on, more of just a cool visual at the first appearance though. I'd absorbed very small amounts through pop culture and had very very vague knowledge of Dr Manhattan and Giant Squid stuff beforehand. From memory the show did a good job at explaining a lot of the weird things it set up, even for people with no Watchmen knowledge.
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Oct 14, 2022 04:30
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I've been watching plenty of movies based on King's books and stories on HBO lately. Seems like all the best ones are on there. I got a suggestion for "A Return To Salem's Lot" which is, as I understand it, some kinda fan fiction sequel to the original. I made it about 20 minutes. It's hilariously bad in a way that I would think King would want his name off the credits like with the Lawnmower Man but maybe he found it endearing. I switched to Dolores Claiborne and felt much better.
Sourdough Sam fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Oct 18, 2022 |
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Oct 18, 2022 07:08
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Return to Salem’s Lot is the one where they are farming animals (cows u think) for blood? I’ve seen it but it has been like 30+ years. Only other things I remember is it starred Michael Moriarty and it was really bad.
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Oct 18, 2022 14:53
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That's the one. He practically shouts all of his lines. The horror fx are pretty terrible too. Vampires just kinda smear prop blood on people's faces. The director apparently stated that he doesn't like vampire movies. 
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Oct 19, 2022 00:05
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I'm reading The Talisman and it is oh so boring and I cannot wait to be done with it. I'm up to the final section, The Talisman. I almost gave up a couple times, something I rarely do, but I resolved to see it through. I regret choosing this for one of my spooky Halloween season reads. I always try to avoid spoilers but I was desperate for something to care about so I read some goodreads reviews and lots of people mentioned the Wolf character--and he was a good character but he shows up too late and leaves too soon. Endings can really make or break a book for me. I don't know how this ends but I just don't care about anything at all. It doesn't feel like a fantasy, horror, or adventure story. It just feels like a failed experiment. I've read about 30-35 King books and this is one of the worst. It's really bloated, overwritten. No more two-author books for me for a long time. Earlier this year I read The Tommyknockers which started good, got real bad with the 40 page nuclear power rant, and swung around to being an enthralling story. It even has a decent ending for King although overall this book is also bloated. I'm glad I didn't quit though. I enjoy when King takes a small isolated horror and has it spread and clash with the wider world. Similar to what happens with Salem's Lot and IT. I also read From a Buick 8 which was fine. Lived up to its reputation of Very Okay.
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Oct 20, 2022 16:57
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I liked The Talisman but Black House was unreadable for me. Down there with Liseys Story.
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Oct 20, 2022 17:03
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If you want something that's actually spooky, I remember Ghost Story by Peter Straub being pretty good.
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Oct 20, 2022 18:20
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Baron von Eevl posted:If you want something that's actually spooky, I remember Ghost Story by Peter Straub being pretty good.
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Oct 20, 2022 22:33
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ProperCoochie posted:I'm reading The Talisman and it is oh so boring and I cannot wait to be done with it. I gave that book two shots. Once as a teenager and the other maybe five years ago and I couldn't agree more. Never finished it.
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Oct 21, 2022 00:08
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ProperCoochie posted:Earlier this year I read The Tommyknockers which started good, got real bad with the 40 page nuclear power rant, and swung around to being an enthralling story. It even has a decent ending for King although overall this book is also bloated. I'm glad I didn't quit though. I enjoy when King takes a small isolated horror and has it spread and clash with the wider world. Similar to what happens with Salem's Lot and IT. Slowly but surely the ranks of Tommyknockers true believers grow. Maybe one day we'll get a decent adaptation, since King doesn't seem too interested in revisiting this one so any semi-talented creative team could trim the fat and probably do some cool stuff with it.
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Oct 21, 2022 01:16
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Tommyknockers rules and the audiobook is great, really got me into the story on a relisten. I just finished Fairy Tale as well and was impressed - just an interesting and compelling story all around that's satisfying the whole way through.
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Oct 21, 2022 10:38
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You can absolutely count me in on the "Tommyknockers has always ruled" train.
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Oct 21, 2022 11:35
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Tommyknockers was the first King book I read, I must have been 15 or 16 but it was followed by many more because it does rule. I always enjoy King's background world mysteries, everything non mundane is always vaguely ancient and sinister. Highlights including; the ship and aliens in The Tommyknockers, the cities/utility buildings like the leftovers of North Central Positronic's and the downfall of Gilead in The Dark Tower series, more recently the world in Fairy tale (Which I really enjoyed) and even The Outsider was carried in part by this, which might be the first time I have ever really been let down by the ending of one of his books. Always feels like there could be much more written but King is stingy and it's probably for the best, doesn't stop me from wanting expansion on all this cool poo poo though.
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Oct 21, 2022 14:32
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