Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King This is probably mildly superfluous as I've already discussed my thoughts about Pet Sematary earlier in this topic, but now you can Go here for my review, which says most of the same things I did before, just in slightly better, or at least more reviewery language, which probably means not making up words like reviewery . URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/620413/#p620413 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I agree the talisman was generally a better book, but Blackhouse had it's good points, however oddly enough my lady and I both really liked henry liden. Yeah, he's a blind radio dj with an awesome voice, however on the plus side, he is never helpless, was married, shows sartorial elegance and is (according to my lady),actually quite attractive in the way he's written. Yet for all of that, they don't do the dare devil thing of making him unrealistic, indeed I quite liked the way that outside of his perspective, people couldn't get a lot of the systems he used for remembering things like where his clothes were. By contrast, I was less a fan of Jack here. he started off realy well when he was lonely and suffering a general mid life crisis and forgetting his childhood, however he quickly becomes a total succeedinator, ), who is fantastic at everything, contemptuous of people like Fred Marshal and even tyler, and just rolled over the powers of darkness with simple ease, (the less said about his romance in this book the better). We also felt that it was more due to the authors wanting Jack to be totally awesome, that things became wy too easy towards the end of the book (despite a really horrific death). Btw, one interesting fact, when I was composing my review for Blackhouse, I ran across the article about the real Albert Fish on wikipedia, and yee gods! I never thought I'd say this, but this is one instance where King and Straub actually seemed to hold back, since the real world Albert Fish makes the fictional charlse Burnside look pretty tame by comparison! URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618948/#p618948 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Black house is one of those novels I like a lot, and dislike a lot. For instance, I love the characterization for a ton of characters - Jack is good, Beezer is good, Judy is also good in a way - but then, I have serious trouble with Henry. He grates on my every nerve almost all of the time. Fifteen percent of the time, he's just a cool cat doing what cool cats do. The other eighty-five percent of the time, he's a blind man in the hands of two guys who don't know how to write blind men, and who don't want you to forget that Henry is indeed a cool cat. I don't know why, but Henry really, really gets up my nose. I also have the sense - as I did during both Doctor Sleep and The Institute - that there is no possible way the good guys will lose, even when awful things happen and setbacks occur. In the aforementioned books, it's worse, but for me it was still present here. Just enough mystical woo-woo to make the good guys come out on top. But there were some horrific setpieces, and Mr. Munshun was disgustingly creepy, among other things. I think I liked The Talisman just a bit better, but Black House is definitely better put together on a structural level. Pound for pound, you can tell that Straub and King in the 1980s just don't quite have the same chops as Straub and King in 2000 or so. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618936/#p618936 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Jayde, yep, it's odd, the Bbc version had great acting and sound design and the events all in the right order, and was probably as good as any adaptation could be, it just didn't have quite as much of the punch, which I suspect is due to just how much in Pet Sematary comes from the way it is told, rather than purely what happens (I'll never think of the title character of the Wizard of Oz quite the same way again).On another note, Back in December I read Black house, the collaboration between King and Straub and sequel to the Talisman. the webmaster of Fantasybookreview.co.uk has now put up my review which can be Found here, he's had a bit of a hiatus in posting lately, though hopefully this was just post Christmas blues and lockdown, and he and his family are all okay.Sort of odd that my review of Blackhouse gets posted just as I'm completing one for another Stephen King novel, but so it goes, I do intend to read my way through King's bibliography, or at least most of it, and bang out the odd review where I can, and where the site doesn't already have one, albeit I'll probably have a break from King for a while and do some stuff in different genres. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618424/#p618424 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Jayde, yep, it's odd, the Bbc version had great acting and sound design and the events all in the right order, and was probably as good as any adaptation could be, it just didn't have quite as much of the punch, which I suspect is due to just how much in Pet Sematary comes from the way it is told, rather than purely what happens (I'll never think of the title character of the Wizard of Oz quite the same way again).On another note, Back in December I read Black house, the collaboration between King and Straub and sequel to the Talisman. the webmaster of Fantasybookreview.co.uk has now put up my review which can be Found here, he's had a bit of a hiatus in posting lately, though hopefully this was just post Christmas blues and lockdown, and he and his family are all okay.Sort of odd that my review of Blackhouse gets posted just as I'm completing one for another Stephen King novel, but so it goes, I do intend to read my way through King's bibliography, or at least most of it, and bang out the odd review where I can, and where the site doesn't already have one. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618424/#p618424 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Jayde, yep, it's odd, the Bbc version had the events all in the right order, and was probably as good as any adaptation could be, it just didn't have quite as much of the punch. On another note, Back in December I read Black house, the collaboration between King and Straub and sequel to the Talisman. the webmaster of Fantasybookreview.co.uk has now put up my review which can be Found here, he's had a bit of a hiatus in posting lately, though hopefully this was just post Christmas blues and lockdown, and he and his family are all okay.Sort of odd that my review of Blackhouse gets posted just as I'm completing one for another Stephen King novel, but so it goes, I do intend to read my way through King's bibleography, or at least most of it, and bang out the odd review where I can. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618424/#p618424 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King The BBC version doesn't have enough time to really let that sense of doom drop over you. It's rushed, because it sort of has to be. Agreed, though, on the sound design and acting. Gage's scream when he goes into the road broke my heart when I heard it. Also, Timmy Baterman, sneering, "What do you think of that!" I was fourteen, remember. Also listening via headphones in a house that wasn't mine, after dark, when no one else was awake. Heh. I did it to myself. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618078/#p618078 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Ah fair enough Jade, I'd certainly noticed several inconsistencies myself while reading like the name of the owner of the bull I mentioned. I'm composing a formal review at the moment so will knock a mark or two off for that, as King; or at least his editor should've done a better job there.I read the synopses for the 2019 film, and the ending sounded totally bonkers, and very schlocky horror to me. Of course, reading a synopses and seeing something done are two different things, though in the case of a book like Pet Sematary, because so much of the horror comes not from what specifically happens, but from how it's told; heck even the mention of the title of the books' third part gave me chills, I don't know how well this one translates into other mediums, which I suppose is why they tried to compensate with a bit more in the 2019 film.Even when my lady and I did the BBC audio drama last year , it was nasty, and well acted, and had a lot of seriously freaky sound design (especially in the swamp), but didn't have quite that absolutely visceral sense of impending doom and utter dark despair which the book has, and didn't give either of us the creeps the way the book did, for all it followed the book very closely. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618071/#p618071 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King No, Dark, unfortunately you're not correct on this point. I'm literally reading Pet Sematary at the moment. When the movers first come, Louis mentions them moving a double bed in. Early in the story, when Louis and Rachel fight, Louis comments that when he gets home, Rachel will undoubtedly be huddled on the far side of the bed (single, one bed) with Gage, leaving him feeling alone. By the time he has the dream about Victor Pascow, however, they are lying in adjoining twin beds. There is even mention, later on, after Rachel confesses about her sister, that Louis brings her into his bed when she wakes in the night.So nope, he gaffed on this one, pure and simple. Doesn't ruin the book or anything, but definitely a gaff.Also, I'm pretty sure the Creed family vehicle changes from a Fairlane to a Civic to a station wagon throughout the novel. I could probably pick out other inconsistencies if I tried.It's still quite a good book though. It was your talking about it that made me want to reread it, in fact, since it's been awhile. Also makes me want to watch the 2019 film version, since I hear it has a wickedly dark ending. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/618059/#p618059 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Jade, one interesting thing about both the Shining and indeed pet Sematary, is that King uses the supernatural influences to exacerbate character traits that were already there. King himself insisted that Jack torrence was a good man, and indeed apparently in the miniseries, Jack actually fights off the influence long enough to voluntarily sacrifice himself to blow up the hotel, however the in the book is rather different, indeed I suspect King protests Jack's innocence rather a lot because King recognises a lot of himself in Jack. Would jack have turned into a monster without the overlook's influence? I honestly don't know, but the possibility was definitely there, it was just that the overlook made it happen more quickly and more spectacularly. Interestingly enough on Dominic Noble's youtube channel lost in adaptation he does a pretty good analyses on the differences between Stephen King's book and Cubric's film Find it here, and one of the differences is that in the Cubric film Jack is far less conflicted, and far more obviously a nasty piece of work even before he gets to the hotel, indeed something King really didn't like. indeed, it's sort of interesting comparing the influences on Louis Creed and Jack Torrance, since King does the same sort of process, pushing buttons that are already there, making Pet sematary a monkey's paw story. That was why I didn't' mind some of the shifts, since Louis himself notices how out of character it is to do things like brow beat his wife into leaving for Chicago so soon after a death, or the way he suddenly finds a facility for lying that he'd never had, since he's recognising the influence, but not really able to stop it. Indeed, one review I read talked about the influence in Pet Sematary being like drug addiction, the adict knows it's wrong, knows where it will lead, but is going to do it anyway, then rationalise to themselves about it being a good idea. For me I think the structure of Pet sematary was more compelling than the shining, simply because everything just built and built, where the shining had it's quiet moments and occasionally nice digressions, in Pet sematary it seemed everything basically lead on. Maybe that is why I found it so compelling, it was one of these cases where I knew where it was going and kept hoping fruitlessly that something different would happen, yet it didn't. I will say there are some inconsistencies and editorial gaffs in pet Sematary, such as the name of the owner of Hanratti the resurrected bull being changed, though there weren't enough to spoil the over all book in general. Btw, I believe Jade the scene you mention with lewis sleeping in a single bed is when Elly is sleeping with Rachel after Gage's death, so Lewis is sleeping in the spare room or on the foldout bed mentioned earlier in the book, though don't quote me. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/617388/#p617388 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King It's a bit difficult with the two movies. The Stanley Kubrick version is much, much creepier and better acted, and it's relatively short and to the point. I can see why people still think this is one of the creepiest horror movies of all time, especially with the soundtrack. But I would say it uses the Shining novel as a source of inspiration rather than adapting it. This is not a bad thing, both stories are awesome in different ways, but if you have only red the book before, it might not be what you expect. On the other hand, the Stephen King adaption with his mini series follows the novel almost page by page. I felt more for the characters in this version, because they have much more time to get introduced, but it's all really not that creepy. Overall, I think reading the book and watching the Kubrick movie gives you the best parts of both worlds. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/617383/#p617383 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King In my opinion It is writen quite good. You Learn about the history of It through out the book, while learning about the main chars. Desperation was a good book to me, but a bit strange, Cujo was ok, and the lawn mower man was stupid in my view. The green mile and the shining are fantastic. Both the movies and the books. I would recomend the Jack Nickleson shining film over the other one. Much better acting. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/617364/#p617364 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I'm not sure if I said this before in this topic. Sorry if I did already. I read It and it was just oddly written. It was very jumpy and hard to follow. It had lots of good parts to it and it's an alright book but I thought it was poorly structured. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/617363/#p617363 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I read It and it was just oddly written. It was very jumpy and hard to follow. It had lots of good parts to it and it's an alright book but I thought it was poorly structured. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/617363/#p617363 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Thoughts on both of those books:The Shining: This was a book I read shortly after my brother died. I read the first half alone in a bedroom at my grandparents' house when I fell asleep too early, woke up at four in the morning and needed to occupy myself for several hours before folks got up (there was no way I was going to sleep anytime soon). There are dry bits, but on the whole, the build is relentless, sad and powerful. You know what's coming. It's just a question of where the pieces are going to fall. What really ramped things up for me was a scene when Jack is on the roof, fixing shingles, and reliving the incident that got him fired from Stovington Prep. He starts out painting himself as the good guy, dealing with an irate student, and as time progresses, even in the flashback, we start to realize that the student actually had a point, that Jack may in fact have screwed him over. I was simultaneously scared of Jack and deeply sorry for him. Wendy went back and forth for me, and so did Danny, and I confess that some of the bi-play between them feels a bit weird in places. But this book is one of King's best for me.Pet Sematary: Okay, so this one is wonderful, but it has problems. I should also mention that my first experience with this novel was an abridged, full-cast version, which I read during the summer of 1998 and which freaked me out immensely at the time. I later read the entire book, and quite liked it. Since I had a pretty good idea where stuff was going, I felt like some of the steps to get there were a little bit laborious and forced (Rachel staying away long enough for Louis to do what he had to do, her going away in the first place so shortly after a death). I also remember spotting a gaff; in one scene, Louis and Rachel are sharing one bed, but in another scene, they're in separate beds for no good reason. This is a book that Stephen himself has said he also didn't like much, because unlike almost all of his other fiction, this one has almost no redemption in it. Bad shit happens, then the book ends. Sometimes, death really is better. There's nothing more to the book's central premise than that. Still, for parents, or for folks who have lost someone close to them, this one can be a sneaky gut-punch of a novel in places. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/617355/#p617355 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay my lady and I just finished pet sematary, which I'll be writing a review for. my review of the shining can be found here.I also previously reviewed blackhouse, sequel to the talisman, which was pretty good, though not imho quite as good as the talisman, but since a review should be appearing for it soon I'll wait and just post the link to that to share my thoughts.Pet Sematary (which we finished last night), however, was absolutely fantastic! It's odd, I first read it at about thirteen and found it a bit slow, oh there were creepy bits and bits I liked, but I think I didn't really appreciate at the time just how well together or how tightly focused the hole book is. Even little details, Lewis noticing how dangerous the road is, the nasty death of Lewis' student Victor Pascow, even small bits of character like Rachel and Lewis having a nasty arguement about Death early on which you only realise later was due to Rachel's trauma over her sister. So much here was just build up build up build up, piling up all the stones until they come crashing down! And wow what a crash this is! actually, Pet Sematary is one book which is almost better on rereading when you know what's happening, since every nice moment, every conversation, even down to Elly's love for her pet cat, you recognise as another walk along the path to destruction! Indeed, I can say my lady and I were reading this late last night and I! was getting seriously freaked, not even just because of the later gore, but just because of the build, the atmosphere and because of where you know this one is going. Indeed, my lady asked to stop so we finished the final hour and a half today.Even my one criticism of the book, that we don't really learn much about rachel besides her relationship to Lewis and her children (and of course her dead sister), isn't exactly one I'm sure of, since quite honestly I don't know if this is due to King not developing Rachel as a character, or just the fact that all of the scenes with Rachel are absolutely necessary to the plot, and anything else would be superfluous. Indeed, I could well believe in this case that Rachel did! have her own friends and interests outside the home, and we just didn't hear about them because the narrative was so focused on Lewis' path, and indeed only turned away from it to highlight where Lewis was going.One blog I read on Stephen King once said some of King's real genius as an author is that even if you take away all the supernatural horror elements, you still have the makings of an ordinary horror story underneith.so, the shining is as much about the danger signs of alcoholism and domestic abuse, as it is about a creepy hotel full of ghosts. This is really true of pet sematary, since the fear of death, not necessarily of dying yourself, but watching others die runs all the way through this, as well as the idea that the bad stuff is only a walk in the woods away. It's interesting that apparently Tabetha King really disliked pet Sematary, as did Peter Straub, leading King to bung it in a draw for a few years, until he had a contractual argument with double day and needed to give them a book, so pulled it out from there, and yet this is one of the best of King's I've read! Even the ending, grim as hell though it ist doesn't feel unearned or unwarrented, since the book was always going there, indeed the hole thing has a rather appointment in samarra feel to it, but then again, it's a story about the inevitability of death, so that's entirely appropriate.So, all in all, Pet Sematary is grim, awsome and creepy as hell! URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/617315/#p617315 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, as has happened several times in this topic, I'm engaging in thradcromancy because my lady and I just finished reading the shining. This was a second read for me, indeed it was interesting going back to page 1 of this topic, since I first read the shining in I believe 2011, and was surprised how good it was. Also, my lady and I have now finally! seen the Cubric film version, which is a very good film, but a vastly different story, and also distinctly unfair to several characters, portraying Jack Torrence as a one dimentional monster, making poor Dick Halloran have far less impact on the plot (really he pretty much just delivers the getaway vehicle and gets killed), and oddly enough, missing out almost entirely on the books' ending.Okay, I loved the characters in this one here particularly. I recall King remarking in an interview at one point that his first draught of the book simply portrayed Jack as nothing but an alcoholic, abusive monster right from the start, but then having the idea of how the book would look if Jack genuinely loved his son. this for me is what makes the book truly compelling, since the Jack torrence we meet at the start of the book is someone who is trying to make good after doing some genuinely horrible things, be a good husband and father and clean up his alcoholism. Whether he would have actually managed if it weren't for the hotel's influence is an interesting question in itself, and not one with a definite answer, since even up until the end, the hotel is very much working with what is there, enhancing Jack's feelings of inferiority and misplaced hatred, indeed it's interesting that you see it try a similar thing with Dick Haloran right towards the very end, working on his own resentment at racism he's experienced , but Dick is able to fight things off. I'll also say, that usually when I don't really like the cliche of the man who has endured abuse turning into a monster, King here makes it both credible and believable, since we understand why jack goes as wrong as he does, and exactly what buttons the hotel is pushing. Getting away from Jack though, the other characters are just as complex, dick, Wendy, even Danny, all have their own forms of journey to go through. I will say, I do think King made a few mistakes with Danny's pov, since often he used language which expressed concepts that a five or six year old wouldn't know, for example when he describes clouds as "pregnant with rain", or the like. This felt a bit jarring, especially when he was showing Danny's actual thoughts, like his referring to Jack's drinking as "the bad thing." Wendy is also one of King's best female characters, particularly her complicated feelings towards her son and jack, even down to her slight jealousy at Danny placing Jack over her in his affections. I also really liked how Wendy accepts Danny's abilities, and eventually, just accepts how completely wrong the hotel is, even as she stands up to things and is pretty all around awesome, indeed while my lady has noted that several of King's early female characters become wet tissues, over emotional and constantly crying (particularly Franny goldsmith from The Stand), Wendy is not one of them. This is particularly notable given that, being literally fifty years old, the social expectations the Shining depicts obviously aren't modern, for example the way that though Wendy has the same level of education as Jack, it is he that has the major career aspirations which are derailed by his alcoholism, and it's just assumed Wendy won't have too many aspirations beyond looking after the house and raising her son. Getting onto plot, wow this one is creepy! I admit I found the focus on some of the hotel's history a bit overly dry, and unecessary, but whenever King was working just with characters and the generally scary stuff at the overlook hotel, frrom ghostly voices to mysterious party favours turning up unexpectedly, the book was fantastic. indeed, it's interesting that you pretty much know what the books' final confrontation will be right from the start, but here's it's very much about the journey not the destination. My only niggle with plot progression, is I did feel the hole "red rum" thing was a bit belaboured, given that the word doesn't appear anywhere, and while it's understandable that a five year old who barely knows how to spell would need to work out what "red rum", is spelled backwards, the fact that it accompanies visions of Danny's insane father whacking away with a roque mallet, didn't exactly make it too mysterious, indeed this is one aspect of the plot that turns up rather better in the film given that Wendy writes "murder", on the bathroom mirror with lipstick. Beware! spoiling spoilers ahoy!I really liked in this one as well, that despite the massive horror elements, only Jack torrence actually dies! It's odd, usually if in a book the author doesn't
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, as has happened several times in this topic, I'm engaging in thradcromancy because my lady and I just finished reading the shining. This was a second read for me, indeed it was interesting going back to page 1 of this topic, since I first read the shining in I believe 2011, and was surprised how good it was. Also, my lady and I have now finally! seen the Cubric film version, which is a very good film, but a vastly different story, and also distinctly unfair to several characters, portraying Jack Torrence as a one dimentional monster, making poor Dick Halloran have far less impact on the plot (really he pretty much just delivers the getaway vehicle and gets killed), and oddly enough, missing out almost entirely on the books' ending.Okay, I loved the characters in this one here particularly. I recall King remarking in an interview at one point that his first draught of the book simply portrayed Jack as nothing but an alcoholic, abusive monster right from the start, but then having the idea of how the book would look if Jack genuinely loved his son. this for me is what makes the book truly compelling, since the Jack torrence we meet at the start of the book is someone who is trying to make good after doing some genuinely horrible things, be a good husband and father and clean up his alcoholism. Whether he would have actually managed if it weren't for the hotel's influence is an interesting question in itself, and not one with a definite answer, since even up until the end, the hotel is very much working with what is there, enhancing Jack's feelings of inferiority and misplaced hatred, indeed it's interesting that you see it try a similar thing with Dick Haloran right towards the very end, working on his own resentment at racism he's experienced , but Dick is able to fight things off. I'll also say, that usually when I don't really like the cliche of the man who has endured abuse turning into a monster, King here makes it both credible and believable, since we understand why jack goes as wrong as he does, and exactly what buttons the hotel is pushing. Getting away from Jack though, the other characters are just as complex, dick, Wendy, even Danny, all have their own forms of journey to go through. I will say, I do think King made a few mistakes with Danny's pov, since often he used language which expressed concepts that a five or six year old wouldn't know, for example when he describes clouds as "pregnant with rain", or the like. This felt a bit jarring, especially when he was showing Danny's actual thoughts, like his referring to Jack's drinking as "the bad thing." Wendy is also one of King's best female characters, particularly her complicated feelings towards her son and jack, even down to her slight jealousy at Danny placing Jack over her in his affections. I also really liked how Wendy accepts Danny's abilities, and eventually, just accepts how completely wrong the hotel is, even as she stands up to things and is pretty all around awesome, indeed while my lady has noted that several of King's early female characters become wet tissues, over emotional and constantly crying (particularly Franny goldsmith from The Stand), Wendy is not one of them. This is particularly notable given that, being literally fifty years old, the social expectations the Shining depicts obviously aren't modern, for example the way that though Wendy has the same level of education as Jack, it is he that has the major career aspirations which are derailed by his alcoholism, and it's just assumed Wendy won't have too many aspirations beyond looking after the house and raising her son. Getting onto plot, wow this one is creepy! I admit I found the focus on some of the hotel's history a bit overly dry, and unecessary, but whenever King was working just with characters and the generally scary stuff at the overlook hotel, frrom ghostly voices to mysterious party favours turning up unexpectedly, the book was fantastic. indeed, it's interesting that you pretty much know what the books' final confrontation will be right from the start, but here's it's very much about the journey not the destination. My only niggle with plot progression, is I did feel the hole "red rum" thing was a bit belaboured, given that the word doesn't appear anywhere, and while it's understandable that a five year old who barely knows how to spell would need to work out what "red rum", is spelled backwards, the fact that it accompanies visions of Danny's insane father whacking away with a roque mallet, didn't exactly make it too mysterious, indeed this is one aspect of the plot that turns up rather better in the film given that Wendy writes "murder", on the bathroom mirror with lipstick. In general there's really not much to say, The Shining is just an incredibly good horror novel executed extremely well, combining humand and inhuman horror with strange visions and reality, i
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Agreed about Gaiman. Most of what he does is sort of offbeat dark fantasy, though Neverwhere is pretty dark, and I'd argue it's at least partially in the horror genre. Ocean at the End of the Lane is beautiful. Still got to get around to reading Coraline one of these days. American Gods is also a great novel IMO. I wish I'd found Gaiman a little bit sooner. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/564440/#p564440 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Lightning dragon, yepp, I've read all of Becky chambers books, and reviewed them. I was a wee bit disappointed with her most recent novella, though I did enjoy the wayfarer's trilogy as a nice, upbeat bit of fun with some interesting ideas. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/564322/#p564322 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
2020-08-25
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AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : lightningdragon via Audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King @dark, murderbot is amazing. It is a lighthearted SF book which does not focus on the science all that much. Rather the focus is more on the character and his interactions with others. I agree with you on Gayman not exactly being a horror author. But I included him due to the creepy factor he has in some of his books. I love discovering new books. I will check out the authors you have mentioned in the post. Have you read any of Becky Chambers books? She also writes character focused science fiction rather than science focus science fiction (Hard sci-fi). I really love her wayfarer series. There are three books so far and the fourth one is coming next year. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/564318/#p564318 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Rich, I have read game of thrones, and indeed all the song of ice and fire books, however at the moment the reason I site game of thrones as getting in the way of my reading is thee tv series, since as I'm having to watch each episode visually, then! listen through to the audio description, I don't really want to start a novel while I'm doing that.I wouldn't exactly class Gayman as horror, his books have horror moments, but generally his stuff is more dark fantasy/adult fairy tales than purely horror, since usually there's as much about the wonder in them as the fright factor. I have not heard of these murderbot diary books, though I'm always up for a bit of sf, albeit my favourite sf writers tend to be those who have decent quality prose and writing over good science, people like Conny willis, who basically writes time travel sitcom, David Brin, or Robert Silverberg, although not everything he's written is equal quality. The most recent sf author who I discovered is Julian May. Her stuff is very dense, character focused and probably not for everyone, but I really wish I could get more of it in audio. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/564302/#p564302 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, some thoughts here.The Institute is bog-standard King. I unfortunately neither loved nor hated this book, and got the sense that the good guys would win less than halfway through the story which sort of killed it for me.The Outsider is kind of ponderous but ultimately builds pretty nicely. The antagonist turns out to be...well, weird, let's put it that way. I think that King has fallen a little too much in love with Holly Gibney. And the thing is, she's a nice, flawed character, but King doesn't handle her especially well IMO. He's a seventy-something-year-old man with no real neuroses or mental problems trying to write a forty-something woman with a complex past and a bunch of different anxieties, and it shows. Sometimes he can write characters with whom he has nothing in common quite well, but sometimes he falls flat, and with Gibney (for me at least) it's more in the latter camp. Still a decent read, but not quite what he wants it to be.Odd Thomas...now this is a book with a whole lot going on. The criticism that a lot of the characters are "too good" is bang on, and the dialogue rings on the ear like bad tin. Seriously, folks, people just don't talk this way, and Koontz has only gotten worse instead of better at this. However, there are some genuinely tense moments, and Odd's sense of humour, while a bit strange, is also pretty fitting in most places. Even when he's trying to dispose of a body that inconveniently showed up in his bathtub, his inner monologue tries to be witty. Also, the ending - which I won't spoil - gut-punched me even though I should've seen it coming. The second book in the series is probably the darkest, but also pretty far-fetched...and the series just falls apart from there. I read the seven books, plus the interlude book, all the way through, and there are moments of good writing and imagery in all of them, but ultimately the series unravels on itself. I wish this had just been left as a standalone novel, where its flaws would've brought it down instead of piling up and killing it.Peter Straub is one of those authors I just can't get a taste for. I've tried to read A Dark Matter four times now, and I always stall. I did read Ghost Story, many many years ago, and there's some great stuff there, but I've forgotten most of it. I've also tried to read Floating Dragon a couple of times as well, but again, I forget most of it and then don't want to slog through everything. Straub does some of the more subtle horror fairly well, and his straight-up writing chops are good as well, but while I wouldn't ever say he's a bad author, I just have trouble with him for some reason. He just doesn't grab me, I suppose, in much the same way that some people gobble up certain trite romances while I just can't.I don't have access to NLS, by the way, nor any book players they might have. I prefer my audiobooks in MP3 format where I can get them, as I listen to them via Windows Media Player. Only annoying bit is if an audiobook is only one or two files, and twenty-something hours long. Skipping around is a real chore then. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/564149/#p564149 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
2020-08-23
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AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : lightningdragon via Audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King @Rich, I really enjoyed the Institute. It has typical king stuff such as young protagonist, supernatural powers, and a fun story. as for ocean at the end of the lane, it’s been years since I’ve read that book so I don’t really remember anything about it. However, I remember loving it. I guess it’s time for a reread. Murderbot diary is amazing. The stories are interesting. There is humor in the story. The protagonist is a lovable character. The space opera part is also fantastic. The first four books are fairly short so you can quickly go through them. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/564011/#p564011 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Hi.@jayde, I also want to read Game of Thrones, but the recordings that NLS has aren't the best, and they don't have the DAISY navigation features that new DAISY books have. Although some of their cassette recordings do have each chapter and part separated by individual levels, these ones don't. You can navigate to your introduction with the title, author, narrator, and all that good stuff, and your chapters are one big file. This means if you fell asleep and the last thing you heard was Chapter 3, so you go to find Chapter 3, there's no navigating by chapter until you hear Chapter 3. You're going to be holding the rewind key until you hear something you remember hearing.As for Stephen King, I've started The Outsider, which isn't a horror book. I never finished it, but I plan to get to it again at some point. Also, I want to read The Institute which is a book that he wrote in 2019.As for Sci-fi, I read the Unwind series by Neal Shusterman.Oh yeah and I also read The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. I liked the book, but I didn't understand a lot of things. For example, what happens to Lettie? Where does the guy go after going under the water?A series I want to start is The Murderbot Diaries, which is based in this future where robots accompany people on these missions, and the one robot breaks into its governor module. I haven't read anything from the series yet, but from what I've seen, it seems cool URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563962/#p563962 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
2020-08-23
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AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : lightningdragon via Audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King @Dark, I have red heart shaped box by Joe Hill. I remember liking that book, because of interesting story, flawed protagonist, etc. it’s been years since I’ve read that book so I cannot exactly recall what was the quality of the book. The other Hill book that I want to read is horns as the concept sounds really interesting. I will also check out his book that you have mentioned. I also have similar opinion as you that I do not find the Fiction books outside of the speculative fiction genre all that interesting. I have tried couple of mystery / thriller books, such as, Jack reacher, girl with the Dragon tattoo, etc. and thought they were all right, nothing too rave about. Not saying the books are bad but they are not for me. Even in the speculative fiction genre, the genre that I most enjoyed reading is fantasy followed by science fiction. I am not as well read as I would like to be in science fiction. I am working on it. As for horror, I have mainly read Stephen King and some Neil gamen stuff such as ocean at the end of the lane and Coraline. Gaiman’s work I also like. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563812/#p563812 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Lightning Dragon, I actually haven't read much lovecraft either myself, though I really should. Peter Straub is another author I want to read more of along with jo Hill. Indeed, i don't know how his other stuff is, but Jo Hill's nos4a2 was one of the single best books I've read in a long while, indeed the only reason it didn't get a review was that I finished it just as the lockdown from covid was declaired, and I was a little too distracted. But really, it was down right amazing, not like Stephen King, despite Hill being King's son, very much it's own thing and just a dam good read, indeedd I should have mentioned it earlier. As far as reading goes, myself, I don't tend too distinguish between fantasy, sf, horror and other tyeps of speculative fiction. I do mostly stay inside the broadly speculative fiction area, since whilst I've read good examples of other types of fiction, fiction that does not promise something at least a little weird or different doesn't tend to grab my interest as often, albeit I have read good examples of none speculative fiction too, often recommended by my lady, who reads crime, suspense and relationship fiction as well as the more speculative end herself. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563808/#p563808 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
2020-08-22
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AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : lightningdragon via Audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King @dark, I will check out your reviews to add more books to my TBR pile. Both Dracula and H p Lovecraft are in my list. I have heard many good things about both of them. I am especially interested in reading the Cthulhu mythos as it is one of the cornerstones of weird Lovecraft horror. I believe in separating art from the artist so I don’t mind reading Lovecraft even though he was an asshole. According to what I have read. I agree with the sentiment that short stories are better for some type of horror. I tend to listen to no sleep narrations on YouTube. They are very hit and miss for me, but I enjoy listening to them as they are fairly short. Go story by peter strob: is another book that I am looking forward to read. I mainly read fantasy and in the past year I have started to expand my reading horizons by trying more non-fantasy series/books. hens this request post. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563798/#p563798 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @lightningdragon, You're welcome. At risk of tooting my own horn, I have written spoiler free reviews for several mentioned here, including Phantoms, hill housse and Scot Sigler's infected, as well as Stephen King and various other things Find my reviews here. I'm afraid I didn't care for Odd Thomas, indeed it nearly put me off Koontz altogether, far too saccharin and full of characters who felt like the flanders family from the simpsons, however my lady persuaded me to give Koontz another try and I will say Phantoms was good. Hill House I can recommend. Even though I suspect it would've been dated even for 1959, since Jackson was consciously mimmicking the Victorian psychic investigation form of horror. If you like classics though, of course Dracula is a must read, indeed my lady and I reread it in 2018, and were surprised just how readable it was, Victorian attitudes and all. Indeed compared to Edgar Alan Poe who we also reread several stories from recently, and who we did find a bit too ponderous, even in his atmospheric moments, Dracula really stood the test of time fairly well.I've also heard good things about HP Lovecraft though not read any of his as yet, despite there being so many tributes. I'd also strongly recommend looking at horror short stories, since in many cases the short story is still the best form of horror. In particular, I recently read a 2003 collection called gathering the bones, edited by Jack Dan, Dennis richardson and Ramsy camble, with stories split between authors from the US, Uk and Australia. Yee gods! there were some fantastic ones in here, and some creepy as hell, from weird psychological horror in Gardens, to the most disturbing blend of inner city poverty and surreal weirdness in the lords of zero, to stories which show how native Australians deal with racist arse holes. Like any collection, there were some I liked more than others, but in general it's one of both the most diverse and generally best quality anthologies I've read for quite some time. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563787/#p563787 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
2020-08-22
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AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : lightningdragon via Audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King @dark, thanks for your recommendations. I wasn’t aware of Parker, siggler, and littel so will check them out. As for the haunting of hill house, that book has been sitting on my TBR for ages but I have forgotten about it. The book as well as the TV show has been well received by the reviewer’s. Dean Koontz’s od Thomas is also sitting on my to read list and I will add the phantom to it.@jade, Thanks for your recommendations.I am not familiar with the books that you have mentioned. I will definitely check them out as they sound interesting. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563779/#p563779 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Scott Smith: The RuinsNick Cutter: The DeepTananarive Due: The Good HouseThe first one has it all (slightly weak characterizations, but it's fast and it's mean). The second one has all kinds of weird claustrophobic imagery. The third one is a slow burn and probably more well-executed overall than the first two, with a more voodoo-influenced horror. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563685/#p563685 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @lightning dragon, I have read several horror authors and good horror novels, but I don't know anyone as consistently good as stephen King, since even when King produces less good stuff, it's still pretty good, where as other authors like Dean Koontz or Clive barker, their less good moments can be pretty dire. Equally though, I haven't read as much horror generally as other types of speculative fiction. I'm not sure why, its just for some reason it doesn't occur to me as often. If you want individual titles though, Weaveworld by Clive Barker is fantastic, sort of a mix of fantasy and horror, without quite as much of a consuming focus on weird sex as much of his stuff, although it spoiled me a bit for many of his other books.The Association by bently littel: yee gods? an evil housing association with completely crazy rules and overthetop punishments? It's just so ingeniously bizarre. Phantoms by Dean Koonnz: Not as sugary or preachy as most of Koontz, and with a bloody evil monster, as well as a great creep factor, completely changed my mind on koontz being worth reading, at least sometimes. Infected by Scot siggler: Siggler's is a very much one trick pony. All of his characters are ridiculously insane hardcases or stereotypes of American family life, he has way too much military worship for my liking, and rarely does his dialogue even feel real. The one trick he has though is gore! Lots of gore! and equally intensive pain to go along with the gore. Great build up before the gore, great atmosphere around the gore, and even teasing as to when the gore will appear!I can't think of many books that have made me almost sick from the sensations involved, but somehow Siggler managed it. The problem with Siggler I found, is that once you've seen the gore in one book, you know what he does, and the other aspects of the book just didn't hold my attention, however it's worth reading one of his book just for the good stuff, and infected is imho where he does the gore best, I wouldn't even recommend the second two books in the trilogy that much, since once you've read infected you've just about seen everything.Haunting of hill house by sherly jackson: okay, complete opposite end to Sigler, Here you have a subtle and complex ghost story written in 1959 with almost lovecraft style weirdness, and an intense focus on its characters. Many horror writers from Harlen ellison to Stephen King site Sherly Jackson as an influence, and it's not hard to see why.I find her short stories a bit hit and mis, going from fantastic, to funny, to weird, to actually quite dull, or mildly incomprehensible, but yee gods hill house was good! Hth. there is probably a lot more good stuff out there, but as I said, for some reason I tend to read horror less often than fantasy or sf, which is a shame. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563682/#p563682 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
2020-08-22
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AudioGames . net Forum — Off-topic room : lightningdragon via Audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King Hi, Can you guys recommend me a horror authors or books similar to Stephen King? I mainly read SFF and would like to read more horror. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563578/#p563578 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Ugh. I want to read Game of Thrones but the only versions I've got are read by Roy Dotrice, and I'm sorry, but I can't stand that guy's narration. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563433/#p563433 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Alright, my review of Duma Key is now up and posted and can be Read here. As for what King book next, we'll see. I'm doing game of thrones at the moment, so am looking around for more short story collections, so maybe it'll be different seasons or four past midnight, neither of which I need to review, though I might have a little break from King for a bit. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/563421/#p563421 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Bag of Bones used to be my favourite King novel. It's fallen out of the top spot, but not by much. I admit that it's kind of slow at the start, but I'm willing to forgive King this because character is always building. Mike doesn't strike me as prickly, and rather than see him whining about spots on the bestseller list, what I actually got from him is the understanding that he knows he's good, but not great. He only matters if the list goes up to 15, after all, so while he wants to stay successful if he can, he also knows he's not changing the world. I remember, in specific, a conversation that Mike has with Harold Oblowski, his agent, where Mike thinks of saying, "So I don't come back. So what?", or some such thing. I don't see this as a condemnation of his character. His relationship with Jo is painted with pretty deft strokes, for the most part, so I agree with you there. Kyra is a bit too idealized, I agree there too, but most of the rest of that book is pretty much spot on.Now, with Duma Key, I only have a couple of criticisms. It's a bit faster and meaner in some ways, but it's also a bit more contrived. I could've done without Candy Brown entirely, and I also wish that King had handled Wireman and Edgar meeting up a little better. The whole laugh-till-you-almost-pass-out-and-now-we're-buddies thing just feels like lazy shorthand to me. Don't get me wrong, the relationship between those two blossomed beautifully after this, but this felt like a shortcut where you get through the first 5-10% too easily, and King probably could've done without it. Some of the "how to draw a picture" bits drag just a wee bit, IMO (not the early ones), but overall it moves along well and builds to some pretty horrific stuff. Now, as it comes to the ending, my understanding is that the two of them sink the steel canister in a deep lake, then go do whatever they're gonna do. Edgar doesn't get to Mexico in time, and Wireman dies of a heart attack because life sucks like that sometimes. But because his family is shattered, he ends up going there anyway, to try and pick up the pieces. While I feel bad for Edgar by the end of this, especially due to the loss of everything just when he began to think things were coming back together again, I've never minded an ending like this because I don't feel that characters who do well have to be rewarded for it. Oh, it feels good when they do - I smiled when Mike talked to John about getting custody of Kyra one day, for instance - but sometimes, that just doesn't happen, and that's okay with me.Those two are two of my favourite King books. He gets a lot right, and not much wrong, and I guess that part of the genre is what draws me. Ghosts, psychic events, pseudo-gothic intrigue, that sort of thing. I'm glad you ended up liking both of these books though. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/560162/#p560162 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, my lady and I just finished Duma key yesterday, which is one I've not actually seen mentioned in this topic, so spoilage ahoy for that one if you've not read it.oddly enough, i'll admit reading this so soon after bag of bones was a miner error, or at least there were some notable similarities in the basic shape of the plot, guy has really crappy event happen in later life, goes off on his own to sort things outt engages in creative work. on the other hand, there are some major differencces. For a start, Edgar freemantle I found a rather more likeable character than Michael in Bag of bones, despite him also being a multi millionaire. I also found that whilst the book moves slowly, there were no points where I was actively wishing King would get on with things. maybe this is just because the way King write's about Edgar's accident and recovery was so very compelling, from his fits of rage, to his both tragic and occasionally even hollowly funny inability to get words right. Actually, the way King dealt with all of the consequences of Edgar's recovery, from what it's actually like to have one arm and a none working leg to his various uncontrollable fits of rage was extremely good. This meant that I was fairly invested in the book at the start, so by the time we started to have creepy stuff begin happening, I was already on board, and that before we got genuinely likable secondary characters. Indeed, with Wireman King does something that I always admire, and lets explanation of the strange influence explain aspects of his character we've already seen. I mean, we realise Wireman is a nice guy, but when we learn that the psychic influence on Duma key affected his talent for empathy the way it affected Edgar and Elizabeth's art, it just clicks. It also explains why this book is such a good bromance, and why Edgar and Wireman become best mates so quickly, then again, since both are lonely nice guys who see the world in the same way it's not too surprising. What I also liked in this book was the way King dealt with Elizabeth's Alzheimer's, being both brutally honest about her condition deteriorating (just as honest in fact as he is about Edgar), and yet at the same time still making Elizabeth both engaging and mysterious, indeed with Elizabeth when you realise how much she remembers of her past and how much she was trying to communicate, her story become all the more tragic. Edgar's daughter Ilse was a little idiolised, then again I can forgive that for being a father's first person view of his favourite child, particularly with the way that other members of Edgar's family tended to come off as real, indeed I like the nuances of Edgar's marriage to Pam, a marriage which both my lady and I suspect was probably doomed anyway even before Edgar's rage caused him to get physical, and yet the fact that towards the end of the book, Pam and Edgar at least reconcile somewhat. Though unfortunately that reconciliation goes down the tube's when Ilse is killed, and presumably never recovers.Another thing I particularly appreciated here, was the way that the mystery about Elizabeth's past had such a slow revelation, combined with creepy stuff happening in the present, indeed King has a tendency in his books, Desperation, Bag of bones, It, to do this huge "and here is what happened in the past!" about three quarters of the way through, after vague hints only leading up to that point. here though, he got both the revelations and clues exactly right, indeed I found myself trying to piece together what had happened to Elizabeth's family in 1927, and what actually had happened to the rest of her family. King indeed, obviously took a lot of time in this book with mysteries since there were lots of moments when he surprised me with plot twists, and yet revealed that the grand work was already there, as indeed he did with Ilse's death, indeed that hole chapter, when you believe she's safe, with Edgar struggling with his memory and the evil sketch was down right fiendish. The only thing I did find a little odd, is how little Edgar used his power, once he realised how it worked, then again, King timed things so that the confirmation Edgar could alter reality only happened just when mysteries connected to the horrific events in the past, and pottential horrors in the present were coming to the for, so Edgar presumably wasn't tempted to try more after disposing of the child murderer and fixing Wireman's eyesight. okay, I'll admit my only major issue with the book was with it's ending. For a start, a miner point, i really wish that there was an implication that Elizabeth's two little sisters had moved on, the way her sister's husband emmerson did after Wireman killed him with Silver and perse was gone, since it would've been fitting to leave all of Elizabeth's family together, then again, I suppose that might have been a little too easy. My major problem though is with the final ending. Wi
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, my lady and I just finished Duma key yesterday, which is one I've not actually seen mentioned in this topic, so spoilage ahoy for that one if you've not read it.oddly enough, i'll admit reading this so soon after bag of bones was a miner error, or at least there were some notable similarities in the basic shape of the plot, guy has really crappy event happen in later life, goes off on his own to sort things outt engages in creative work. on the other hand, there are some major differencces. For a start, Edgar freemantle I found a rather more likeable character than Michael in Bag of bones, despite him also being a multi millionaire. I also found that whilst the book moves slowly, there were no points where I was actively wishing King would get on with things. maybe this is just because the way King write's about Edgar's accident and recovery was so very compelling, from his fits of rage, to his both tragic and occasionally even hollowly funny inability to get words right. Actually, the way King dealt with all of the consequences of Edgar's recovery, from what it's actually like to have one arm and a none working leg to his various uncontrollable fits of rage was extremely good. This meant that I was fairly invested in the book at the start, so by the time we started to have creepy stuff begin happening, I was already on board, and that before we got genuinely likable secondary characters. Indeed, with Wireman King does something that I always admire, and lets explanation of the strange influence explain aspects of his character we've already seen. I mean, we realise Wireman is a nice guy, but when we learn that the psychic influence on Duma key affected his talent for empathy the way it affected Edgar and Elizabeth's art, it just clicks. It also explains why this book is such a good bromance, and why Edgar and Wireman become best mates so quickly, then again, since both are lonely nice guys who see the world in the same way it's not too surprising. What I also liked in this book was the way King dealt with Elizabeth's Alzheimer's, being both brutally honest about her condition deteriorating (just as honest in fact as he is about Edgar), and yet at the same time still making Elizabeth both engaging and mysterious, indeed with Elizabeth when you realise how much she remembers of her past and how much she was trying to communicate, her story become all the more tragic. Edgar's daughter Ilse was a little idiolised, then again I can forgive that for being a father's first person view of his favourite child, particularly with the way that other members of Edgar's family tended to come off as real, indeed I like the nuances of Edgar's marriage to Pam, a marriage which both my lady and I suspect was probably doomed anyway even before Edgar's rage caused him to get physical, and yet the fact that towards the end of the book, Pam and Edgar at least reconcile somewhat. Another thing I particularly appreciated here, was the way that the mystery about Elizabeth's past had such a slow revelation, combined with creepy stuff happening in the present, indeed King has a tendency in his books, Desperation, Bag of bones, It, to do this huge "and here is what happened in the past!" about three quarters of the way through, after vague hints only leading up to that point. here though, he got both the revelations and clues exactly right, indeed I found myself trying to piece together what had happened to Elizabeth's family in 1927, and what actually had happened to the rest of her family. King indeed, obviously took a lot of time in this book with mysteries since there were lots of moments when he surprised me with plot twists, and yet revealed that the grand work was already there, as indeed he did with Ilse's death, indeed that hole chapter, when you believe she's safe, with Edgar struggling with his memory and the evil sketch was down right fiendish. The only thing I did find a little odd, is how little Edgar used his power, once he realised how it worked, then again, King timed things so that the confirmation Edgar could alter reality only happened just when mysteries connected to the horrific events in the past, and pottential horrors in the present were coming to the for, so Edgar presumably wasn't tempted to try more after disposing of the child murderer and fixing Wireman's eyesight. okay, I'll admit my only major issue with the book was with it's ending. For a start, a miner point, i really wish that there was an implication that Elizabeth's two little sisters had moved on, the way her sister's husband emmerson did after Wireman killed him with Silver and perse was gone, since it would've been fitting to leave all of Elizabeth's family together, then again, I suppose that might have been a little too easy. My major problem though is with the final ending. Wireman dies of a random heart attack, not because of the evil influence, or giving his life for something gre
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King At risk of threadcromantically blowing my own trumpet (which sounds really disturbing), Here is my formal bag of bones review. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/537891/#p537891 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I'de say yes. I haven't read all his books but so far all the once I have read have been good. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/528055/#p528055 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, I'm bringing this topic back from the grave because Mrs. Dark and I have just finished another Stephen King novel, this time Bag of bones. I'll be putting together a more formal review in a bit, but I thought I'd throw some thoughts down here and see what everyone else thinks as well, oh and of course spoilers ahoy!It's actually odd rereading Bag of bones now, since this is a case where my life experience has vastly changed my view on many things in the book. When I first read it I was nineteen and had no idea what being married was like, now almost nineteen years later, I reread it with my wife, and thus my hole take on Mike's grief about Jo's death is utterly different. I particularly liked how much you got to know Jo even before the ghosts turned up. That being said, I didn't find mike quite as easy company. maybe it was him describing himself as "moderately successful", and complaining because he only has two houses and a few million dollars, and is winjing about only being at position fifteen on the best seller list, but honestly, at the beginning of the book, and even later when he was commenting snearingly about Matty shopping at K mart, he actually come across as snobbish and less than pleasant some of the time. I also will freely admit, this was the Stephen King book that reminded me just why people say King's books are too long, since nearly the first third, up until he actually moves back to the Haunted house Sarah Laughs, was very long winded setup, and whilst necessary for character and situation building (as well as a brief appearance from Ralf Roberts from Insomnia), at the same time things were dragging a fair bit, since wierd dreams and loneliness can only take a narrative so far. All of this changed once Mike moved back to Sarah Laughs, and both the supernatural manifestations and character interest went into overdrive. I will say, Kyra, the little three year old girl was scating the point of being a bit too overly cute and idealised on occasion, though at least King Avoided the trap writers like Koontz fall into with child characters, and had either the rest of the cast, or even the narrator tell us how lovely they were. The way King Handled Mike's feeling for a much younger woman and the desire to help leading to friendship leading to romance was genuinely rather sweet, albeit some of his descriptions of Matty did get a bit overly praiseworthy. One aspect I did feel a bit odd about, was the way that Mike continually referdd either in his ghost induced sexual dreams, or in narration to the phrase "do what you want", a phrase he'd picked up from a feminist essay claiming that was what all men wanted in sex. Whether Mike's attributing this phrase to himself, and describing "love for men as one part lust one part astonishment", was a genuine idea, a symptom of Mike's believed self disgust being an older man looking at a younger woman, or the psychic influence of Sarah I'm not sure. Speaking of psychic influence though, these are probaly some of the best written ghosts I've seen, I particularly love the combination of unconscious impulses, rituals and psychic manifestations, and how this all ties in to the community, conspiracy and some genuinely skin crawling child murder. Indeed, the way the conspiracy and psychic influence was unearthed was something I particularly liked, since what happened to Sarah Tidwell and her son was truly, and unbelievably horrific, indeed some of the nastiest stuff King has ever written, and yet at the same time we see what she's been doing in revenge, how many people she's influenced to kill their own children. it's a wonderfully tangled, horribly uggly situation where two wrongs, and pretty extreme and nasty wrongs at that, dont' make a right, for all that Sarah's rage is both understandable, even if it has transformed her into something quite wrong.The other side of the coin, I actually thought the romance with matty and the battle over Kyra's custody worked, well, particularly how down right nasty a villain max Devor was, and how this tied into the small town consciousness. Again, that sort of small town, everyone knows everyone else, and one person can be ostracised when they're disapproved of seems a bit odd to me, but then again, I grew up in a city, and whilst I now am living in a small town, I don't really know anyone here to be ostracised from anyway .Matty's death is shocking, yet at the same time, made perfect sense, since had she survived, things would have been a bit too pat. The only thing I didn't care for in the ending, was the implication that perhaps Jo's spirit was stuck in Sarah Laughs, unless she was waiting until Mike was okay and had full custody of Kyra, and the last rant about writing and why Mike stopped. There were several times when Mike felt a little too close to King himself, and in this winj about killing off characters making an author a nasty person, he
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King That's basically what I thought as well. The start really draged on for a while, but then it got interesting. Problem was, I listened to a daisy audio book in german and I have never heard such a slow reader in my entire life. And the first thing he did was pronouncing Stephen like Steffen. I was imediately convinced that this was going to be great. Luckily, that was when I got Audible and I could switch to a professional german voice actor. Don't get me wrong, I find it great that there are free audio books on daisy, but their readers can be quite unmotivated sometimes. Don't know how this applies to english audio books. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/484467/#p484467 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay threadcromancy is both because my needful things review is up and can be Read here, and because I've just finished reading The talisman, which is a collaboration between Stephen King and Peter Straub.This one doesn't get talked about when people discuss King's novels, and to some extent I can see why. Indeed, whilst I've only read one Straub novel, Floating dragon, there were quite a few things here that reminded me of that in style, particularly the dips into rather odd poetry, predestination and fantasy, not to a real edge to hollywood stardom, which were less like the gritty stephen King we know. That being said there was a lot of typical kingism here, a really well done protagonist who was a twelve year old boy, and a journey literally across the entire length of America, plus a lot of horrible experiences in both this world and in the fantasy world of the territories, which at least in this novel, isn't related to the dark tower world. Okay, for those who haven't read it, the talisman is about twelve year old Jack Sawyer, son of a B movie actress from the fifties. His mother is dying of cancer and being menaced by his father's business partner Morgen slote (yes with a name like Morgan slote you just know he's going to be a nice chap). it turns out that Jack's situation mirrors that in the fantasy world of the territoriess, where the queen is similarly dying and being menaced by Morgan of Oris, her evil minister. For this reason, jack is sent off, by a very typically king lovable old theme park handy man who actually turns out to be a gunslinger in the other world), to recover the Talisman which can cure both his mother and the queen. I admit the start was slow, and partly that was due to Straub's rather annoying habit of only giving half an info dump, then having the action go somewhere else, indeed I know people have a downer on infodumps in literature but given Jack had to have several conversations with speedy parker (the old handyman I mentioned), why Speedy couldn't just tell him more in one go I don't know. However, I admit I'm a sucker for journey stories, so once Jack started off, I got interested. The teretories was a wonderfully dangerous world, indeed even farmer's markets and the like had a hinge of danger to them, and some things Jack encountered were down right disturbing. Occasionally, jack would need to flip back to America to travel for a while, but surprisingly these secdtions didn't drag, since like the Stand, the authors gave things a real sense of place and horror, and some of the very normal nastiness Jack ran into was nasty enough. I admit one thing I didn't like, was the fact that when Jack ran into various dodgy guys whilst hitch hiking, they were always referd to as "queers" or "sissies" as if "queer" and and "pedophyle" were the same thing. Not that the book has any out and out homophobic rants, indeed there are background comments about one of Jack's dad's friends being a perfectly nice gay guy, but the fact that Jack simply blanket categorises all the creeps as "queers" didn't feel right to me.That being said a lot of other stuff was just quite cool, indeed the book contains probably the best example of a werewolf I've read in a long time. Who'd have imagined werewolves as shepherds, what's mor werewolves who are very canine, but just as wolfish when the moon comes up. Indeed if I have a miner problem, I do wish we'd seen more of wolf and that he'd been in the book for longer, though yee gods that was how to do tragedy!Unfortunately, after wolf exited, Jack's next companion was his friend Richard who really was a disappointment. Honestly, if Richard were female I'd be calling him an utter damsel for how useless he was. I don't mind characters having an arc, starting off useless growing and finally achieving their potential, that is called development, however Richard pretty much starts off like the panicky character in any disaster film, then when he stops doing that and finally believs what is happening, he gets ill and Jack has to literally carry him! In the end, when jack has to go into the final big scary location, he's told he needs to take Richard with him, yet all richard did was literally pass out in the hall!I think one thing that contributed to this, is that towards the end jack became a bit too awesome and the authors were a little too in love with jack. There is a point where writing universe spanning ultimate power of light works, and a point when it just looks as if the main character is succeeding too often. Sometimes, I applauded Jack's success. Sometimes I loved the poetry even when I just had to run with the logic (especially when jack was using the talisman), sometimes however, it just felt as if Jack was running around yelling "demon begone!" and getting through a little too easily, as when he's able to rambo his way passed an entire army even
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay threadcromancy is both because my needful things review is up and can be Read here, and because I've just finished reading The talisman, which is a collaboration between Stephen King and Peter Straub.This one doesn't get talked about when people discuss King's novels, and to some extent I can see why. Indeed, whilst I've only read one Straub novel, Floating dragon, there were quite a few things here that reminded me of that in style, particularly the dips into rather odd poetry, predestination and fantasy, not to a real edge to hollywood stardom, which were less like the gritty stephen King we know. That being said there was a lot of typical kingism here, a really well done protagonist who was a twelve year old boy, and a journey literally across the entire length of America, plus a lot of horrible experiences in both this world and in the fantasy world of the territories, which at least in this novel, isn't related to the dark tower world. Okay, for those who haven't read it, the talisman is about twelve year old Jack Sawyer, son of a B movie actress from the fifties. His mother is dying of cancer and being menaced by his father's business partner Morgen slote (yes with a name like Morgan slote you just know he's going to be a nice chap). it turns out that Jack's situation mirrors that in the fantasy world of the territoriess, where the queen is similarly dying and being menaced by Morgan of Oris, her evil minister. For this reason, jack is sent off, by a very typically king lovable old theme park handy man who actually turns out to be a gunslinger in the other world), to recover the Talisman which can cure both his mother and the queen. I admit the start was slow, and partly that was due to Straub's rather annoying habit of only giving half an info dump, then having the action go somewhere else, indeed I know people have a downer on infodumps in literature but given Jack had to have several conversations with speedy parker (the old handyman I mentioned), why Speedy couldn't just tell him more in one go I don't know. However, I admit I'm a sucker for journey stories, so once Jack started off, I got interested. The teretories was a wonderfully dangerous world, indeed even farmer's markets and the like had a hinge of danger to them, and some things Jack encountered were down right disturbing. Occasionally, jack would need to flip back to America to travel for a while, but surprisingly these secdtions didn't drag, since like the Stand, the authors gave things a real sense of place and horror, and some of the very normal nastiness Jack ran into was nasty enough. I admit one thing I didn't like, was the fact that when Jack ran into various dodgy guys whilst hitch hiking, they were always referd to as "queers" or "sissies" as if "queer" and and "pedophyle" were the same thing. Not that the book has any out and out homophobic rants, indeed there are background comments about one of Jack's dad's friends being a perfectly nice gay guy, but the fact that Jack simply blanket categorises all the creeps as "queers" didn't feel right to me.That being said a lot of other stuff was just quite cool, indeed the book contains probably the best example of a werewolf I've read in a long time. Who'd have imagined werewolves as shepherds, what's mor werewolves who are very canine, but just as wolfish when the moon comes up. Indeed if I have a miner problem, I do wish we'd seen more of wolf and that he'd been in the book for longer, though yee gods that was how to do tragedy!Unfortunately, after wolf exited, Jack's next companion was his friend Richard who really was a disappointment. Honestly, if Richard were female I'd be calling him an utter damsel for how useless he was. I don't mind characters having an arc, starting off useless then becomeing awesome, however Richard pretty much starts off like the panicky character in any disaster film, then when he stops doing that and finally believs what is happening, he gets ill Jack has to literally carry him! In the end, when jack has to go into the final big scary location, he's told he needs to take Richard with him, yet all richard did was literally pass out in the hall!I think one thing that contributed to this, is that towards the end jack became a bit too awesome and the authors were a little too in love with jack. There is a point where writing universe spanning ultimate awesome power of light works, and a point when it just looks as if the main character is succeeding too often. Sometimes, I applauded Jack's success. Sometimes I loved the poetry even when I just had to run with the logic (especially when jack was using the talisman), sometimes however, it just felt as if Jack was running around yelling "demon begone!" and getting through a little too easily, as when he's able to rambo his way passed an entire army even though he's never fired a gun before in his life
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay threadcromancy is both because my needful things review is up and can be Read here, and because I've just finished reading The talisman, which is a collaboration between Stephen King and Peter Straub.This one doesn't get talked about when people discuss King's novels, and to some extent I can see why. Indeed, whilst I've only read one Straub novel, Floating dragon, there were quite a few things here that reminded me of that in style, particularly the dips into rather odd poetry, predestination and fantasy, not to a real edge to hollywood stardom, which were less like the gritty stephen King we know. That being said there was a lot of typical kingism here, a really well done protagonist who was a twelve year old boy, and a journey literally across the entire length of America, plus a lot of horrible experiences in both this world and in the fantasy world of the territories, which at least in this novel, isn't related to the dark tower world. Okay, for those who haven't read it, the talisman is about twelve year old Jack Sawyer, son of a B movie actress from the fifties. His mother is dying of cancer and being menaced by his father's business partner Morgen slote (yes with a name like Morgan slote you just know he's going to be a nice chap). it turns out that Jack's situation mirrors that in the fantasy world of the territoriess, where the queen is similarly dying and being menaced by Morgan of Oris, her evil minister. For this reason, jack is sent off, by a very typically king lovable old theme park handy man who actually turns out to be a gunslinger in the other world), to recover the Talisman which can cure both his mother and the queen. I admit the start was slow, and partly that was due to Straub's rather annoying habit of only giving half an info dump, then having the action go somewhere else, indeed I know people have a downer on infodumps in literature but given Jack had to have several conversations with speedy parker (the old handyman I mentioned), why Speedy couldn't just tell him more in one go I don't know. However, I admit I'm a sucker for journey stories, so once Jack started off, I got interested. The teretories was a wonderfully dangerous world, indeed even farmer's markets and the like had a hinge of danger to them, and some things Jack encountered were down right disturbing. Occasionally, jack would need to flip back to America to travel for a while, but surprisingly these secdtions didn't drag, since like the Stand, the authors gave things a real sense of place and horror, and some of the very normal nastiness Jack ran into was nasty enough. I admit one thing I didn't like, was the fact that when Jack ran into various dodgy guys whilst hitch hiking, they were always referd to as "queers" or "sissies" as if "queer" and and "pedophyle" were the same thing. Not that the book has any out and out homophobic rants, indeed there are background comments about one of Jack's dad's friends being a perfectly nice gay guy, but the fact that Jack simply blanket categorises all the creeps as "queers" didn't feel right to me.That being said a lot of other stuff was just quite awesome, indeed the book contains probably the best example of a werewolf I've read in a long time. Who'd have imagined werewolves as shepherds, what's mor werewolves who are very canine, but just as wolfish when the moon comes up. Indeed if I have a miner problem, I do wish we'd seen more of wolf and that he'd been in the book for longer, though yee gods that was how to do tragedy!Unfortunately, after wolf exited, JAck's next companion was his friend Richard who really was a disappointment. Honestly, if Richard were female I'd be calling him an utter damsel for how useless he was. I don't mind characters having an arc, starting off useless then becomeing awesome, however Richard pretty much starts off like the panicky character in any disaster film, then when he stops doing that and finally believs what is happening, he gets ill Jack has to literally carry him! In the end, when jack has to go into the final big scary location, he's told he needs to take Richard with him, yet all richard did was literally pass out in the hall!I think one thing that contributed to this, is that towards the end jack became a bit too awesome and the authors were a little too in love with jack. There is a point where writing universe spanning ultimate awesome power of light works, and a point when it just looks as if the main character is succeeding too often. Sometimes, I applauded Jack's success. Sometimes I loved the poetry even when I just had to run with the logic (especially when jack was using the talisman), sometimes however, it just felt as if Jack was running around yelling "demon begone!" and getting through a little too easily, as when he's able to rambo his way passed an entire army even though he's never fired a gun before in his life
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Well today my lady and I finished reading needful things. We'd had some extremely bad news last week, and needed something really engrossing to read together, and its one my lady's fancied doing for a while, not the least because the audio version read by Stephen King is one of his best, with King doing a great job of the readings and some wonderfully ironic musical themes used for each character. So, thoughts in coming, as are spoilers, stop here lest yee wish to be spoiled!It's odd. On the one hand the book is extremely slow, there is a massive amount of setup as you go through each of the town's residents individually with gaunt selling them items and demanding tricks, and everyone getting increasingly possessive about the things they by, even as you learn their backstory. I will give King credit in creating a lot of very well rounded characters, some of whom, we even ended up feeling sorry for inspite of ourselves, some of whom we loved to hate (Wilma Jersic reminded me of a very nasty downstairs neighbor I used to have). and I liked the fact that the catholic/baptist disagreement is over something so petty, and also the fact that not all sides are quite equally responsible for starting things off (the catholic priest came across as a slightly less rabid person pushed too far).Some characters were exasperating at points, EG Sally the perfectly virtuous and self righteous girl with her nice but dim boyfriend, who at the same time really didn't deserve the tricks played on them or where they ended up, though in that debarcle the one I really felt sorry for was John, the poor cop who got beaten up and nearly killed. That being said, all this comes at something of a cost, since there is so much setup, you know thing are going to go to hell, it's all a question of who, and how and where, and while I won't say the book dragged, I did wonder when King was going to get to the point. It's rather like eating a really huge shepherd's pie. You start off with the mashed potatoes on top. The mash is nice, it tastes good, it's well seasoned, but you want to break through into the bit underneath, particularly because you know that mash would be even nicer when eaten along side the stew.Spending so much time around the town was also slightly detremental for some characters like Polly and Brian we actually wanted to see a little more of, indeed, while I know part of the point of the story was that everyone had their buttons and secrets and issues, I do sort of wish we'd spent a little less time with scuzbags like Ace marrel, who did get a bit samy after a while. Oh and BTw poor Thad beaumont! I never realised his wife had left him and he shot himself, that is just down right depressing!it also might have been nice if the one black character wasn't a raging racist and the gay characters weren't both pedophyles either, though King actually managed to do something I didn't think possible and actually make two pedophyles commic relief, (I loved the phrase "you killed my parakeet and shit on my mother!"). I also liked the way in the final conclusion Alan's magic worked, which made perfect sense for Gaunt, though I do wish King had eased off on all of the "Demon begone, I banish thee!" type of stuff. Those sorts of poetic, power lof light triumphs endings work best when they're based around the characters, as in It, floating dragon or the stand, and worst when it feels more like something else doing the vanquishing and the characters are sidelined. So, whilst Alan and the magic, and even a couple of callbacks to The Dark Half and Cujo (which I haven't actually read), were okay, I did think King over did things a bit.I also have heard the criticism that Needful things is a generic King and just recycles a lot of his ideas, evil cars, small town rivalry with small town going boom at the end, conclusion where the powers of light do in the bad guy. I also see a few myself, Ace the evil greaser, Danforth the unstable nutty statetes man, the good natured cop, the spider scene in the bathroom etc. The problem is whilst this is vaguely true, at the same time this is Stephen King we're talking about. So often my lady and I would find ourselves laughing at a bit of gallows humour, sympathetic when people had aweful things happen to them, and genuinely creeped out by something creepy. Plus, King took a step here and actively shocked me! Since I honestly never saw Brian's suicide coming, and after that I knew all bets were off, so when we ran into things like Danford's murder of poor murtle they were genuine scares. I wouldn't say Needful things stands out as a King novel. Where Desperation felt like King having a go at a generalised horror novel, Needful things feels like King slightly resting on his laurels and doing what King does. The problem is, what King does is also a bloody good read and well worth reading! even aside from King's own wonderfully enthusiastic reading and
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Well today my lady and I finished reading needful things. We'd had some extremely bad news last week, and needed something really engrossing to read together, and its one my lady's fancied doing for a while, not the least because the audio version read by Stephen King is one of his best, with King doing a great job of the readings and some wonderfully ironic musical themes used for each character. So, thoughts in coming, as are spoilers, stop here lest yee wish to be spoiled!It's odd. On the one hand the book is extremely slow, there is a massive amount of setup as you go through each of the town's residents individually with gaunt selling them items and demanding tricks, and everyone getting increasingly possessive about the things they by, even as you learn their backstory. I will give King credit in creating a lot of very well rounded characters, some of whom, we even ended up feeling sorry for inspite of ourselves, some of whom we loved to hate (Wilma Jersic reminded me of a very nasty downstairs neighbor I used to have). and I liked the fact that the catholic/baptist disagreement is over something so petty, and also the fact that not all sides are quite equally responsible for starting things off (the catholic priest came across as a slightly less rabid person pushed too far).Some characters were exasperating at points, EG Sally the perfectly virtuous and self righteous girl with her dum jock of a boyfriend, who at the same time really didn't deserve the tricks played on them. That being said, all this comes at something of a cost, since there is so much setup, you know thing are going to go to hell, it's all a question of who, and how and where, and while I won't say the book dragged, I did wonder when King was going to get to the point. It's rather like eating a really huge shepherd's pie. You start off with the matshed potatoes on top. The mash is nice, it tastes good, it's well seasoned, but you want to break through into the bit underneath, particularly because you know that mash would be even nicer with a bit of gravy to back it up. Spending so much time around the town was also slightly detremental for some characters like Polly and Brian we actually wanted to see a little more of, indeed, while I know part of the point of the story was that everyone had their buttons and secrets and issues, I do sort of wish we'd spent a little less time with scuzbags like Ace marrel, who did get a bit samy after a while. Oh and BTw poor Thad beaumont! I never realised his wife had left him and he shot himself, that is just down right depressing!it also might have been nice if the one black character wasn't a raging racist and the gay characters weren't both pedophyles either, though King actually managed to do something I didn't think possible and actually make two pedophyles commic relief, (I loved the phrase "you killed my parakeet and shit on my mother!"). I also liked the way in the final conclusion Alan's magic worked, which made perfect sense for Gaunt, though I do wish King had eased off on all of the "Demon begone, I banish thee!" type of stuff. Those sorts of poetic, power lof light triumphs endings work best when they're based around the characters, as in It, floating dragon or the stand, and worst when it feels more like something else doing the vanquishing and the characters are sidelined. So, whilst Alan and the magic, and even a couple of callbacks to The Dark Half and Cujo (which I haven't actually read), were okay, I did think King over did things a bit.I also have heard the criticism that Needful things is a generic King and just recycles a lot of his ideas, evil cars, small town rivalry with small town going boom at the end, conclusion where the powers of light do in the bad guy. I also see a few myself, Ace the evil greaser, Danforth the unstable nutty statetes man, the good natured cop, the spider scene in the bathroom etc. The problem is whilst this is vaguely true, at the same time this is Stephen King we're talking about. So often my lady and I would find ourselves laughing at a bit of gallows humour, sympathetic when people had aweful things happen to them, and genuinely creeped out by something creepy. Plus, King took a step here and actively shocked me! Since I honestly never saw Brian's suicide coming, and after that I knew all bets were off, so when we ran into things like Danford's murder of poor murtle they were genuine scares. I wouldn't say Needful things stands out as a King novel. Where Desperation felt like King having a go at a generalised horror novel, Needful things feels like King slightly resting on his laurels and doing what King does. The problem is, what King does is also a bloody good read and well worth reading! even aside from King's own wonderfully enthusiastic reading and the ironic music. So, whilst probably not a favourite King novel, not a bad one either. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, shameless plug, my Review of Gerald's game can be read hereIts basically what I said earlier in this topic, though rather better written. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460947/#p460947 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Lol, Okay I am officially a stupid head, I thought you meant someone in American black history somewhere when you said "mythical figure."I also apologies profusely to the god of coffee for not its closness to holiness .I'll have to ask my lady, who is both far more well read in Christianity and stephen King than I am if she picked that up. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460786/#p460786 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Remember, also, that she just sort of walks into a home and is there when people turn around. That in itself is plenty strange without her blindness or the peculiarity of the situation.When I talk about mythical figures, this isn't something you have to be Canadian or American to know. John Coffey's initials, JC, are also the initials of Jesus Christ, who was also well-known for healing the sick and wounded, and we all know how it turned out for him. Sacrificed, right? Just like Coffey. To me, this is either brilliance or arrogance on King's part, I'm not quite sure which. But it was definitely intentional, he said so himself. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460784/#p460784 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King While Iana's ability was transferrable, the presentation of her as blind, and the specific association of blindness with otherworldly strangeness was what bothered me here, that and the fact that both the girl and her carer were presented as so "blind!"but Fair enough Jayde, as I said I just took the story differently. The "magical negro" thing is something I've only picked up from reading other people's reviews and didn't really bother me as such,, as I said I found John Coffee and Mother Abigail both really appealing characters, especially coffee, partly in fact because of the tragedy of the racism contributing to him not having a trial. remember that we don't have the history that goes with a lot of that sort of thing in this country (I don't know who your referring to with your mention of "mythical initials", not that there aren't racists in England, there definitely are, but over here most dark skinned people you meet are usually third or fourth generation west Indians whose grand parents or great grand parents came to Britain in the fifties, indeed here your more likely to encounter racism against Indians or Pakistanis than against black people.(the first time I heard the N word, was someone listening to gangster rap, and I thought it meant gangster).I only mentioned the magical negro thing with respect to Iana since it seemed to me very much a case of "the magical blind girl," though the fact she heals sighted people bothers me less than her presentation as very very blind and therefore strange. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460783/#p460783 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I personally thought Iana's ability came from her blindness myself, albeit transferable.but Fair enough Jayde, as I said I just took the story differently. The "magical negro" thing is something I've only picked up from reading other people's reviews and didn't really bother me as such,, as I said I found John Coffee and Mother Abigail both really appealing characters, especially coffee, partly in fact because of the tragedy of the racism contributing to him not having a trial. remember that we don't have the history that goes with a lot of that sort of thing in this country (I don't know who your referring to with your mention of "mythical initials", not that there aren't racists in England, there definitely are, but over here most dark skinned people you meet are usually third or fourth generation west Indians whose grand parents or great grand parents came to Britain in the fifties, indeed here your more likely to encounter racism against Indians or Pakistanis than against black people.(the first time I heard the N word, was someone listening to gangster rap, and I thought it meant gangster).I only mentioned the magical negro thing with respect to Iana since it seemed to me very much a case of "the magical blind girl," though the fact she heals sighted people bothers me less than her presentation as very very blind and therefore weird. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460783/#p460783 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Well, the fact that she's blind is proven incidental when the main character, who appears to have no such issues of his own, gets the ability passed on to him. Thus it's not related to who you are or what you have, it's where you are at any given time. It sounds, in fact, as if Ayana got her gift (probably in the hospital, while dying herself), and was compelled to use it and pass it on. Also, "a girl performs a miracle" sounds so much more bland than "a blind girl performs a miracle". Nah, this is not a magical blind child. This is someone who is, in a rather sad way, a victim of circumstance. And I think (correct me if I'm just flat wrong on this) that the woman who's with her, the one who says "let me hear you count" does not look like her mother/grandmother, but rather like someone who's accompanying her. In that case, I have an issue with that person more than the child herself. But in this way, King is actually hitting it square, because some people most definitely -are just that insufferable.Also? Regarding magical Negros, to use a tired phrase? Yes, King has done it. Abigail is the most egregious example in my opinion. John Coffey, your mileage may vary on. But it's no accident that his initials mirror those of perhaps the most famous mythical figure in history (his original name was something like John Bowes, but King changed it). In the time and place King chose for his story, Coffey all but had to be black, as a white man would have gotten a fairer trial instead of just being arrested on the spot. After all, if one prison guard can figure it out, and if a few reporters could also figure it out, you'd think they'd go for a retrial...but nope, because that's not what was done for people of colour in those days. So without his skin colour, you don't have a premise. Do I cringe at the idea of a white dude writing a black character who seems destined to heal and/or otherwise set right the plights of a bunch of white people, one way or the other? Hell yes. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460721/#p460721 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @JAyde, I'm afraid Iana being magical and blind sort of seemed forgone to me from the very start, and definitely facts that went together from the description of her eyes, to her sun glasses, to the way King even wrote out the "let me here you count."Maybe I'm a bit more sensitive about this since I was myself a very sick blind child at the age of seven and always felt mortified when people treated me that way, or maybe its bad memories from the langoleers I don't know. Its also possible the back cover really spoiled things:back cover wrote:In “Ayana,” a blind girl works a miracleit didn't describe Tight place as "A gay man gets locked in the lavatory!" .Still I'm not going to let one less good story spoil the hole collection anyway. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460712/#p460712 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Interestingly, Ayana didn't suck for me as much as for you. She didn't have magical powers because she was blind; she had magical powers because random people get them passed along. As I recall, she was also ill as well as blind, and only like seven years old, and seemingly with someone who, while they knew her, was not actively teaching her properly (thus the counting steps). I felt that her blindness, then, was incidental, and not all that important, really. Thus, I actually quite liked that one.Totally agree with you about Mute and A Very Tight Place though. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460702/#p460702 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Alright with finishing A very tight place this morning we bring the collection to a close so thoughts here. I've mentioned King's occasional crassness being distracting. when he seems to just stick it in in an unwarrented place, however when he devotes himself to it, he can be wonderfully, most carefully and effusively disgusting in an absolutely hilarious, and skin crawling way. I particularly liked how he managed to get even grosser as time went on, what with poor Curtice having to crawl into the holding tank not to mention the fantastic confrontation in the guy's bath. Actually, what impressed me here is that King worked the elements of a successful short story into what was essentially a shock piece. Millionaire stock brokers engaged in petty grudge matters with millions of dollars are not inherently sympathetic people, and King doesn't shy away from the fact that Curtice is not exactly a nice guy, or even a particularly rational guy with his neurotic tendencies and self harming via vomiting, indeed at the start I wasn't exactly sure whether Curtice or "the mother fucker" was really the injured party.However, King makes curtice inherently more sympathetic by the fact that he had a dog who he loved, and his rival much nastier by the fact that the rival as much as killed the dog, and that even before we meet the rival and realise the guy is a complete nutball. I also liked the fact that curtice is very much a character who is also gay, rather than a gay! character, that is, king makes him a person first, and gay just as part of that, perhaps lessons he should've thought of a bit more clearly when writing about heavenly little blind children.. I did notice a few recurrent King themes, especially in the physical torment Curtice was going through in the porterloo, though being as this was a short story, albeit a long one, King didn't overdo things too much or repeat Gerald's game or mysery, he gave us enough info to know how nasty it was and cheer when Curtice made it out, actually I really liked the use of Betsy's dog tag here. the final confrontation was quite justified and hilarious. All in all a rousing end to the collection. In general, the collection has been great fun, there have been some storeis I liked more than others, but a lot of really solid ones, such as N, Tight place and the gingerbread girl, indeed only a couple of really major clunkers, but that's true of any collection. As to what comes next, we'll see. I have four past midnight, and my lady fancies doing needful things, but I might give that a rest for a little while. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460654/#p460654 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay I've read a couple more stories so thoughts coming up. Mute: I liked the initial setup of this one, particularly with it being a confession about a confession, and us getting almost three separate scenes, Monette confessing to the priest, Monette bitching to the mute hitch hiker in the car, and the story of his wife's affair and financial shenanigans, also credit to King for creating a wonderfully human and down to earth catholic priest for the guy to confess to, someone who obviously has dealt with a lot of people and heard it all before.The problem is that this didn't really go anywhere. As in 1922, it was the story about a rather nasty guy with a rather nasty wife, indeed the guy's self justifications were about as pleasant to read as the details of the wife's rather casual affair and remorseless gambling, this made the payoff super pointless. By the bare way the set up was done it was obvious that the mute would not be quite as deaf as the guy thought and the wife (and possibly her lover), were up for the chop. This meant when I heard the hitchhiker had tracked them down and beat them to death with a pipe wrapped in a hotel towel my initial thought was more "oh that's an interesting method of murder," than "oh god someone has just been killed" or even any feelings about Monette's situation. This one really needed a sting, a bit of calmer, for Monette's response that he ws glad his wife was dead to cost him something, indeed I wondered if the hitch hiker might go and murder Monette's daughter, (his love for her was really his only redeeming feature and while that would've been a nasty ending this is a horror story after all), or maybe that the "company" the priest mentioned having for lunch would turn out to be the hitchhiker who'd just heard monette's confession and was rather anoyed about being tattled on, but no, ding dong the witch is dead, hurrah for homicide. A long story whose end was obvious, and which just plane lacked the surprise it ; should've had, and whose main character was almost a total arsehole. Not good. Iana: definitely the worst story in the collection. King's blind child was so ridiculously overthetop it made me wince, (even at seven being asked to count steps out loud would've made me feel stupid), and the girl falls over the IV stand, just to make sure we all know how weird and blind she is. Of course she has magic powers, because blind people, particularly blind children are wonderfully strange and otherworldly and do strange magical blind things. I've seen reviews that criticise john Coffee in the green mile and Mother Abigail in the stand as being "magical negro" characters, that is black people who have mysterious magical powers from being so otherwordly and dark skinned. I never felt that way about either, since both are also shown to be very human characters who have their own struggles and I loved both, indeed the major point in the green mile is how poor John Cofee's magic powers get him into trouble for just trying to help. In this story though, Iana is literally called "the magical negro child" by the main character's cynical wife, I'd add blind onto that description too and you pretty much have a walking cliche, particularly with shock horror, the fact that at the end of the story the main character is told she's dead, because magical blind angels obviously need to go back to heaven where they belong. Apart from her, the premise of the story might've worked, I got a clearer idea of character here, and credit to King for creating a spiky wife who was cynical without being repellent, also his descriptions of sickness were sort of irreverent to the point of almost surrealism, I also liked how the father who was sick was actually shown to be a real person, indeed credit to King on hitting the contrast between someone very ill and the person they were (which makes his magical blind person even more obviously a major misstep). Even the idea that the power gets passed on, and people get the power to heal others, which had he executed it differently could've made for a genuinely appealing story of miracles, especially with the guy not able to heal his sister in law's Alzheimer's couldn't save this one for me.Btw, when I mentioned this one to my lady, she said she'd actively repressed memory of it, and that King really fails with blind people, like Dyna in the langoleers, yet another magic blind girl, which makes me interested to reread that one as well and see what I think of it now.Next up is the narrow place, which I believe my lady has mentioned to me before as a wonderfully icky premise which I'm quite looking forward to. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460602/#p460602 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King As I understood it, there is no especial significance to the number from the call itself. It's just a matter that the number had to come from somewhere, got essentially hijacked briefly. The message is also supposed to be that the dead can reach out to you occasionally, to help you, but you, in your mortal way, can never reach back. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460122/#p460122 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Oh the cat from hell! I'll admit the title is too obvious, but the cat and especially the end made me laugh and feel sick at the same time. My grandparents had my sister's cats when I read this story, I kept picturing myself being the Hitman and I couldn't go near them for a while.The new York times story was too strange to be good I always thought. James describing the station and the doors that surround it brought to mind the dark tower doorways. King seems to have a weird obsession with afterlife dimensions, this story and some others have the same feel. Maybe he's expressing his fear of the afterlife in stories because what lies beyond death is unknowable to us all. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460118/#p460118 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @JAyde, I have no problem with people wanting to make love, or have sex on a train or anywhere else, as part of coping with my genophobia, my lady and I read through both Alex comfort joy of sex books together, we've tried various things together and had conversations about what else we'd like to try. My problem is more the way King always uses the most profane descriptions possible, and that these things come out of left field often in an unrelated situation. had David been recalling his relationship with Willa and various memories of their lovemaking (or fucking if he thinks of it that way), and then! talked about what she'd wanted to do that would've been fine. Similarly, I can accept that some people get off on talking dirty even though neither my lady nor I do, however in King's case it just seems he puts these things in as almost a routine. Indeed, King almost seems the opposite of Koontz for this, since where the Koontz i've read tend to overdo the treacle and the niceness and tell you how good his characters are, King has to always stick in something a bit offf, usually sexual, as with the protagonist of "the thing's we left behind's" masturbation. of course, a little of this with one or two characters would make sense and be true to life as you say, but King seems to do it with almost every character almost all the time, even in situations when it seems fairly inappropriate (since apart from that crass metaphore, Johnny struck me as an extreme rationalist). On the dating thing in things left behind, I'm afraid I didn't think there was any meta commentary going on here, after all King as I said did very much the same thing in Joyland, though there it was from the other way around when Stewart's apparently female friend Erin, who was actually with Stewart's other friend at the time starts kissing him and is clearly attracted.Okay read a couple more stories so thoughts coming up. The cat from hell: which has to be the most god aweful title for a story King has ever come up with. Oddly enough, the story was actually rather good. Like several of King's stories, it literally does what it says on the tin. Its a purely schlocky, completely predictable and formula horror story with the subtlety of a chainsaw to the guts. I also thought it was awesome! Cats are bloody evil, and this cat had revenge in its mind. I particularly liked how King did almost camera cuts with each of the cat's murders, so by the time the hit man was heading off to peacefully do the cat in, we pretty much know what's coming. The genious part, is what is coming is described in such wonderfully splatterhouse detail, honestly towards the end when the cat was going for the guy's mouth I was thinking "your not really going to do cat alien are you?" and yes, indeed he is! Okay, its basically a literary version of a mortal Combat fatality, and not a story that would have any long lasting value, but it did its job bloody well, pun most definitely intended. The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates: Okay, had I read this story before getting married, I probably would've gone "well that was interesting," however the way King captures two people who know each other extremely well and obviously love each other has a really frightening realism to it, especially when reading it whilst in bed holding my wife and unable to sleep. I particularly liked the way James was just sort of vaguely resigned and having a fairly average phone call. Though very different in style and feeling, it reminded me strongly of Ray Bradberry's last night of the world. the only miner niggle I have is that there were lose ends that I think King should've either expanded or snipped. For example James , mentions being unsure which door to go through in the station, and I wondered if that would relate to Anny somehow. Similarly, I really didn't quite get the ending, since while I got that James helped Anny avoid tragedies later, I didn't exactly get why she seemed to be ringing a new york times subscription company or what the title meant, which might just be me being dim. So, while King got the mood and characters of this one absolutely right, scarily right in fact, either I'm not getting something or he should've tightened things up a little. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460112/#p460112 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King The things they left behind I liked a lot, because I could relate to the story a lot. I never lived in New York, but I saw the news breaks as they were happening and I remember thinking what next, is this the end of the world? I've been afraid to fly ever since. But the story captures the horror and pain of 9/11 so well.Graduation afternoon was okay, the nuclear thing I didn't like, but the way king writes the scene of the explosion and the aftermath work very well. I remember in the 80s and 90s, there were threats of nuclear war from the soviets and others, so after a while it feels old, but the story still worked for me.N was great, I remember when I first read it I was going to church that night, and the story scared me so badly I was very glad to be somewhere like that. I've always assumed that cthun was one of the leatherheads mentioned in under the dome, I just wondered at the time where the giant eye and the thing with heads for teeth were. Maybe they were gone when they entered that dimension at the end of under the dome. I've always liked the idea of a story within a story, so I loved the way n was presented. The people who read n in the audiobook do a great job, especially when doing the voice of cthun. When I look back, the imagery feels so clear, the field, the stone circle, even the sign, "ackerman's field, no hunting." The story doesn't explain who or what ackerman is, but that would've been interesting to know along with everything else. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460089/#p460089 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I think some of this stuff, Dark, is just down to personal taste. Willa saying she wants to fuck on a train...what if that's what she really does want, and given that her and David are on their honeymoon, don't you think that's valid? And as for "getting past the foreplay and onto the fucking" sometimes people do say and think things like this. Yes it's crass. But yes it's also true to life.I'm mostly with you on the stories, btw. Graduation Afternoon worked for me because when Janice retreated into thoughts of country music or whatnot, it's because she knows they're all dead. The cloud is too big and too close. This one broke my heart. It wasn't perfect, but it was good.The Things they Left Behind frustrated me at first, then really paid off. I didn't cry, but he nailed the ending here. As far as the whole "we're not dating because I'm married" thing, I think he was actually making a side comment about how some people make a big deal out of this. It felt a bit much on purpose, but that's just me.And as for N: you're spot on. You know what's coming and it still works. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460038/#p460038 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King N: A really good example of a story within a story within a story. i loved the idea that OCD symptoms might actually have occult significance and that the psychiatrist is pulled into things in spite of himself. I don't think king quite caught the otherworldy horror as well as he did in crouch end, what with language being a bit planer, but on the other hand I loved his use of diaries and contrasting accounts, very Dracula. Its odd, this is a horror story where you know the ending from the start, and where everything is pretty much as you'd expect, account of nasty thing, disbelieving person goes to investigate account of nasty thing, nasty thing is real, person gets got by nasty thing, person leaves account to next person, rend and repeat .The odd thing is, this one just worked. There were times I was impatient with the pacing, but then things absolutely paid off and the slowness made sense in retrospect, likewise, while I didn't get as much idea of the characters as people, this one was all about the scary, particularly the scary use of numbers. king did over egg the pudding a bit occasionally, telling us about the "world behind the world" and the "Monsters of everlasting darkness," but it didn't bother me as much as it might have done, albeit I probably would've been more scared if King had worked harder not to come up with cliches and use his own phrasing, as he usually does. Btw, I wonder why in this story, even though King's obviously borrowing Lovecraft's great old ones or something very much like them, he named the creature as Cthun, not Cthulhu? or is there another Lovecraftian monster called Cthun I don't know about? Then again with mentions of Chester's mill and Julia Shunway making a brief camio, I wonder if Cthun was one of the leather heads from under the dome, since its head was described the same way.Oh, and again the usual King crassness rears its ugly and possibly leathery, head, why he has to describe someone deciding to enter the gate to the field of evil with the phrase "why was I wasting time on fore play, lets get on with the fucking," I don't know. Its not that I have anything intrinsic against crude language or metaphors, its just, well time and place! All in all though a good solid horror story and example of the Cthulhu mythos. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460028/#p460028 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King N: A really good example of a story within a story within a story. i loved the idea that OCD symptoms might actually have occult significance and that the psychiatrist is pulled into things in spite of himself. I don't think king quite caught the otherworldy horror as well as he did in crouch end, what with language being a bit planer, but on the other hand I loved his use of diaries and contrasting accounts, very Dracula. Its odd, this is a horror story where you know the ending from the start, and where everything is pretty much as you'd expect, account of nasty thing, disbelieving person goes to investigate account of nasty thing, nasty thing is real, person gets got by nasty thing, person leaves account to next person, rend and repeat .The odd thing is, this one just worked. There were times I was impatient with the pacing, but then things absolutely paid off and the slowness made sense in retrospect, likewise, while I didn't get as much idea of the characters as people, this one was all about the scary, particularly the scary use of numbers. king did over egg the pudding a bit occasionally, telling us about the "world behind the world" and the "Monsters of everlasting darkness," but while it didn't bother me as much as it might have done, albeit I probably would've been less scared if King had worked harder not to come up with cliches and use his own phrasing, as he usually does. Btw, I wonder why in this story, even though King's obviously borrowing Lovecraft's great old ones or something very much like them, he named the creature as Cthun, not Cthulhu? or is there another Lovecraftian monster called Cthun I don't know about? Then again with mentions of Chester's mill and Julia Shunway making a brief camio, I wonder if Cthun was one of the leather heads from under the dome, since its head was described the same way.Oh, and again the usual King crassness rears its ugly and possibly leathery, head, why he has to describe someone deciding to enter the gate to the field of evil with the phrase "why was I wasting time on fore play, lets get on with the fucking," I don't know. Its not that I have anything intrinsic against crude language or metaphors, its just, well time and place! All in all though a good solid horror story and example of the Cthulhu mythos. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460028/#p460028 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King N: A really good example of a story within a story within a story. i loved the idea that OCD symptoms might actually have occult significance and that the psychiatrist is pulled into things in spite of himself. I don't think king quite caught the otherworldy horror as well as he did in crouch end, what with language being a bit planer, but on the other hand I loved his use of diaries and contrasting accounts, very Dracula. Its odd, this is a horror story where you know the ending from the start, and where everything is pretty much as you'd expect, account of nasty thing, disbelieving person goes to investigate account of nasty thing, nasty thing is real, person gets got by nasty thing, person leaves account to next person, rend and repeat .The odd thing is, this one just worked. There were times I was impatient with the pacing, but then things absolutely paid off and the slowness made sense in retrospect, likewise, while I didn't get as much idea of the characters as people, this one was all about the scary, particularly the scary use of numbers. king did over egg the pudding a bit occasionally, telling us about the "world behind the world" and the "Monsters of everlasting darkness," but while it didn't bother me as much as it might have done, albeit I probably would've been less scared if King had worked harder not to come up with cliches and use his own phrasing, as he usually does. Btw, I wonder why in this story, even though King's obviously borrowing Lovecraft's great old ones or something very much like them, he named the creature as Cthun, not Cthulhu? or is there another Lovecraftian monster called Cthun I don't know about?Oh, and again the usual King crassness rears its ugly head, why he has to describe someone deciding to enter the gate to the field of evil with the phrase "why was I wasting time on fore play, lets get on with the fucking," I don't know. Its not that I have anything intrinsic against crude language or metaphors, its just, well time and place! All in all though a good solid horror story and example of the Cthulhu mythos. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/460028/#p460028 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Graduation afternoon: A bit of a miss here, or at least a piece that would've been more effective if it had had a little work. King establishes the snobby rich people, and then when the bomb hits they refuse to believe its real, however King spent a bit too much time on Janis, the protagonist and how she was actually a complex character, quite arrogant in her own way, then at the end had her attitude to the bomb hitting being to lose herself in memories of country music. there was not really enough poetry to make this a pure mood piece, and a little too much character to make this a poetic meditation, plus of course, it doesn't help that these days nuclear blasts feel a bit old hat, or at least to anyone who grew up in the eighties and nineties, so simply going "look a mushroom cloud isn't it scary" probably doesn't have the instant fear factor it does for the world war 2 generation. Not that the idea of nuclear bombs isn't scary, just that to shock me in a short story there needs to be a little more behind them. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459935/#p459935 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Graduation afternoon: A bit of a miss here, or at least a piece that would've been more effective if it had had a little work. King establishes the snobby rich people, and then when the bomb hits they refuse to believe its real, however King spent a bit too much time on Janis, the protagonist and how she was actually a complex character, quite arrogant in her own way, then at the end had her attitude to the bomb hitting being to lose herself in memories of country music. there was not really enough poetry to make this a pure mood piece, and a little too much character to make this a poetic meditation, plus of course, it doesn't help that these days nuclear blasts feel a bit old hat, or at least to anyone who grew up in the eighties, so simply going "look a mushroom cloud isn't it scary" probably doesn't have the instant fear factor it does for the cold war generation. Not that the idea of nuclear bombs isn't scary, just that to shock me in a short story there needs to be a little more behind them. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459935/#p459935 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Jayde, we'll have to see, as I said,I was disappointed with Susanna's arc in the last few dark tower books and I was not a fan of Mia, and until I reread the series again, which I will certainly do, possibly together with my lady, I can't say much else.@guitarman, completely agree about the jokes in the rest stop. sometimes I think Stephen King just got into the habit of being crass or tasteless for shock value and often can't kick it, which means frequently even comparatively decent characters suddenly come out with dodgy stuff, like Willa suddenly telling David in the title story how she wanted to "fuck on a train." Sometimes, these crassness's have a lot of point, like the nasty jokes in Gerald's game Jessie remembers, sometimes though it feels rather gratuitous, indeed Norman in Rose Madder was waaay! overboard.Well I've done a couple more stories so thoughts incoming. Stationary bike: I loved the premise for this one. The doctor in the first scene explaining the vision of the workmen in Richard's metabolism struck me as a bit overly King making a pretty obvious author insert (the doctor even talked like King's usual narration), but honestly, once the picture was done, the guys had names and we were cycling off I didn't mind since the story was just so wonderfully weird. I do wish King had either stuck some more incident in there, or made the story a bit shorter, indeed he basically said half way through "this is how these stories go," also I confess I was a wee bit disappointed when the strange road in Richard's body turned into a sort of amalgamated hymn to childhood cycling, however I was just so interested to see where the premise would go, and hay, king even surprised me with the ending here, especially with how he left so much up to everyone's imagination, rather than going the hole metafictional hog and suggesting, shock horror, that even Richard could be an idea in a book, perhaps a book by Stephen King. Probably not imiho as good as the gingerbread girl, but still not a bad story. The things left behind: I was wondering where this one was going, what the items were and thinking the story was a bit disjointed, I only realised as things went on the disjointed quality had a bloody good reason. Massive credit to King for managing to write a sort of horror story themed around September the eleventh which didn't feel either excessive or cheap, and captured so much of the emotions a survivor of something like that would have.My only two miner issues is I did think King reitterated the "we're not dating, but we might be attracted, but we're not because I'm married, even though we're still attracted" business with Paula a bit too much. Indeed as I said of Joyland King does seem to fall a bit too much into the harry met Sally trap of assuming men and women can't be just friends without some vague sort of sexual interest there. Second, what is it with King and flashbacks that just make his characters slightly scummy? Like his excessive jokes this just seems a bit too much and in because its expected, since if I am to have sympathy for the main character, telling us all about how he was nearly caught by his mother mastabating into his sister's underpants is just plane unnecessary. On the other hand, the ending hear actually made me cry, and I loved the final premise of why the items kept returning, indeed capturing people's lives through random personal momentous they had hanging about the office is a heart wrenching way of thinking about a terrorist attack. Definitely a really awesome story, and one King clearly poured his heart and soul into for obvious reasons. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459887/#p459887 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Jayde, we'll have to see, as I said,I was disappointed with Susanna's arc in the last few dark tower books and I was not a fan of Mia, and until I reread the series again, which I will certainly do, possibly together with my lady, I can't say much else.@guitarman, completely agree about the jokes in the rest stop. sometimes I think Stephen King just got into the habit of being crass or tasteless for shock value and often can't kick it, which means frequently even comparatively decent characters suddenly come out with dodgy stuff, like Willa suddenly telling David in the title story how she wanted to "fuck on a train." Sometimes, these crassness's have a lot of point, like the nasty jokes in Gerald's game Jessie remembers, sometimes though it feels rather gratuitous, indeed Norman in Rose Madder was waaay! overboard.Well I've done a couple more stories so thoughts incoming. Stationary bike: I loved the premise for this one. The doctor in the first scene explaining the vision of the workmen in Richard's metabolism struck me as a bit overly King making a pretty obvious author insert (the doctor even talked like King's usual narration), but honestly, once the picture was done, the guys had names and we were cycling off I didn't mind since the story was just so wonderfully weird. I do wish King had either stuck some more incident in there, or made the story a bit shorter, indeed he basically said half way through "this is how these stories go," also I confess I was a wee bit disappointed when the strange road in Richard's body turned into a sort of amalgamated hymn to childhood cycling, however I was just so interested to see where the premise would go, and hay, king even surprised me with the ending here, especially with how he left so much up to everyone's imagination, rather than going the hole metafictional hog and suggesting, shock horror, that even Richard could be an idea in a book, perhaps a book by Stephen King. Probably not imiho as good as the gingerbread girl, but still not a bad story. The things left behind: I was wondering where this one was going, what the items were and thinking the story was a bit disjointed, I only realised as things went on the disjointed quality had a bloody good reason. Massive credit to King for managing to write a sort of horror story themed around September the eleventh which didn't feel either excessive or cheap, and captured so much of the emotions a survivor of something like that would have.My only two miner issues is I did think King reitterated the "we're not dating, but we might be attracted, but we're not because I'm married, even though we're still attracted" business with Paula a bit too much. Indeed as I said of Joyland King does seem to fall a bit too much into the harry met Sally trap of assuming men and women can't be just friends without some vague sort of sexual interest there. Second, what is it with King and flashbacks that just make his characters slightly scummy? Like his excessive jokes this just seems a bit too much and in because its expected, since if I am to have sympathy for the main character, telling us all about how he was nearly caught by his mother mastabating into his sister's underpants is just plane unnecessary. On the other hand, the ending hear actually made me cry, and I loved the final premise of what the items were, indeed capturing people's lives through random personal momentos they had hanging about the office is a heart renching tactic of thinking about a terrorist attack. Definitely a really awesome story, and one King clearly poured his heart and soul into for obvious reasons. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459887/#p459887 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Dark, Harvey's dream I didn't like at all. I don't understand why he wrote it, it wasn't scary to me at all.Rest stop I liked a lot, especially when you see the old author's other side. I didn't appreciate his jokes, I've seen domestic abuse for years, mostly from my older step brother. He has the whole crazy boyfriend thing going on. Reading rest stop felt like reliving things from my past. It's interesting the guy writes about a character called the dog, but he seems to be mild mannered, then his other personality turns out to mirror what he writes. It felt to me like king was trying to make the point that writers have a thin line between imagination and the reality of things. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459849/#p459849 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Song of Susannah starts with people getting sucked through the wrong portals, so to speak. Roland and Eddie show up to talk to Sai King, and Jake and Father Callahan show up in keystone New York to follow Susannah/Mia to the Dixie Pig.Unlike Detta/Odetta, who were arguably just fragments of Susannah's own personality brought partway into being by a traumatic brain injury (remember the falling brick?), Mia is very real, very external and very dead set on having her chap. Susannah's past with Detta and Odetta make her very uniquely suited to fight Mia; this book, when it's about her, isn't about pregnancy in and of itself. It's about being dominated, about being controlled, and finding other ways to fight back against that control. Slowing Mia down, making Mia feel things. Even if she cannot ultimately stop what's happening, she uses all her long-acquired skills. Hell, when the birth happens at the start of book 7 and Susannah gets hold of a gun and starts shooting up the place, she pretty much turns the tide. The same way Roland and Eddie showing up when Jake is cornered, in that same book, stop him and Oy from being two lonely targets on a firing range. I see this as King making a very strong and sometimes repetitive statement about the way women, and even women of colour, are portrayed, and how they often get pigeon-holed. After all, you'll note, I hope, that Susannah is only actually pregnant once, and as to the story of possession/personalities/all that jazz, the first is internal (which she beats, with Roland's help) while the second is internal, and she beats that one all by herself. To me, this is thematically whole. I'm not saying it's perfect, it's not. But it's a whole lot more charitable than you're painting it, IMHO.Harvey's Dream, BTW, had this weird "I want to be eerie and I can't quite make it" feel to me. Rest Stop didn't do a whole lot for me either way, except to sicken me and remind me that approximately one in five women will suffer some form of abuse in their lifetime. Twenty percent. And it's probably higher, because a lot of it goes unreported. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459706/#p459706 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Guitarman, Yeah, I gathered that a honkitonk is a bar, though I don't really get the country music, cowboy thing, its likely this is one of those bits of American culture which is hard to get a handle on elsewhere. i've heard country music songs I sort of like, but the idea that a cultural mistique complete with decor etc would make for a sort of idillic afterlife seems a little confusing to me. Pickering was indeed wonderfully bonkers! I particularly liked his hilarious sense of unfairness when things didn't go his way . He was a little overthetop and silly, which probably would've bothered me if the gingerbread girl had been longer and we'd seen more of him, but for a short bit of horror he was just perfect sort of oddball nutter that makes for a good villain, this is why I disagree with Jayde that pickering was a bit too silly.@Jayde, I honestly wasn't sure with the body in his car whether pickering was driving around that way or not, though even if he had gone into the house to get a blanket or something to carry the body back in, it was still coincidence a wee bit too far for this to happen literally just a minute or two after Deek warns Emily of him, especially I doubt someone as careful as Pickering would've left the boot open anyway even if he gone into the ghouse to get something. Had she been warned earlier in the story and then saw the car later that would've been a bit more understandable. As regards Susana, I'm afraid you've just precisely proved my point. She does all these awesome things before and after Mia, but then her main plot, her main obstacle in the book that bares her name is this unwanted pregnancy and personality change. Perhaps if I reread the series I'll feel a little differently about Mia and their interactions, but i just don't remember thinking much to Mia in general. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459702/#p459702 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Lack of sleep means I've just read two more stories, so before answering Jayde and Guitarman's comments, I'll go through my thoughts on those. Also, bare in mind these stories were read at about two AM, which is in fairness likely the right time to read stephen King, though also bare in mind they were read whilst doing a lot of washing dishes, cleaning the kitchen and other such domestic tasks which tend to get done at this point in time when I can't sleep, which is definitely not! the right thing to do whilst reading Stephen King, though given how much some things I've read whilst doing housework have creeped me out previously, I do submit my ability to multitask is pretty good .Harvey's dream: Okay this one suffered a little from king trying too hard to make the story scary before we got to the actually scary bit, then not have the scary bit really continue to become scary enough. All of the talk of Janet's marriage and things going wrong which then get steam rolered by her husbands possibly prophetic dream didn't really build a scary atmosphere, especially with the implication that she had developed a little contempt for her husbantd. Then again, this is something King seems to have a problem with which comes up in a lot of his stories, very few of his characters can actually be nice, or even love each other successfully. Of course, the concept of one or other daughter possibly being killed in a drunk car crash is a nasty enough one, but the shock never really registered to me as well as it should've done, indeed I thought sorry right number was a much better executed example of this type of premise, even if it was written as a screen play. Rest stop: Okay I'll admit my thoughts on this one changed rather drastically as I was reading it. My first thought, when king was talking of the author who wrote gritty suspense novels about a hired killer during the summer was that we were in for a retread of the dark half. My second thought, when we over hear the scuzbag beating his wife was that King was overdoing a little, especially with the author's less than nice feelings about domestic abuse (his joke about spousal abuse occuring because "they just don't listen" was just plane tasteless). then however something happened, i remembered an incident in 2016 when we were still living in our small flat. My downstairs neighbour was a lady in her fifties who'd had previously had a long relationship with a seemingly decent guy, which I gathered between the lines ended badly. then however we saw several other guys over a short space of time. This culminated in an incident when my lady and I were woken at 5 AM by shouting and massive amounts of banging from below. We at first assumed it was a party (my downstairs neighbor had many rather loud parties with her friends), however this was different. There were sounds of breaking glass and smashing wood and definitely sounds of someone getting hit. My downstairs neighbor was sobbing and screaming for the guy to "just go." we couldn't exactly hear his half of the conversation but "no," and "fuck" came into it a lot. So what do we do? Were I able to see I might have gone down there to sort things out, but I knew physical intervention would likely be a bad idea. In the end we settled on hammering on the floor, shouting "what's going on down there" and then calling 999. Scummy guy left shortly after, before the police arrived, however when the police turned up, I went downstairs with my lady, my downstairs neighbor hugged me, then told the police she was alright, whereupon the wonderfully straight forward Jordy copper said: "well if your alright, why is there blood on your face?" In the end we never saw scummy guy again, indeed it wouldn't have surprised me if my neighbor got a restraining order, though I wasn't asked to witness or anything. Later said neighbor also wrote complaining letters to the council about my guide dog's dog hair (yeah gratittude), but hay. the point of all this, is that suddenly, this story of what sounded like a rather overthetop and stylised version of domestic abuse, down to the woman being pregnant and the man's rather typical "you looked as if you were attracted to some other guy" spiel, took on a new meaning, especially with the writer trying to decide what exactly to do about it.does this mean the situation wasn't a bit cliche? I'm not sure, maybe it was a realistic response to a cliche situation (tasteless jokes aside), either way it did strike a cord with me. So, the ending and seeing the bullying get his comeuppance at the hands of the writer's nastier alter ego was satisfying, though I do wish the writer had been less of an arse hole to the woman, or at least hadn't continued to be contemptuous towards her, his "move your dumb arse" comment and then observing that she "obeyed because she understood" didn't e
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Few things here:1. If not for Susannah, Roland probably dies in the tunnels under Fedic. He's going to have a hard time running full speed and lighting/throwing burning bones to keep the damn worm-thing away. You could argue that having Susannah on his back slowed him a bit, but it's debatable, at least.2. Susannah definitely saves Roland from Dandelo.3. If either Roland or Susannah goes into the badlands alone, Oy is probably sacrificed in order to harvest his fur, at which point Roland likely dies because Oy is no longer there to warn him about Mordred's ambush. They kept each other warm, remember, and snuggled up for warmth on cold nights. They did not have the appropriate clothes for survival, so their own body heat might have kept them both alive.Those are your main three points, but remember that not all characters have to be equally useful at all times. I would think, for instance, that during the prison break at Algul Siento, Susannah setting up that damn laser gun, which started a ton of fires and really caused chaos, was pretty instrumental. If she doesn't distract the demon in book 3, Eddie and maybe even Roland are ripped to pieces, Jake never shows up, and that line never plays out. Susannah also helps with the battle against the wolves.I also think it's pretty cheap to just dismiss Mia. Yes, she wanted her "chap". Yes, she was pretty damn single-minded. But once she got talking to Susannah in book 6, Susannah made her feel sympathy, and while I was never going to like or respect Mia much, she was more than just her desire to have a child. Don't make the mistake of misrepresenting her by how she ends up once Mordred is born; she runs mad and gets eaten, and that's kind of a bad death, though it couldn't have been any other way, really. I'm not saying Mia is a wonderful character, but to dismiss Susannah as you're doing, Dark, gives me the impression that you perhaps aren't paying as much attention as you could be.Now, to Willa and the Gingerbread Girl:First, Willa. I'm pretty sure David and Willa weren't straight-up trapped in the honky-tonk, but lingered there out of a desire to do so. Rather than be tethered to the station, they linger there because they enjoy it. Some people do. I thought the coda in this story was especially sweet...not -my idea of heaven, mind you, but sweet enough, in its way. I thought King did a good job of building this one, doing it fairly subtly, making Willa prickly but also likable in a lot of ways. Just a well-done story.Gingerbread Girl, I'm a mixed bag on. I just never got into the whole Pickering thing, didn't buy the premise. On the part about having a blonde girl in his trunk though: I very, very strongly doubt he was driving around that way. I suspect Pickering went in the house or out of the way after leaving his trunk open, intending to come straight back. So Em goes in there, looks into the trunk, Pickering comes back out and sees he's got a visitor, and the rest is history. As far as the whole losing-a-child thing? I don't see Henry as being written off as a contemptuous act. This happens sometimes, is all. Dead children can sometimes wreck marriages, as such tragedy often brings out the absolute worst in people. We simply don't have enough info to say whether or not Em and Henry were happy - presumably they were, at some point, else why did they get married? - but I don't presume to know a character's past better than the author does. If he said it worked once upon a time, and now it's not, then okay, now it's not. I'd only have an issue with it if we manifestly saw everything humming along, and then the marriage exploded for no reason at all. In that case, yeah, I have a huge problem with it. But that's not what happened here. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459696/#p459696 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King @Dark, I have a long history with the gingerbread girl. It was published in esquire magazine, and at the time that was the only way it was available. I brought it to my high school and my teacher's aid was kind enough to scan it into a text file for me. Pickering is so crazy it's very funny, before he leaves he talks to himself as if he's getting instructions from someone or something. I really enjoyed the running aspect of the story, especially since I was running track at the time. Later when just after sunset was published I got to read gingerbread girl in audiobook form, which I liked even more. The end I loved especially because Pickering is undone by something that most people learn how to do when they are children.Willa I liked okay, but to me it was another king exploration of the afterlife, which felt like old news to me at the time.A Honky-tonk is a bar, usually with a country western theme. They have country singers and bands, and people are dressed in a country style, boots, leather, like that. I've been to a few, and where I live now there are some in the area. I don't like loud music and noise much either, but if I go outside once in a while I can usually handle being there for a period of time. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/459693/#p459693 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, well given the interest in this topic and me obviously being in something of a King mood, I started Just after sunset. I've read the first two stories so far and as has become my custom here I'll add some thoughts on each one, so beware spoiling spoilers of spoileriness beyond this point! Willa: Okay this was a rather cute premise which slightly missed the mark for me, though in fairness to King I suspect that's more a cultural matter. I gathered something was up with the people waiting in the station, and I did indeed wonder if they were dead, so nice to prove I'm write, also a great job by King on painting the people as the most annoying bunch of pasengers to get stuck with (I particularly liked how spot on he was with the cranky five year old), I also liked that Willa was neither entirely likable nor completely irritating, and that David recognised her faults, her spiky and occasionally selfish personality just as he still loved her. the problems came for me firstly in that the story felt a little long, since after we found out the people were all dead, matters seemed to drag a little. Then, while I liked the idea of Willa and David going back to try and get the rest of the people unstuck and them refusing, it didn't feel entirely right that Willa and David were themselves still stuck in the honkitonk bar anyway. I rather thought King should at least have implied that by moving out of the station and stopping waiting for the train, Willa and David might get the chance to move on, rather than just be stuck in the bar forever, which would also imply that the other passengers might get the chance to move on eventually as well (while she was annoying I thought it was a bit rough on the little girl, especially when her mother slapped her and physically dragged her off).Then again its entirely possible this is simply a cultural thing. I'm not entirely sure what "honkitonk" actually means, and having no especial liking for rock or country music, and an active dislike of places that are too noisy and crowded to converse, the idea of being stuck in a bar for all eternity sounds a bit like hell to me, whereas Willa, David and King obviously felt differently.Again, I might have been able to accept if there was some possibility that they might pass over in the future, as occurred with the trucker at the truck stop in James tiptree Junior's; aka Alice Sheldon's, story, her smoke rose up forever, indeed I wonder if King read that story as there are some striking similarities in plot, if not quite in style, though ironically for a writer known for zir grim take on things, tiptree's story ends surprisingly well.So all in all, Willa wasn't a bad story, not a favourite, though how much of this was just King's preferences over mine for an afterlife I don't know. the gingerbread girl: Okay this one was a lot of fun, particularly the onrunning battle with the psychopath. Indeed, it interesting reading this one so soon after Gerald's game and noting a few of the same feelings, even some similar turns of description around physical cramps, muscle pain etc, indeed only Stephen King could make the act of pulling yourself off a chair you'd been duct taped to quite as agonising, or as riveting. I genuinely loved the run up the beach and the way the psycho got his just deserts, though I felt rather sorry for the nice Mexican chap, still deaths of innocents are par for the course in horror stories. I'd also call this one an absolute crash course in how to setup an ending with payoff and deal with your character's skills. We know that Emily has been training herself as a runner, we see her do it in the book, so her kicking free of the chair and out running the crazy murderer is almost the exact opposite of a deus ex machina, would that be a devil stuck in a tree? .My only two miner issues were how we got to the big confrontation, and the character of Emily's husband. Rather like Jessy in the Stand), henry just seemed to get written off with a little contempt, and I could never really understand how these two people could've been happy together at first. I get that King just had to find an excuse to get Emily to florida and with a running obsession and that a husband would get in the way, but he could've done it with a little less contempt, EG, maybe she just had to go to Florida to clear her head and get out of the house where she'd lost her baby. Then again, since I've never fathered a child, much less lost one, I can't say what that would do to someone's marriage, and hay maybe Emily and henry (surprised their daughter wasn't called Dorathy), weren't too fond of each other to begin with. My second issue with the story is more critical. Emily sees Deek the old bridge keeper who warns her away from the nasty Pickering, okay, however then Pickering, a guy who has apparently made murdering several women a year pretty much a regular summer occurrence, just happen
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, well given the interest in this topic and me obviously being in something of a King mood, I started Just after sunset. I've read the first two stories so far and as has become my custom here I'll add some thoughts on each one, so beware spoiling spoilers of spoileriness beyond this point! Willa: Okay this was a rather cute premise which slightly missed the mark for me, though in fairness to King I suspect that's more a cultural matter. I gathered something was up with the people waiting in the station, and I did indeed wonder if they were dead, so nice to prove I'm write, also a great job by King on painting the people as the most annoying bunch of pasengers to get stuck with (I particularly liked how spot on he was with the cranky five year old), I also liked that Willa was neither entirely likable nor completely irritating, and that David recognised her faults, her spiky and occasionally selfish personality just as he still loved her. the problems came for me firstly in that the story felt a little long, since after we found out the people were all dead, matters seemed to drag a little. Then, while I liked the idea of Willa and David going back to try and get the rest of the people unstuck and them refusing, it didn't feel entirely right that Willa and David were themselves still stuck in the honkitonk bar anyway. I rather thought King should at least have implied that by moving out of the station and stopping waiting for the train, Willa and David might get the chance to move on, rather than just be stuck in the bar forever, which would also imply that the other passengers might get the chance to move on eventually as well (while she was annoying I thought it was a bit rough on the little girl, especially when her mother slapped her and physically dragged her off).Then again its entirely possible this is simply a cultural thing. I'm not entirely sure what "honkitonk" actually means, and having no especial liking for rock or country music, and an active dislike of places that are too noisy and crowded to converse, the idea of being stuck in a bar for all eternity sounds a bit like hell to me, whereas Willa, David and King obviously felt differently.Again, I might have been able to accept if there was some possibility that they might pass over in the future, as occurred with the trucker at the truck stop in James tiptree Junior's; aka Alice Sheldon's, story, her smoke rose up forever, indeed I wonder if King read that story as there are some striking similarities in plot, if not quite in style, though ironically for a writer known for zir grim take on things, tiptree's story ends surprisingly well.So all in all, Willa wasn't a bad story, not a favourite, though how much of this was just King's preferences over mine for an afterlife I don't know. the gingerbread girl: Okay this one was a lot of fun, particularly the onrunning battle with the psychopath. Indeed, it interesting reading this one so soon after Gerald's game and noting a few of the same feelings, even some similar turns of description around physical cramps, muscle pain etc, indeed only Stephen King could make the act of pulling yourself off a chair you'd been duct taped to quite as agonising, or as riveting. I genuinely loved the run up the beach and the way the psycho got his just deserts, though I felt rather sorry for the nice Mexican chap, still deaths of innocents are par for the course in horror stories. I'd also call this one an absolute crash course in how to setup an ending with payoff and mess with your character's skills. We know that Emily has been training herself as a runner, we see her do it in the book, so her kicking free of the chair and out running the crazy murderer is almost the exact opposite of a deus ex machina, would that be a devil stuck in a tree? .My only two miner issues were how we got to the big confrontation, and the character of Emily's husband. Rather like Jessy in the Stand), henry just seemed to get written off with a little contempt, and I could never really understand how these two people could've been happy together at first. I get that King just had to find an excuse to get Emily to florida and with a running obsession and that a husband would get in the way, but he could've done it with a little less contempt, EG, maybe she just had to go to Florida to clear her head and get out of the house where she'd lost her baby. Then again, since I've never fathered a child, much less lost one, I can't say what that would do to someone's marriage, and hay maybe Emily and henry (surprised their daughter wasn't called Dorathy), weren't too fond of each other to begin with. My second issue with the story is more critical. Emily sees Deek the old bridge keeper who warns her away from the nasty Pickering, okay, however then Pickering, a guy who has apparently made murdering several women a year pretty much a regular summer occurrence, just happen
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, well given the interest in this topic and me obviously being in something of a King mood, I started Just after sunset. I've read the first two stories so far and as has become my custom here I'll add some thoughts on each one, so beware spoiling spoilers of spoileriness beyond this point! Willa: Okay this was a rather cute premise which slightly missed the mark for me, though in fairness to King I suspect that's more a cultural matter. I gathered something was up with the people waiting in the station, and I did indeed wonder if they were dead, so nice to prove I'm write, also a great job by King on painting the people as the most annoying bunch of pasengers to get stuck with (I particularly liked how spot on he was with the cranky five year old), I also liked that Willa was neither entirely likable nor completely irritating, and that David recognised her faults, her spiky and occasionally selfish personality just as he still loved her. the problems came for me firstly in that the story felt a little long, since after we found out the people were all dead, matters seemed to drag a little. Then, while I liked the idea of Willa and David going back to try and get the rest of the people unstuck and them refusing, it didn't feel entirely right that Willa and David were themselves still stuck in the honkitonk bar anyway. I rather thought King should at least have implied that by moving out of the station and stopping waiting for the train, Willa and David might get the chance to move on, rather than just be stuck in the bar forever, which would also imply that the other passengers might get the chance to move on eventually as well (while she was annoying I thought it was a bit rough on the little girl, especially when her mother slapped her and physically dragged her off).Then again its entirely possible this is simply a cultural thing. I'm not entirely sure what "honkitonk" means, and having no especial liking for rock or country music, and an active dislike of places that are too noisy and crowded to converse, the idea of being stuck in a bar for all eternity sounds a bit like hell to me, whereas Willa, David and King obviously felt differently.Again, I might have been able to accept if there was some possibility that they might pass over in the future, as occurred with the trucker at the truck stop in James tiptree Junior's; aka Alice Sheldon's, story, her smoke rose up forever, indeed I wonder if King read that story as there are some striking similarities in plot, if not quite in style, though ironically for a writer known for zir grim take on things,So all in all, Willa wasn't a bad story, not a favourite, though how much of this was just King's preferences over mine for an afterlife I don't know. the gingerbread girl: Okay this one was a lot of fun, particularly the onrunning battle with the psychopath. Indeed, it interesting reading this one so soon after Gerald's game and noting a few of the same feelings, even some similar turns of description around physical cramps, muscle pain etc, indeed only Stephen King could make the act of pulling yourself off a chair you'd been duct taped to quite as agonising, or as riveting. I genuinely loved the run up the beach and the way the psycho got his just deserts, though I felt rather sorry for the nice Mexican chap, still deaths of innocents are par for the course in horror stories. I'd also call this one an absolute crash course in how to setup an ending with payoff and mess with your character's skills. We know that Emily has been training herself as a runner, we see her do it in the book, so her kicking free of the chair and out running the crazy murderer is almost the exact opposite of a deus ex machina, would that be a devil stuck in a tree? .My only two miner issues were how we got to the big confrontation, and the character of Emily's husband. Rather like Jessy in the Stand), henry just seemed to get written off with a little contempt, and I could never really understand how these two people could've been happy together at first. I get that King just had to find an excuse to get Emily to florida and with a running obsession and that a husband would get in the way, but he could've done it with a little less contempt, EG, maybe she just had to go to Florida to clear her head and get out of the house where she'd lost her baby. Then again, since I've never fathered a child, much less lost one, I can't say what that would do to someone's marriage, and hay maybe Emily and henry (surprised their daughter wasn't called Dorathy), weren't too fond of each other to begin with. My second issue with the story is more critical. Emily sees Deek the old bridge keeper who warns her away from the nasty Pickering, okay, however then Pickering, a guy who has apparently made murdering several women a year pretty much a regular summer occurrence, just happens to leave the boot of his car open so the bloody h
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I Agree with guitarman here. Maybe if I started with the reworked gunslinger, but as it stands there is just too much that was promised which never appears, oh and yeah, I wondered if that was the beast too, in particular I always got the idea Walter was semi disposable, which is why on the night he shows Rowland the vision in the gunslinger, he sort of dies, and of course the jawbone becomes important in the wastelands, Walter's essential function was as the tempter, tempting Rowland onward on his journey, indeed I wondered if eventually Rowland would turn out to be part of the Crimson king's plan in some way himself, particularly with how he's quite willing to sacrifice Jake along the way.Again, its entirely possible that my irritation with the retcon here is due to how young I was when I first read the book, since I read the gunslinger when I was 13, drawing of the three and the wastelands when I was around 15 or 16, and Wizard and glass when was about 19 or 20. I therefore must have reread the Gunslinger a good four or five times over, I remember being so amazed when we got answers , like who Cuthbert, Alain and Susan Delgardo were. Combine this with all of the Dark tower references King has in his other books, and I was pretty jazzed about the lore of the world. Then for King to go "woopse! sorry changed my mind" was nothing short of an anticlimax. I did get who and what Mia was, that she was the demon Rowland meets in The Gunslinger who Susana ( largely channelling Detta walker), then has sex with in the wastelands during Jake's drawing. The problem though is that the actual manifestation of this plot was basically just again Susana losing her mind and going off alone, plus Mia herself had little personality beyond the desire to have a child. Oh, King wrote the plot in a really ghoulish and typical King way, (the sequence after Mordred's birth when he kills Mia is wonderfully nasty), but I just wish Susana had had more to do than replay the plot of Rosemary's baby, since there was much more to her than that, especially given that Mordred himself was just plane disappointing. Fortunately, my lady just reminded me she does do for the danddilo so she does still have a bit to do after giving birth, yet it always did seem a unfair that the title character in song of Susana spends most of her time being compelled into giving birth. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/458883/#p458883 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Spoilers.What bothered me so much in book 7 was that if roland had turned back after saving the beams, as the three of the crimson king's men had suggested, things might have turned out better. They do say that the beams will multiply, gilead will return, and if roland had left it at that things might have turned out okay.I remember reading the gunslinger, the ageless stranger and the beast were mentioned at the end, I was excited to read more and learn more about them. In the afterword of the original, king says that if roland makes it to the tower, he may meet martin there and finally get his revenge. Of course we know this doesn't happen, and the fact that king makes martin and walter one, bothers me a lot. I'd like to think martin was on a whole other level than walter. It's odd, but although king gets rid of the idea of the beast, in the waste lands, there is a scene where eddie is dreaming of being at the tower, and as he is standing in the roses, something monstrous comes down from the sky. Probably the beast, which would have been better than what it turned out to be. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/458794/#p458794 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King King has stated at different points that at first, Marten/Walter were meant to be very different characters, but that he got confused and, given the message he was going for and the similarity of the characters to one another overall, he decided to squish them together. If you read the first Gunslinger, then yeah, it's going to jar like hell, but I personally think it was smart of him to update the Gunslinger the way he did. Writers do this sometimes. If you read the newer Gunslinger, you'll even see tiny foreshadowings (the kan-toi, for instance, and the Taheen, which I quite liked). It's made a bit clearer how stuff actually works, and the ending actually makes more sense (the ending of the series, not the book, although the book's ending is clarified a bit too).Okay...Susannah. *deep breath* I agree with you on part of it - I'm a big fan of how she evicted Detta/Odetta and became her own person - but if you'll remember what ended up happening to her. She did not just develop a new personality. She literally became infested by a demon, an elemental if you will, with a female aspect (or one that can shift aspects). It's a lot of hoo-ha, honestly, but the upshot is that this elemental (explained in book 6) realized after eons untold of not being able to experience anything that it wanted a child of some kind, and it made a sort of Faustian bargain with the Crimson King, said it would do anything to have a child. So what happened? Essentially, through some really wonky fantasy logic, Roland has sex with an oracle demon in the first book, and that demon somehow impregnates Susannah in book 3. It then essentially rides quietly for a couple of books before making its play. Yes, pregnancy is a bit of a tired trope, and I think King could've done better, but if you think about it, you can see it as Roland snaring Susannah, all unknowing, all over again; were it not for him, this doesn't happen and no one is at risk. But his choices led to this, put her in that position, so it's in many ways Roland's own damn fault. This guy does a lot of monstrous stuff when you get right down to it.But Mia is a real creature, of sorts, so I'm okay with that part of it. Actually made me sympathize a little, even. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/458718/#p458718 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I've just now red all the dark tower books, so I started with the reworked version of gunslinger and didn't have those problems. Another advantage of reading them now is that I could insert the new eight dark tower book between book four and five, as is chronologically correct. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/458695/#p458695 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, I'll also say beware dark tower spoilage here. My personal problems with the series didn't so much relate to ow it ended, or who was lost, so much as to how certain other characters were treated along the way and King's final coda. Rowland needed to gain the tower and the Crimson King being a great bunhug was certainly fitting enough, also, while I did not like Jake and Eddy's deaths, I could understand them, Rowland has always made it clear from the first book onward he's given up everything for the tower, and would be willing to do so again. The heart breaking scene is that in the wastelands, in which a grief stricken Jake is pulled through the door, reunited with Rowland and begs him to not let him fall again, and even as he comfort's Jake, Rowland knows the promise he gives is a lie, since heck yes, he would let Jake fall again if it meant gaining the tower. This is the contrast between Roland and Susana, since Susana realises in the end that their katette itself and what they've gained together is more valuable than the tower. My lady described this as a fairy tale ending of the kind King doesn't usually write, but then remarked she didnt' mind in the least, and neither did I since the ending was definitvely a deserved reward for all of them. I admit I'm in two minds about the coda, since while on the one hand I could understand what Rowland finds in the tower and the implication that he's stuck on the wheel, at the same time I'm not really sure if King actually should have written the coda itself. Yes, King remarks that nothing he could've written could've been like our imagining of the dark tower, and that's true, but in a way I would rather King had left matters at that, rather the way, much as I love the time war audios, that Doctor who had never shown us the time war, much less retconned the hole thing, since a war that is so all encompassing it is fought through time itself and warps the entirety of reality is, like the dark tower, a concept which should really just be left unexplained, and inexplicable. There is after all a perfectly good literary reason why the title character neve appears in Lord of the rings.Oh, King did write a warning that those who prefer to imagine the tower should stop without reading on, but honestly I don't think I know anyone who did. So while I do understand the ending, I found it disappointing, but then again was probably always doomed to, unless King had indeed just stopped with Rowland entering the dark tower, as he probably should've done, much as it would possibly still piss off another portion of the fan base.My really major problems with the Dark tower's last few books involved the way Mordred, the man in black and Susana were handled. First, in the original Gunslinger, and in Wizard and glass, it is made pretty clear that Walter, the man in black is definitely not! Flag, aka Martin Broadcloak, aka the ageless stranger. yet, suddenly they become the same person? This really disappointed me, I remember at thirteen reading the description of Rowland's vision in the Gunslinger, and thinking "Wow, this ageless stranger sounds bloody evil, and as for this beast?" And yet suddenly there is no order of evil, just Flag and his boss, with the beast being retconed out of existance in a new retelling of the gunslinger (which I haven't read yet). Frankly that! disappoints me almost as much as the ending, since mystery is one thing, but retconning because you can't be bothered to plot enemies you promised is just plane lazy. Second, Susana. In The drawing of the three and the wastelands we see Susana conquer her alternate personalities, come together and become down right awesome. Then suddenly bing! she's got another one! really this was a severely unfair use of the character, simply repeating yet another plot. what is worse, is that King went with the most obvious plot for his female character and had Susana's story suddenly revolve around pregnancy, when there was so much more to her than simply the fact that she's female. Again, this just plane struck me as lazy, going with the most obvious plotline, and an unfair use of a character who had so much to her, her learning to shoot, her activism, whether Detta walker's immorality had left scars, than merely the fact that she happened to have a uterus. And the result of this pregnancy is some frankenstein mess of a character who proves to be the dampest of damp squibs, and also rubs King's most iconic villain off the map in an effectively off screen scene that has nothing to do with the protagonists! Again, I appreciate that King's idea was to show that evil consumes itself, but honestly one can take bumhuggery a bit too far. of course, also bare in mind, that while I have read the first four dark tower books several times each over the years, starting with the Gunslinger when I was thirteen, I've only read the last three books once in 2008, (I had to get them from
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, I'll also say beware dark tower spoilage here. My personal problems with the series didn't so much relate to ow it ended, or who was lost, so much as to how certain other characters were treated along the way and King's final coda. Rowland needed to gain the tower and the Crimson King being a great bunhug was certainly fitting enough, also, while I did not like Jake and Eddy's deaths, I could understand them, Rowland has always made it clear from the first book onward he's given up everything for the tower, and would be willing to do so again. The heart breaking scene is that in the wastelands, in which a grief stricken Jake is pulled through the door, reunited with Rowland and begs him to not let him fall again, and even as he comfort's Jake, Rowland knows the promise he gives is a lie, since heck yes, he would let Jake fall again if it meant gaining the tower. This is the contrast between Roland and Susana, since Susana realises in the end that their katette itself and what they've gained together is more valuable than the tower. My lady described this as a fairy tale ending of the kind King doesn't usually write, but then remarked she didnt' mind in the least, and neither did I since the ending was definitvely a deserved reward for all of them. I admit I'm in two minds about the coda, since while on the one hand I could understand what Rowland finds in the tower and the implication that he's stuck on the wheel, at the same time I'm not really sure if King actually should have written the coda itself. Yes, King remarks that nothing he could've written could've been like our imagining of the dark tower, and that's true, but in a way I would rather King had left matters at that, rather the way, much as I love the time war audios, that Doctor who had never shown us the time war, much less retconned the hole thing, since a war that is so all encompassing it is fought through time itself and warps the entirety of reality is, like the dark tower, a concept which should really just be left unexplained, and inexplicable. There is after all a perfectly good literary reason why the title character neve appears in Lord of the rings.Oh, King did write a warning that those who prefer to imagine the tower should stop without reading on, but honestly I don't think I know anyone who did. So while I do understand the ending, I found it disappointing, but then again was probably always doomed to, unless King had indeed just stopped with Rowland entering the dark tower, as he probably should've done, much as it would possibly still piss off another portion of the fan base.My really major problems with the Dark tower's last few books involved the way Mordred, the man in black and Susana were handled. First, in the original Gunslinger, and in Wizard and glass, it is made pretty clear that Walter, the man in black is definitely not! Flag, aka Martin Broadcloak, aka the ageless stranger. yet, suddenly they become the same person? This really disappointed me, I remember at thirteen reading the description of Rowland's vision in the Gunslinger, and thinking "Wow, this ageless stranger sounds bloody evil, and as for this beast?" And yet suddenly there is no order of evil, just Flag and his boss, with the beast being retconed out of existance in a new retelling of the gunslinger (which I haven't read yet). Frankly that! disappoints me almost as much as the ending, since mystery is one thing, but retconning because you can't be bothered to plot enemies you promised is just plane lazy. Second, Susana. In The drawing of the three and the wastelands we see Susana conquer her alternate personalities, come together and become down right awesome. Then suddenly bing! she's got another one! really this was a severely unfair use of the character, simply repeating yet another plot. what is worse, is that King went with the most obvious plot for his female character and had Susana's story suddenly revolve around pregnancy, when there was so much more to her than simply the fact that she's female. Again, this just plane struck me as lazy, going with the most obvious plotline, and an unfair use of a character who had so much to her, her learning to shoot, her activism, whether Detta walker's immorality had left scars, than merely the fact that she happened to have a uterus. And the result of this pregnancy is some frankenstein mess of a character who proves to be the dampest of damp squibs, and also rubs King's most iconic villain off the map in an effectively off screen scene that has nothing to do with the protagonists! Again, I appreciate that King's idea was to show that evil consumes itself, but honestly one can take bumhuggery a bit too far. of course, also bare in mind, that while I have read the first four dark tower books several times each over the years, starting with the Gunslinger when I was thirteen, I've only read the last three books once in 2008, (I had to get them from
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King It should also be pointed out that roland doing what he did was not new. He's been using his friends as a means to an end since he was young. He's learned better, but can't always do better. In the end, the Tower conquers all for him. Maybe in some future iteration, he learns how to turn aside, or how to get to where he's going a different way.I actually really liked how grim the last half of book 7 was, mostly because we get to lose characters instead of gaining them. It's a nice thought to think that Eddie, Susannah, Jake and even Oy are out there somewhere in their own universe, maybe not quite as we knew them, but living a life without Roland and a life where they can be their own sort of ka-tet. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/458596/#p458596 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I found the ending very fitting to the series. Not happy, of course, but that, as Jayde said, would not fit anyway. And it's funny how, after the epilogue with the other Eddie, King writes that for a kinda good ending, the readers should stop now. As if anyone would stop then, but the idea counts URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/458515/#p458515 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay...so this thread is full of spoilers, but the Dark Tower is infamous, so proceed beyond this point at your own risk.Seriously. If you don't want spoilage, stop right here.Okay, still here? Then here we go.The nature of an author is that they are god to their characters, in the sense that a world they create depends on the author to give it flesh. I do think King went up his own butt a little bit with this, since people were chewing on him for the massive slowdown in Dark Tower novels, but this didn't come out of nowhere. He's been dropping hints of this since book 4, when it was made very, very clear that there were many, many different Earths, much less different other worlds than these. In Wolves of the Calla, Eddie realizes something is rotten in Denmark when he picks up on all the references to his own world in Midworld (think sneeches, just for one example, although Eddie didn't get that one). King also plays the deus ex machina a little heavily near the end of the book, with Dandelo in particular I mean, and to my mind at least, gets a little too up close and personal with "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came", the narrative poem by Robert Browning cited throughout as a major inspiration for the whole series. It is not egotism to suggest that Roland's quest depends on Mr. King staying alive in order to succeed; it's fact. For whatever reason, Gan (the force that sort of runs all, in this universe) decided that King would be its voice, and if that voice is silenced, then hail Discordia.I also feel "hile wordslinger" was sort of Roland trying to be snide or funny, in the way he sometimes does. After all, wordslinger doesn't have nearly the same ring as gunslinger. He didn't call King a wordsmith, after all, and King has never claimed, either in this series nor anywhere else, that he's a literary genius of any kind. He just does what he loves, but with this series he got lazy, and metareferenced it.Now, to speak of the way the series ends:first Eddie dies, and I saw that coming a mile off. It hurt though.Then Jake dies, and I ugly-cried when that happened when I read it the first time. Again, knew it would happen, but it was still awful. And the awful nature of it is that if King had been doing his job, it would never have had to occur. The way it sort of scooped roland hollow hurts my heart even now.Then Susannah, Roland and Oy sorta toughed it out awhile, but you could tell there was no real ka-tet left. It was just three people sharing a road and trying to stay alive. Oh, the history wasn't gone, but all the fun and fire had gone out of it for all of them. Susannah's heart went with Eddie, and to a lesser extent Jake, and her dreams, haunting her pretty much from the moment of Eddie's death, are pulling her toward another idealized world she wants to go to. And Roland's been doing this so long that he can't quit now. All the blood and the miles and the death behind him? No way to turn back. What's there besides emptiness for him anyway?So then Susannah finds her way through, and off she goes, with Patrick's help. She throws away the gun, she gives everything up.Then it's just Roland and Oy, and eventually Oy is what stands between Roland being assassinated by silly Mordred (he's the character I liked least; the only good thing he did was off Walter, and even then, I hated the way this was done). Anyway, Oy dies, but it gives Roland enough time to do what needs done.So Roland and Patrick are left alone, and ultimately Roland finds the tower and conquers it. And he gets spun back.Surprise!Or not. Ka like a wheel. He's been dropping hints before. This wasn't Rolan's first go-round. But he's got the horn this time. Maybe it'll be better this time. Maybe he can make good cohices.A lot of fiction, when you get to the final hard stretch, you know that the guys you're rooting for are going to win. You might lose a few, you might not get everything you want, but you're very likely going to win. King took that trope and stood it on its head. Yes, Roland gains the Tower, but should he have done so? Does the Tower actually represent something one should want and strive for, given how much it seems to cost? There are a lot of potentially profound messages in this story, and flawed though it inevitably must be, I think this note was hit very well. If you came out of this series with a happy ending, that to me would be a cheat. If I was writing it, I'd want you to feel bleak when you read that coda. I'd want you to ask "what's it all for?", because it would get you thinking.Just as I hope this analysis has, for that matter. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/458499/#p458499 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Hi.Well I liked having king slip himself into the series, but what bothers me is that the whole quest for the tower is endangered just because king refuses to finish the series. I do believe the price that has to be paid to keep king alive was asking far too much. I do appreciate that in the end king faces up to his responsibilities, or at least that is implied in the story.I know this will sound silly to a lot of you, but I'm not a fan of the dark tower series anymore because of how it ended. I loved the series the whole time I was reading it, but when I got to the end, I read through the coda, and it broke my heart. If I had it to do over again, I would turn back before I read what I read. To me the whole second half of the final book was a major disappointment, I remember expecting a big triumphant conclusion, instead it was sad and short. In the end it seemed to me that roland used his friends as a means to an end. I think that's what I hated the most! The series up until the seventh book was great. So many good ideas, humor, questing, magic and guns, but it all ends in nothing. I never expected a completely happy ending, but I did expect king to have something rewarding at the end of the story.His other books are better, I don't have to worry about another series like that. Or at least that's what I'm hoping. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/458471/#p458471 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I don't mind metafiction myself and have seen several good examples, and I really liked linking King's cosmology and seeing characters like father Calahan again. My only major problem in the Dark tower with King sticking himself in there, was the way he made himself so important to the cosmology of the world. True, he shows himself in a not entirely flattering light, but the fact that basically its implied all of reality depends upon Stephen King's wellbeing, - plus, cute phrase though it was, Rowland's "Hyo Word slinger" was going a little too far in self congratulation I thought. Had King just made himself some old scribe sat on the sidelines who was taking inspiration from elsewhere or writing events he somehow knew from another source I wouldn't have minded. then again, I'm much more kindly disposed to King's metafiction after reading John Scalzi's redshirts which is probably the worst example I've ever encountered and a truly abysmal book, find my less than complementary review here URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457994/#p457994 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I'm...very mixed on it, personally.On the one hand, King presents his avatar as extremely flawed, a conduit rather than a god. He isn't doing what he's supposed to be doing, and so the ka-tet nearly comes to ruin over it. In the end, an enormous price must be paid so that King's avatar does not die before the story can be written.On the other hand, this sort of metareferencing is something I've never much cared for, regardless of who's doing it. It's just not my cup of tea, and it never has been. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457991/#p457991 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Speaking of the dark tower, how do you feel about King including himself as an almost godlike character (or maybe the herald of a godlike force) in the later dark tower books? I liked the idea, because it opened up the possibility of using characters from his other books like Father Calahan, but not every reader liked that. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457988/#p457988 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Speaking of the dark tower, how do you feel about King including himself as an almost godlike character (or maybe the herald of a godlike force) in the later dark tower books. I liked the idea, because it opened up the possibility of using characters from his other books like Father Calahan, but not every reader liked that. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457988/#p457988 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I don't remember Salem's lot feeling particularly dry when I read it, or indeed ploddy the way the Dead zone felt. People seem to have something of a hate for Salem's lot but I actually enjoyed it. I remember when I first read it as a teenager, I mentioned to my dad that I was going to read it but it'd probably take a long while to get good, and he told me Salem's lot was the one exception where King picks things up fairly quickly, and that was what I found. I do remember Susan felt a bit generic, though what he did with her plot took me genuinely by surprise, and I loved seeing Father calahan getting redemption in the dark tower.Then again, I first read Dracula when I was fairly young, about ten or eleven I think, so it was interesting enough for me to just see what King would do with vampires in a modern setting, of course this was back in the nineties before Twilight and the point that everyone got seriously fanged off with vampires . I have reread it since then, though possibly the last time was a good ten or twelve years ago, so I might be a little hazy on the details since then. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457983/#p457983 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Well that's part of your problem. lol It would be mid-70s culture, not mid-60s. I didn't find that the book rambled too much. It just develops slowly and has a dryness to it, sort of like Salem's Lot, that bugs some people, self included. It's actually not particularly padded or verbose for the most part. Its language just isn't all that spot on for what it's trying to do.I'm pretty sure the narrator of that book is Lorelei King, and I never got into her reading; she sounds really boring. By contrast, the NLS version is read by Diane Ailenberg or some such, and she's pretty good, albeit not great. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457963/#p457963 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I agree on Joubert's final speech to Jessie being awesome moment, I just wish we'd got to it sooner and King had had a less trite explanation, since it just felt to me as if Joubert was a collection of cliches and borderline stereotypes, and we know King can do better, this is why as I said I'd have almost preferred him to be unexplained, still so it goes. I am rather tempted with four past midnight next off, what with me leaving it half finished for all these years, but we'll see.@je97, the deadzone was one I just could not get into. I personally don't have a narrator voice preference as long as its a human, and they can do some acting all the better, but for some reason I just couldn't get into the dead zone. I tried once in braille, and then again in audio, and honestly wound up giving up part way through since it just felt aimless, definitely one of those books that gives credence to the theory that King's books ramble too much I thought.it did strike me the deadzone was a very heavily period based book, so maybe there are just nuances of American history and mid sixties American culture I'm missing, or maybe I just need to try again and persevere a bit to get to the interesting partts. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457940/#p457940 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King My all time favourite King book is the dead zone, and the narrator makes it for me. I'm generally not a fan of many female narrators, especially American ones as many seem to be trying to make their voices unnaturally high-pitched (so kate reading and whoever is the narrator of the dead zone are good, whoever reads Impyrium is not.) The book is just very...slick. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457897/#p457897 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Well, the man who's trying to help Jessie in the epilogue isn't too bad. Do remember this is like 1992, so they're still like twenty-odd years behind the overall curve. Brandon is not a terrible man by any stretch, he's just protective and sort of shocked. I think this is fine. I don't think we need a sympathetic male character, a "good guy" just to balance the fact that several of the men in this story are real pieces of work.I also am pretty sure King never intended for Joubert's physical appearance or apparent homosexuality to imply that he was evil. His physical appearance is just meant to make him look ghoulish, and his homosexuality was just another point about him. I'd have to reread the epilogue to be sure, but I'm pretty sure King does not tie these things together. I tell you what though; when Jessie's in court and watching Joubert, and he leaps up and shrieks, "You're not real! You're only made of moonlight!", I got legit chills. That note, for me at least, was hit pretty much right on key. I do think the epilogue was too slow, mind you. Nice idea, but too slow.Just After Sunset is, in my opinion, better than Four Past Midnight. There are some duds in that collection, but not many. Dolores Claiborn, if you read it via audio, is narrated by Frances Sternhagen, and so long as you can get past her voice (which some will find annoying) she's freaking amazing. The book itself drags a few times, but is ultimately quite good. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457817/#p457817 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I think Jayde a lot of my issues with Gerald's game came from the epilogue, since had the book finished not long after Jessie's escape I certainly would've just taken Jessie's comments in character and understandably a product of her history and circumstances, but it was the fact that the closest thing the book has to a nice male character is still condescending and dismissive of women generally, and Jessie in particular that seemed a bit much. Then again maybe this is an accurate portrait of rich lawyers from main, I'm honestly not sure, still again that was another reason for me the book went on a bit too long and why I preferd Rose Madder in terms of King's dealing with themes of violence against women. With Joubert. I'd have been quite happy were he just a mystery, indeed the explanation King had was just a bit too far, apart from being quite stat and rather hachnied, if not literally stereotyped, what with him being weird looking so he's evil! and homosexual so he's evil! and a man who was sexually abused as a child so he's evil! Again, King was just shooting for the lowest possible targets here, apart from the fact the explanation seemed to take far longer than Joubert was actually in the book. Indeed, I sort of wonder if Joubert was a left over horror idea, since honestly his first appearence wouldn't have been out of place in midworld, then King suddenly realised that the book wasn't going to be a sueprnatural one and had to suddenly fudge an explanation.anyway. For a lot of the epilogue I was just wanting things to wrap up so we could get the idea that Jessie was, if not actually alright, at least in a better place and on the road to recovery. We got there in the end, and I really liked the idea of Jessie reconnecting with Ruth in an effort to stop the nightmares , but it just felt way too long in coming, like when you finish on the roller coaster and are just waiting to get off. Ironically, even though misery is one of my least favourite King novels, this is one area where I thought it scored better than Gerald's game, since once we've had the climax with Anny, we see the mess Paul is left in, but at the last we get a bit of a ray of hope with him starting writing.I've not read Dolores Claimborn, and I'll probably get to it at some point, though I suspect its going to be needful things next as that's another my lady would like to do, though I might have another go at one of King's short story collections as generally I've really enjoyed them,and I tend to like to read short story collections between needing to review books. Actually just after Sunset has been mentioned in this topic by several people, and so possibly that's the King collection I'll do next, though I'm also tempted to try four past midnight. I got the book years ago, read the langoleers, which had a premise I really liked and was interesting after watching the miniseries, albeit Dyna seemed to be a pretty blatant example of both the helpless and mystical blind person moulds (my lady really gets annoyed at Dyna), however just as I started the second story, the disk broke and the RNIB never sent me another copy, so I haven't read the other three stories in the collection. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457788/#p457788 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King I have a few issues with Gerald's Game, but most of what you disliked, Dark, I didn't mind.For instance, I think it's too long and draggy in some places. It was a novella that King pumped up a little too much. This would do better if it was about 140 pages shorter. Lean, mean and scary as hell if done right and if the throttle is held down a little more, especially at the end. Like you, I think the post-escape part is really quite slow. Too slow, really.But where I stop agreeing with you is in the targeting of men, and in the truth about Joubert.So, men being awful and all that. Jessie dealt with arguably the single most important male figure in her life first molesting her, then emotionally blackmailing her into never, ever telling. We know the shit that caused her. So she ended up married to a man of considerable wealth, a lawyer who generally never grew up and was rather childish. This man then very nearly raped her before she fought back, kicked him in the gut, and inadvertently brought on the heart attack that bumped him off. Gerald did not deserve to die, but when you have someone in handcuffs and they tell you to let them go, you do it. You don't play games. You do it. This is why safe words exist for good reason, BTW. Anyway, I think you can understand how this worked out. The two most important men in Jessie's life have made her pretty understandably gun-shy. She doesn't actually believe every man out there is awful, not all the way down, but it's going to take her some time before she can get past what she's come through. To expect her to even hear the "not all men" rhetoric after her ordeal is just foolish, and to -use that rhetoric on her is borderline heartless. Because no, not all men are that way; in fact, most would be appalled by that level of behaviour. But the issue is that if that's your experience, ore most of it, then it's all you have, and you can't just be told that "well these other men will be different". I didn't see this as ham-fisted by King, I saw it as spot-on for survivors of male-perpetrated violence against women.And now, Joubert. Okay, he went a -little bit far with this one. But the fact that there was a random necrophiliac who liked stealing bones and jewelry, I thought, was actually creepy as hell. King could've left it ambiguous, but I think the reason it was brought in at the end this way is because Jessie really needed to be able to put it to bed. Now she knows it was a man, not a figment of her imagination. A terribly disturbed, perhaps mentally unstable man. And hey, guess what? They're out there, folks. Women too. All genders, they're out there. So this was a little convenient, but not horribly outlandish. If it'd just been left as Jessie never knowing what she saw, it's arguably scarier but also far more bleak, as she'll never really get closure that way. I think King was, in his way, actually trying to bring the story to closure of a sort, the way Dolores got.Speaking of, Dolores Claiborne and Gerald's Game were once halves of a bigger novel called In the Path of the Eclipse. You can see little pieces of them still tied to each other, but I think King got a bit spooked by what that would entail, and took them apart. Dolores worked very well, in my opinion; Gerald's Game was good, but not great, mostly owing to its wooliness and penchant for protracted rambling. Totally squicked out when I first read the escape though; I hope I'm never, ever called upon to do that to myself. URL: https://forum.audiogames.net/post/457703/#p457703 -- Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
Re: Books by Stephen King
Re: Books by Stephen King Okay, threadcromancy here is because yesterday Mrs. Dark and I finished Gerald's game. its odd, as I said earlier in this topic I was sent the book as a teenager, but decided not to read it both because I had not particularly enjoyed misery and the premise in Gerald's game sounded disturbingly similar, and because at that point I was still extremely genophobic, and the premise behind geralds game sort of automatically implied that matters would get pretty x rated, after all it is about a woman who winds up handcuffed to the bed with a dead husband after an attempted sex game goes severely wrong.In general I like the book, albeit I had a couple of issues. While the book moved slowly, the plot and action were more than compelling enough to hold my interest for the most part, and I thought King did a far better job here with realistic characters in a bad situation.Okay now on to the spoilery part of what I plan to say so only read on if you don't mind spoilers. As in the long walk, King has a really amazing ability to describe progressive physical torture which is neither boring nor gratuitous, so all of the descriptions of Jessy's physical sensations, cramps, dehydration etc were spot on awesome (if that is the right word). I also loved the way the book used minimal restricted movement to up the tension, never before could I imagine being on tentahooks to see if someone could tip a shelf, or grab a jar of face cream. My lady did not like the plot with the dog eating Gerald's corpse, and I can see why, though, aweful as it was I do credit King for even making his corpse eating stray dog partly sympathetic . Speaking of sympathetic, this one contrasted oddly with Rose Madder. Jessy is not as likable as rose, she often comes across as a rather unpleasant, quite privileged woman, even though Rose endures more abuse. What is odd however, is that where Norman was at rock bottom a plane monster, Gerald (and indeed Jessy's father), were far more realistically unpleasant characters. yet for all that, jessy in Gerald's game is far more free with mysandric statements, saying men are cursed with penises, heck, even at the end when Jessy runs into a supposedly nice man, he's still condescending and partly dismissive of her, plus being part of a law firm who want to sweep Gerald's unpleasantness under a rug. Its odd, on the one hand I can completely understand why jessy has the attitude she does, heck given what her father did even before Gerald, and the premeditation involved, and his effort to convince her to cover it up its entirely believable. On the other, there is no denying that were this book written by a woman not by a man, my lady and I would probably assume that the attitudes were the author's not the character's. Indeed, this is another way in which Gerald's game contrasts with Rose Madder, since though Norman is pretty much as bad as it gets, Rose Madder features some extremely nice men (rose runs into one just after leaving her husband), and despite norman's awefulness, Rose doesn't extend this to believing all men are arseholes.Apparently King had been criticised for not being able to write realistic female characters by his publishers, so maybe this was something of an adverse reaction, or maybe King just assumed this was how all abuse survivors behaved, I don't know.Either way this was just another fact that made Jessy a sympathetic, but not necessarily always likable character. Yet, oddly for that, King was so frighteningly correct with ptsd and sexual abuse it was actively scary, flashbacks, songs, occasional breakdowns, even the importance of writing things down to get things out of your head.In terms of actual action The tension, the voices in Jessy's head, and the revelation of her past were all really well delivered, in particular, I loved the way King actually gave the revelation of Jessy's past abuse some realistic, practical significance to her current predicament with the broken glass.So, all in all the book was actually really good, welll it was really good up to the point that felt like a natural ending.I loved King's description of the apparition of the space cowboy, it was wonderfully disturbing, very king,and honestly I could imagine this guy hunching through midworld along with the slow mutants and the low men in yellow coatss.The problem? King needed a long and convoluted explanation, an explanation which was very clunkily delivered, indeed the book felt a good two hours longer than it needed to be. Really, i would've been quite happy if this apparition remained an unexplained bit of horror, and if the ending was just that Jessy started recovering, got in touch with her old friend Ruth, and was eventually going to be okay. Heck, Jessy had a couple of visions of Dolores Clayborn,and since I haven't read that novel, they didn't mean much to me, however it didn't matter since I just took them as a general part of Jessy's extreme situation resting
