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Soul Glo posted:As someone who had 1000s of baseball cards as a 6 year old in 1991 and whose family had/still has lots of Elvis poo poo, those two check out. Confirming this as accurate (though I was 9 in 1991).
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Jan 27, 2017 18:31
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First time I came to the US was in 1991. Supermarkets would have tons of baseball/basketball card packs by the registers, and there was a sports store in Downtown Disney where they essentially sold jerseys and cards. Coming from Brazil at that time I was confused as hell as to why anyone would buy those cards.
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Jan 28, 2017 03:08
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What a poo poo post that was by me - I apologise. I am one of the few people who actually seems to like Needful Things. I have it in hardback and as an audio book so I have read and listened to it many times. It always seemed to me that it was a podunk little town stuck in the past, so the baseball cards and Elvis photos and carnival glass made sense to me and fits in with the feel of the town.
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Jan 28, 2017 11:21
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If your antagonist is literally THE DEVIL  then there's no tension at all. (I don't care if the good guys win - I've erased the ending of that dumb book from my memory.) gently caress that invisible car. I know NT is supposed to be a satire/black comedy but other King books are funnier. The Tommyknockers is really funny in parts, covers small-town politics, etc. King keeps the internal logic of the story consistent. Plus it has characters we care about. I don't care about the playing sectarian fault lines. Seriously. There is nothing that is in NT that isn't in Tommyknockers but done better, sharper, more energetically and with more panache in the earlier book.
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Jan 28, 2017 12:42
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Robert McCammon's Swan Song is on sale for 23c. Not King, but it's a book that gets mentioned in here every few months due to the parallels with The Stand.
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Jan 29, 2017 03:23
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:If your antagonist is literally THE DEVIL Counterpoint: the Man in the Black Suit is the best short story he's ever written Also the Tommyknockers sucks
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Jan 29, 2017 08:25
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Counterpoint: You suck. Checkmate.
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Jan 29, 2017 09:38
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Counterpoint: You suck. The book is pretty good up until Gardener gets to Bobby's (particularly his binge scene) but after that it kinda seems like King had no idea where to go with the story. The murderous coke machine was pretty cool tho
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Jan 29, 2017 09:52
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A Typical Goon, you and I are not so different after all. If our lives had taken slightly different turns I could be a you and you could be me. 
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Jan 29, 2017 11:16
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Tommyknockers was my first King and thus I have a lot of fondness for it, but it is not strictly a great book outside of some isolated scenes and concepts That said, I definitely like it better than Needful Things; none of the Castle Rock books ever really appealed to me (Cujo least of all, ugh)
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Jan 29, 2017 16:37
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Closed-Down Pizza Parlor posted:Tommyknockers was my first King and thus I have a lot of fondness for it, but it is not strictly a great book outside of some isolated scenes and concepts I really like the Tommyknockers even though I shouldn't. It's weird and disorganzed. It's painful to read, especially those early chapters with Gardener, when he self-destructs (nobody does low-bottom like King). It goes from crazy to absurd to almost a parody of itself near the end. But i'll still pick it up from time to time and get lost in it. There's just enough good stuff - like that insight about talent and art, in regards to Hilly Brown, how you can't make art without talent but with enough practice you can make some good forgeries - that keeps me reading even when the story starts feeling bloated.
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Jan 29, 2017 19:07
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3Romeo posted:(nobody does low-bottom like King)
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Jan 29, 2017 20:21
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Closed-Down Pizza Parlor posted:none of the Castle Rock books ever really appealed to me Counterpoint: The Dead Zone
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Jan 29, 2017 20:44
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The talk about The Tommyknockers got me thinking of another rarely mentioned late 80s King book, what's this threads take on The Dark Half I couldn't put it down and read it in probably a day, but at the same time I've never seen anyone talk about it
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Jan 29, 2017 20:59
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Counterpoint: The Dead Zone I just read The Dead Zone a month or so ago, and it is very good. However, I was diving into fiction to escape from the news and Trump and everything that was bringing me down about all of it, and then I felt very depressed when I got to Stillson's rally and realized where things were going.
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Jan 29, 2017 21:05
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:Counterpoint: The Dead Zone I'm the one person in the world who didn't care for The Dead Zone; it felt like three different books stapled together.
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Jan 29, 2017 21:46
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Closed-Down Pizza Parlor posted:I'm the one person in the world who didn't care for The Dead Zone; it felt like three different books stapled together.  You are indeed a unique individual. A Typical Goon posted:The Dark Half It's ok as a supernatural thriller. I'm not quite sure what to say about it though it's been years since I read it.
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Jan 29, 2017 21:51
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A Typical Goon posted:The talk about The Tommyknockers got me thinking of another rarely mentioned late 80s King book, what's this threads take on The Dark Half
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Jan 29, 2017 22:44
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The Dark Half started OK, but quickly got horrible. It's one of my least favorite of his. I thought King gave away Stark too early. I think it might have worked better with the approach he used in Secret Window, Secret Garden. Alexis Machine was by far the best character in the book. I had no interest in Thad Beaumont at all.
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Jan 30, 2017 05:58
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I literally forget that The Dark Half exists most of the time. I think it's the only King I haven't re-read, ever, in 36 years.
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Jan 30, 2017 15:54
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:
You have the coma thing and coping with how life + the girl you were with moved on afterward, you have the psychic power serial killer mystery, and you have the Stillson stuff. All three fine and interesting concepts on their own, but smooshed together in one book just made it feel really tonally dissonant to me.
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Jan 30, 2017 16:19
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Closed-Down Pizza Parlor posted:You have the coma thing and coping with how life + the girl you were with moved on afterward, you have the psychic power serial killer mystery, and you have the Stillson stuff. All three fine and interesting concepts on their own, but smooshed together in one book just made it feel really tonally dissonant to me. Counterpoint: I think that the novel's strength comes from it being four separate novellas that flow into each other. If they were compiled into one, it would be a muddled ugly plot. By exploring each point of Johnny's life in linear episodes with an underlying plot following Stillson, each section has enough time to breath, be explored and end on it's own merits. Johnny is able to be born into a new situation, complete it's cycle and "die", and then repeat, until he is ready to make the ultimate sacrifice, thus completing his journey as a hero.
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Jan 30, 2017 16:32
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I just finished re-reading Tommyknockers and noticed for the first time how he refers to "that place in Virginia" that a little girl burned down, also the journalist who remembers "Johnny" who could tell things about people just by touching them. I think he's been cross-referencing his own work from the very beginning. Also, The Dark Half I always get mixed up with Secret Window, and, somehow, Bag of Bones, plus maybe a couple other short stories. It's like a story that he's tried to tell multiple times.
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Jan 31, 2017 03:45
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Pheeets posted:I just finished re-reading Tommyknockers and noticed for the first time how he refers to "that place in Virginia" that a little girl burned down, also the journalist who remembers "Johnny" who could tell things about people just by touching them. I think he's been cross-referencing his own work from the very beginning. Absolutely. The funny thing is that Tommyknockers never gets referenced in any future books. Though to be fair, I guess it's hard to set up a "normal" world in which the contents of that book happened.
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Jan 31, 2017 13:55
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I like that one Stephen King book where the guy is a cool writer, but also, he has inner demons.
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Feb 1, 2017 20:32
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Did I just completely blank out the Gerald's Game movie coming out?
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Feb 2, 2017 00:28
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Stevie says it's good. He wouldn't lie to us, would he? https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/830211848238661632
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Feb 11, 2017 13:29
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RC and Moon Pie posted:The Dark Half started OK, but quickly got horrible. It's one of my least favorite of his. Dark Half rocks if only because it introduced me not only to Westlake-as-Stark, but also Dead City. I've read two copies of Dead City to pieces. My current copy is coverless and held together with duct tape.
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Feb 11, 2017 17:40
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Absolutely. The funny thing is that Tommyknockers never gets referenced in any future books. It just happened on a different level of The Tower, that's all. I just re-read IT, and I had forgotten that Dick from The Shining was in it. There was a couple Dark Tower references I noticed too.
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Feb 11, 2017 19:42
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JohnnyCanuck posted:Absolutely. The funny thing is that Tommyknockers never gets referenced in any future books.
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Feb 12, 2017 05:30
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Casimir Radon posted:Probably because King has outright said that it's not good, and was a product of the really bad addiction he was going through right before he got sober. He's said similar things about Dreamcatcher which was written after the van hit him and he was on strong painkillers. TOMMYKNOCKERS really feels like a cry for help at times.
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Feb 12, 2017 19:34
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I do very much enjoy a scumbag Bruce Greenwood.
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Feb 13, 2017 02:08
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DrVenkman posted:TOMMYKNOCKERS really feels like a cry for help at times. It's crazy to me that Misery was released before The Tommyknockers.
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Feb 13, 2017 03:56
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Hey so here's a thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGHupqE1LCI
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Feb 18, 2017 03:52
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Ornamented Death posted:Hey so here's a thing: Oh man. I want to be hopeful, but the entire tone of the teaser makes me think that it's just going to be an entire miniseries of Stephen King doing that clunky, awkward namedrop in the worst "HEY REMEMBER THAT ONE GUY? HERE HE IS, BEFORE HE DID THAT THING IN MY OTHER BOOK!" fashion. J.J. Abrams is kind of guilty of doing that exact thing, too. Hope I'm wrong! Let's hear that there's a plot that doesn't have to do with seeing Annie Wilkes walk past Cujo on the street. Aquarium Gravel fucked around with this message at 04:08 on Feb 18, 2017 |
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Feb 18, 2017 04:05
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I'm hopeful. Though I felt a bit let down by some of the changes in 11.22.63, and this seems like the same people.
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Feb 18, 2017 04:10
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Aquarium Gravel posted:Oh man. I'm weirdly hopeful for this. I could be way off base, but there have been some re-worked story universes lately that seriously heebied my jeebies, like the Hannibal TV series, and I loved what Once Upon A Time did with classic fairy tales, although I admit I got tired of trying to keep up with so many storylines and didn't watch after season 4 of that one. Bates Motel is fantastic. The SK universe is at least as great as those ones. What if a group of really focused, dedicated writers were able to extract the best parts (the great characters, the first halves of the books) and combine them in a new way, and eliminate the less-great to awful parts (poo poo weasels, etc.)? There's a HUGE amount of material to draw from, and it doesn't look like they plan to limit themselves to the Castle Rock stories. Pennywise lived in Derry, and Salem's Lot was a whole other town. The big downside, as I see it, is that unlike the other re-worked universes, SK is still writing his. And with his tendency to throw pop culture stuff into his books, it could turn into some kind of mutually parasitic race to the bottom, where the books start to reference the show which is drawing from the books and ugh I broke my brain and can't finish that sentence. But yeah... I'm extremely excited by the possibilities. Assuming that's where they are heading.
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Feb 18, 2017 14:11
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So I'm about 2/3 of the way through Song of Susannah and everyone seems to say it's the worst of the series. I agree that it definitely has lots of problems, but for some reason I'm tearing through it in ways I absolutely didn't with the first five. S Also is it just me or was Wolves of the Calla roughly 90% pointless water treading and like 10% story advancement?
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Feb 21, 2017 15:10
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Karmine posted:So I'm about 2/3 of the way through Song of Susannah and everyone seems to say it's the worst of the series. I agree that it definitely has lots of problems, but for some reason I'm tearing through it in ways I absolutely didn't with the first five. SoS is really quickly paced - I mean, except for the beginning, it takes place over like what, a day? It's a super quick read that has some really good parts, like Eddie and Roland's shootout at the gas station, but it doesn't have a lot of weight to it. It's more of a thriller than anything. And yeah, I agree with you: Wolves was a lot of filler and most of it wasn't very interesting. (Father Callahan's a great character but his stories about being homeless seemed like they went on forever.) But it also had one of my favorite scenes in the entire series (Roland's dream about Jericho Hill, "blood and thunder tales of pretend") that I've read probably a hundred times and still get goosebumps.
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Feb 21, 2017 19:20
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Karmine posted:So I'm about 2/3 of the way through Song of Susannah and everyone seems to say it's the worst of the series. I agree that it definitely has lots of problems, but for some reason I'm tearing through it in ways I absolutely didn't with the first five. S This is the exact same thing that's happening to me. I've been tearing through the overall series in general and some of the connected books but I started SoS yesterday and I'm already over 50% through it. Definitely weird and I'm not liking the direction things are going but it's moving fast.
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Feb 22, 2017 02:46
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