Prince Sphinc-Tor Posted January 7, 2009 Share Posted January 7, 2009 QUOTE (DiscipleofLerxst @ Nov 12 2008, 06:21 PM) I used to read King all the time starting about 20 years ago when I discovered reading was something more than just what your teachers forced you into. Although....I haven't read any of his never stuff...kinda like I love the purity of the older material. What I've read. Carrie Cycle of the Werewolf The Dead Zone Gunslinger (I think that was the first in the Dark Tower series) Dolores Clairborne The Eyes of the Dragon Gerald game It Misery Needful Things Salems Lot (possibly my favorite book of all time. Read it at least 5 times, twice this year and I just finished it the other day) The Shining The Stand (both cut and uncut versions) The Talisman The Tommyknockers Different Seasons (Compilation of short stories) Four Past Midnight (Compilation of short stories) Nightmare & Dreamscapes (Compilation of short stories) Nightshift (Compilation of short stories) Skeleton Crew (Compilation of short stories) I think that's it...I guess I should at least try some of his newer stuff...anyone got any suggestions? I've read the exact same list. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 7, 2009 Author Share Posted January 7, 2009 The last book I read, Carrie, was King's first published novel in 1974, but this next one I'm going to read he started writing well before that. I've taken the reading of this one very seriously. I've watched several classic westerns to get myself in the right mood, films such as Once Upon a Time in the West, For a Few Dollars More, The Good the bad and the Ugly. I really want to give myself the best chance possible to enjoy this because last time back in 1987 or 88 I wasn't too impressed.  When I read it before I just didn't really get it, there were too many oblique references to events that never got explained, too many people were described that the reader never meets, in essence there was too much left unanswered, too many loose ends and well before I finished the last page i was sick of the mumbo jumbo frankly.  Oh yeah I should tell you, the book in question is the first volume in the Dark Tower series, The Gunslinger, here's what my UK 1987 trade paperback looks like... http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2638/gunslingeriy4.jpg Now though, years and decades have passed and in that time the Dark Tower series has been completed and published and even a slowcoach like me has read 3 more volumes, 2 of them twice now. So armed with the knowledge gained from reading these, and feeling much more at home in Roland's universe, I feel I will appreciate this first volume much more this time around. So all I need now is my poncho, my remmington six shooter, my cowboy boots, stetson and I can finally curl up on my couch/bed and return to this after 20 odd years... I'll be back later with sand in my boots... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 8, 2009 Author Share Posted January 8, 2009 http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2638/gunslingeriy4.jpg It's all coming back to me now. No wonder this volume seems a little haphazard. It wasn't originally written as one 200 page + volume but 5 short stories that were published in a magazine from 1978-1981. The first one is not bad but gave me a case of flashback fever; the Gunslinger in the desert chasing the man in black, thinks back to the last dweller shack where he recalled the tale of the events in Tull and within that the woman told him the tale of the Man in Black raising the dead...a story within a story, within a story within a story... I notice The Beatles Hey Jude gets a mention, just like in Carrie, I suppose King was on a Hey Jude kick back in the early 70s... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 11, 2009 Author Share Posted January 11, 2009 http://img132.imageshack.us/img132/2638/gunslingeriy4.jpg I said it was all coming back to me but in fact I forgot most of it (again). It's the weakest volume of the series without doubt I'd say (so far), but it's still not a bad little book. I struggled with it early on though, I just couldn't seem to get into it early on and later on too, i kept either dozing off, re-reading the same line over and over or finding my mind wandering. But when I did get going there were several good sequences that were pretty enjoyable, such as the battle in Tull, Roland's coming of age was good, the attack of the slow mutants, the meeting with the man in black and so on. In between though I was getting a little restless.  Once again though this was a King book that turned out to be better than I remembered. I enjoyed reading the afterword too, where King tells a little of the history of how he came to write the story; he started in 1970, did some more while he had a break from writing Salem's Lot, another section around the time of The Shining, none at all during the time he worked on The Stand and so on. Then he tells of green paper and his wife and on and on... I wouldn't mind reading some more stuff like that...I wonder... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 11, 2009 Author Share Posted January 11, 2009 Just one more word on the Gunslinger, I meant to say that I really enjoyed the artwork by Michael Whelan in this volume, much more than the artwork in The Drawing of the Three. Here are the illustrations that featured: http://img162.imageshack.us/img162/9769/slingerdeadtownyo1.jpghttp://img218.imageshack.us/img218/1944/slingerhaxhl0.jpghttp://img78.imageshack.us/img78/8544/slingertempleoraclell3.jpg http://img229.imageshack.us/img229/6466/sllingerslowmutantsny2.jpghttp://img58.imageshack.us/img58/145/slingeronbeachrs2.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 13, 2009 Author Share Posted January 13, 2009 I'm gonna take a little non-fiction detour in my King fest with the next book. I read Danse Macabre back in the 80s and I don't feel the need to revisit that one. The non-fiction book I haven't read though is On Writing which is where I want to go next. Here's what my copy looks like... http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/9126/onwritingrs5.jpg Mine looks exactly like that except where it says A Memoir in red at the bottom, mine says A Memoir of the craft. I've no idea why it's different but there you go. Part of me, the real horror/sci-fi/thriller junkie part of me, is foolishly hoping the craft in question is a spacecraft, hah! I'll convince it that non-fiction King is also good King before I get started reading it. Oh yeah my copy looks waaaay cleaner and brighter than the one in that pic...just sayin... So anyway, this book is part autobiographical and part instructional. I know full well that the instructional part is gonna make me feel like a total slug for not doing my own writing, but I'll get over the guilt...somehow, yes I'll live with being a lazy, talentless bastard! Aha but what I'm really interested in are the bio parts of the book. Especially the van accident. Wow I want to read details of that!!I want to read about pain, blood, agony and carnage!! I want gore, broken bones, pain pain pain!! I want to hear the screams in my mind in fact!! Wait a second, don't look at my text like that!! I'm not an animal I'm a Stephen King fan!!! What do you expect??? Squeamishness? Pity?? Oh come on now, you know you loved that van accident part when you read it! You were fascinated, you little King freak you!! I see you! Seriously though, I'm really interested in the full story of that event in King's life. I remember hearing about the accident on the news and thinking "oh shit no more Stephen King novels!" Once I found out he was alive I was worried about head injuries, I mean, you know what I mean. Oh God I'm totally selfish aren't I? There he is in hospital broken and half-dying and there's me, all I care about is the next book that he may not be able to publish?? God I'm bad aren't I?? Gruesome as a ghoul eh??! It was strange though, the accident, it almost like one of his novels came to life and bit him on the arse, so to speak. As if Misery had come true, just without crazy Annie Wilkes to nurse him back to health...fortunately for Steve. And the guy who drove the van mysteriously died soon after. Talk about truth being stranger than fiction and life imitating art. And didn't King take a hammer to van itself like a madman out of control!!??  So anyway I'm babbling and making light of this, but there it is. And yes non-fiction KING for me...for now...I'll talk more later... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 15, 2009 Author Share Posted January 15, 2009 http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/9126/onwritingrs5.jpg Quick update: I've now read the CV, What writing is and Toolbox sections.  I really enjoyed the CV section, particularly the story of the "Village Vomit" and when he bought a hair dryer for Tabby when he found out he'd just sold the paperback rights to Carrie for $400,000. If he'd given her that as a present at any other time he'd have been in the DOGHOUSE for sure!! A certain TRFer will know what I mean. I laughed at that part and also the account of first time he got drunk on a trip to New York when he was 19, I laughed out loud when he mentioned that Old Cue Ball of Village vomit fame was with them. I also loved the image King gives us of him in the 80s when he was drunk and high and sat at his huge desk like, as he puts it, a captain on a voyage to nowhere. I might disagree with him about the drinking though, most of my favourite King books were written when he was a drunk. Get drunk again Steve, you know it makes sense! Overall King sounds, or makes himself sound a pretty ordinary guy, who had a pretty normal upbringing, with no traumatic experiences beyond 200 pound babysitters farting in his face. One thing he hasn't mentioned though is the body he found as a kid, that little tale was conspicuous by it's absence. Ah well, it was a fun read anyway. The Toolbox section is a little bit of rudimentary instruction. I do a bit of writing myself, or used to do, so I already worked out the "he said she said" dialogue thing a long time ago (he typed egomanically) [oh shit I hope King doesn't see that bit in brackets - the other brackets]. So yeah I do the he said she said with dialogue, if i do anything at all with it, so that anyone reading it will concentrate on the dialogue and not any crap that I put directly after it. You know what I mean. Oh and I know know none of the technical names in grammar, English teachers are really the only ones who need to know those terms though. Oh yeah btw Cormac McCarthy novels are a little difficult to understand in places, I found The Crossing a bit hard to get here and there... I'll shut up now... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 18, 2009 Author Share Posted January 18, 2009 http://img393.imageshack.us/img393/9126/onwritingrs5.jpg I enjoyed the "On Writing" part more than I thought I would, probably because King has such a charming and funny way with the subject (he's like that with most subjects actually). There's some good info in there for the budding writer too or for the writer who's been at it a while but not yet broken out, so to speak. Some things you might not go along with exactly like how many drafts to write, though SK's 2+ is very reasonable, or how long to leave it in the drawer after you finish the first draft before tinkering with it. The section that deals with King's accident with the blue van is a lot shorter than I imagined it was going to be, and I'm glad it was in the end. I felt really sorry for the guy to be honest, to the point of getting serious sympathy pains and needing to lie down on the couch with my hand over my face feeling a bit sick. The marbles in a sock description of his leg after the crash was the culprit, along with imagining how it felt when he took his first steps on that leg and how he could do nothing but literally cry with pain afterwards . Ahhh empathy is a tough gig, it is for me anyway. And so there ends my little detour, yep it's back to King fiction next... btw I wonder if he'd approve of the writing in this thread, I'm sure he'd cut it down by more than 10%, 25% maybe? 40?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dweezil Posted January 20, 2009 Share Posted January 20, 2009 I hate series as a rule, so convince me that I should read that gunslinger/dark tower thing series. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 20, 2009 Author Share Posted January 20, 2009 QUOTE (Mrs. Huck Rogers @ Jan 20 2009, 12:28 PM) I hate series as a rule, so convince me that I should read that gunslinger/dark tower thing series. Well I haven't read it all yet, but as you can see by what I said about the first volume, it's only a so-so start, not bad but nothing to get steamed up about, but it gets better with each volume. The thing is, as I said, I haven't finished the series yet, Wizard and Glass is as far as I've got. And Wizard and Glass for me is the best of the 16 books I've covered so far in the thread, so that should tell you something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 21, 2009 Author Share Posted January 21, 2009 Next up is a novel that was originally released as a "serial thriller" a six part series of six mini books with a cliffhanger ending. Nowadays it's just sold as one single volume of course, but I read it back in 1996 part by part as it was meant to be. So I dug my 6 mini volumes out of an old but well preserved Dillons bookshop bag and I'm good to go. Here's how they look: http://img150.imageshack.us/img150/3996/greenmilesethd2.jpg This is one case where the US and UK editions looked exactly the same. The only difference is the publisher, Penguin in the UK and Signet in the US. If you look at the picture you can see the little Penguin logo in the bottom left hand corner of each mini book. I wasn't going to read this again, I didn't like it last time and I'm pretty sure I won't love it now. It seemed back then another example of a long drawn out work that should have been a short story. And it seems to me now, after reading On Writing, that King wasn't obeying his own rules on cutting out the crap, so to speak. Soon after I'd packed the book away and forgotten it the Tom Hanks film version came out with all the hype surrounding it and I really didn't get it at all.  But...people keep telling me and I keep reading that The Green Mile is their favourite King novel. So, ok, I'll give it another go and see if I was harsh, after all I liked Carrie an awful lot better than I thought I would. This is actually going to be the first of 5 books by Steve that I really didn't care for first time around, or at least wasn't too keen on.  This is the Signet version of the first volume, exactly like mine except mine has the little Penguin in the corner...  http://img232.imageshack.us/img232/6822/greenmile1tc5.jpg  Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dweezil Posted January 21, 2009 Share Posted January 21, 2009 Get out of the cockadoody car!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Prince Sphinc-Tor Posted January 21, 2009 Share Posted January 21, 2009 WOW Tree...you've got a book with your last many posts!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 22, 2009 Author Share Posted January 22, 2009 QUOTE (Mrs. Huck Rogers @ Jan 21 2009, 05:37 AM) Get out of the cockadoody car!!! Annie Wilkes??   I finished the first first mini-volume and so far it's been easy reading and fairly interesting. I liked the description during the harrowing scene where the posse track and find Coffey and the girls, very nicely drawn and pretty spooky.  Overall though, so far, this is just an ok story to me. I mean what have we got here? A group of prison guards who bring in a guy to Cold Mountain's death row, E-block, and ok he's a BIG guy. And like a lot of King's groups one of the group is a rotten apple who's spoiling the lot and you know he's gonna get his comeuppance along the way, and you also know that when he does he'll have already done enough damage that the repercussions will be felt long after he's gone. Interesting? Yes, but this kind of situation would just be a minor sub-plot in one of King's best novels. I just can't see how this book could ever be described as King's best, or even one of his best. It's nothing special at all. At least it's better than From a Buick 8 though, so far, but that's not a lot to shout about... Anyway I'm ready for the next volume... http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/7162/greenmile2eb7.jpg My copy is bright yellow for some reason, a bit more useless infor for you... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Turn Me On Dead Man Posted January 22, 2009 Share Posted January 22, 2009 QUOTE (Mrs. Huck Rogers @ Jan 21 2009, 05:37 AM) Get out of the cockadoody car!!! ....You dirty birdie... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 23, 2009 Author Share Posted January 23, 2009 I've got this pal who swears blind that the Green Mile is one of King's best novels, but as I read Mouse on the Mile last night, I just can't see how it could be. I find it totally average by King standards, the setting doesn't seem totally authentic, the story is pretty humdrum with not a lot happening by and large, and the mouse I just can't take seriously. Calling it a serial thriller is a bit of a stretch, serial drama maybe... The religious theme that King saw in this story and developed, I don't really care for either. Meanwhile his Jesus Christ character, John Coffey didn't feature much in part two, it was mostly back story about the Chief, Percy and the best bit about the new prisoner was left till about 10 pages from the end. Anyway part three later... http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/8405/greenmile3ul6.jpg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 26, 2009 Author Share Posted January 26, 2009 (edited) http://img104.imageshack.us/img104/9342/greenmile4hc6.jpghttp://img230.imageshack.us/img230/715/greenmile5ef2.jpg http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/1716/greenmile6op9.jpg I'm on the last mini volume, Coffey on the Mile, and I'm pretty glad it's nearly over, it's not a terrible novel by any means but I've really found it a chore to read, not because it's hard to read or boring, but because I'm just not fan of the story, the setting or the ideas in it. I don't much care about any of the characters either (John Coffey comes across like a caricature to me) or the religious theme he seems to be drawing, there's something unconvincing about the setting as well. And there's other things I don't like about it like the whole mouse idea, which is silly almost to the point of being ridiculous.  It's predictable too. At the point I'm up to, page 48 of the final volume, it's not yet been confirmed, but from the moment it's revealed in volume three that Coffey possesses supernatural healing powers, it's obvious A that he didn't kill the girls and B that it's going to turn out that it was the new prisoner William Wharton who killed them.  So I don't like the story and I can work out the plot. I suppose this why they were able to turn it into a successful Hollywood film, because the story is so simple. King's at his best when he juggles multiple points of view, but this one is written in first person, all from Paul's POV. This limits King a little too. What else can I say about it? Well all his bad boy characters in this seem like one and the same person, even though I know King's is trying to draw a parallel between the death row prison block Paul used to work in and the death row that is the old folks home he lives in while penning the story. The whole serial thriller thing bothers me too. If you look at each volume they use the word experiment in the blurb and that gives you a good idea about the thinking behind it, it seems to have been a side project while his real novel of that year (1996) was already ready to go, so this "extra" book was free to be a failure. Somehow though it became popular but if it hadn't I'm pretty sure King and the publishers would have just said ah well it was a nice little experiment no big deal. To me it was King writing his "electric chair" novel and getting the serial novel gimmick out of his system, just like the story for sale on the net gimmick (The Plant). So all in all, not his worst novel but still it's a predictable and forgettable King tale that's a long, long way from his best. Edited January 26, 2009 by treeduck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted January 29, 2009 Author Share Posted January 29, 2009 King's used a lot his character's names for his books, whether they're people, dogs or even cars, Carrie, Christine, Cujo for instance. Such is the case with the next one I'm reading Dolores Claiborne. Again this isn't one I'm a fan of. It was published in 1992 and over here in early 1993, I remember groaning when I saw it in a local bookshop window when it was first published, knowing I wasn't going to like it and so it was.  My hardback copy, newly dusted off, looks like this: http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1164/claibornegq3.jpg  This book is one of what I like to call King's "subplot novels" where it appears that his subplots have taken over as the main subject matter, where in the past they would support the chief overlying plot, whether it be vampires, psychic teenagers, haunted cars. The subplots in question usually concern domestic strife, spousal abuse, sexual abuse, family secrets such as insanity, general bullying and so forth. All subjects King covered excellently in all his early novels as superb subplots. By the 1990s though the subplots had taken over King's asylum, breaking out as the chief subject matter, beginning I think with Needful Things. Was King running out of ideas maybe, falling back on his feudin' townsfolk? In this novel, which is heavily connected to the previously published one, Gerald's Game, we see one of those tense domestic, dirty family secret situations that King explores so enthusiastically, expanded to short novel length, rather than just 30 or 40 pages of subplot/back story as part of another work. For me these kind of novels are King treading water and I really didn't enjoy this one much, but here I go again hoping that it'll be better this time around... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted February 2, 2009 Author Share Posted February 2, 2009 http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/1164/claibornegq3.jpg Dolores Claiborne is one long uninterrupted monologue in the form of a confession to the Long Tall Island police. It's not like a written confession it's a verbal narrative where she even "repeats" the unheard questions of the unvoiced interviewers at times. There's no paragraph breaks, no chapters, no third person interruptions, it's like we the readers are one of the people in the room with her. The female voice seems authentic and I think this was the attraction of doing this book for King; could he speak in the voice of a woman, which could even be mistaken for the voice of his own mother? I actually think he pulls this off very well. The only problem is that, as with The Green Mile, King seems as much in love with the style of delivery as he does with the story and the characters; swap the throwback serial drama for the uninterrupted female monologue novel. It's a short novel but I didn't exactly zoom through the pages with this like I did with say, Carrie. It took me about 40 or 50 pages to slowly start getting into it, Dolores tends to ramble from subject to subject in the early going, starts one part of the story then moves on to something else and promises to tell it later etc. King uses a Rural Maine vernacular for her which is easy to understand and somewhat familiar from his other novels, (though laid on thicker here) but it's kind of distracting to start off with, presented in this way, especially as it's all we have in the way of narrative right from the first page. What about the story she tells? Well in the first 50 pages we get subject matter that's very unappetizing like the bed pan wars and dust bunny episodes with Vera Donovan. I can't say I enjoyed this part and this was one of the reasons I found the book hard work at first. It gets interesting once she gets to telling about her husband Joe, but I think interesting is as good as this book gets for me. I can't say I enjoyed this too much when it comes right down to it, it was a bit of a chore to read in fact. On the positive side it wasn't boring like From a Buick 8 and I did warm more to the character and the story more towards the end, but overall I have to say I wasn't exactly enthralled by the life and times of Missus Claiborne and it seemed a much worse novel than I remembered it to be (I never did see the film btw). Oh yeah, I notice that both The Green Mile and Delores feature illustrations, one at the front of each mini volume in The Green Mile and about 20 at irregular intervals in Dolores. Ok that's that, you know what's next don't you? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted February 5, 2009 Author Share Posted February 5, 2009 And now it's time to play the game...Gerald's game that is. This 1992 novel is connected to Dolores Claiborne, via some kind of eclipse-driven psychic link. Of course I'll be reading them in the wrong order, that's they way I do it though... It doesn't make any difference actually though, the link is just a quirk that pops up and is nothing to do with either story really, though there's a connecting theme there.  This is how my GG 1992 hardback looks: http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3235/geraldfl0.jpg  This is another King book I'm not too keen on. The whole novel is one scene: a woman hancuffed to a bed with a dead man in her summer house and no one knows she's there, in fact everyone thinks she's on holiday somewhere else, so they're not going to come looking for her until it's too late. The book's about her escape attempts and how the experience unblocks her repressed memories of old horrors. Plus an interesting weird character pops up at the end. I expect this one to be marginally better than Delores, though that's not saying much really... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted February 10, 2009 Author Share Posted February 10, 2009 http://img80.imageshack.us/img80/3235/geraldfl0.jpg  It was around the late 80s that SK began coming up with some very, very shaky story ideas. He made some of them work, but this one, a 340 page (in hardback) novel, the whole thing about a woman handcuffed to a bed? I have to admire him for cleverly stretching this idea out into a book-length work, but this woman's struggle to escape, her internal struggle to survive and the world we find inside her head, including flashbacks, is not nearly enough to sustain it. It seems like an exercise again, his challenge this time: could he write a whole book that features just one character all alone in one room? The answer is yes, he can, but what's the point if it's not a good read? My mind wandered during the reading of this, often, almost to the point of acquiring my very own wacky gang of inner voices talking to me, as well as Jesse, every one of them, including my version of Ruth Neary, telling me the same thing over and over: stop reading this book this instant, PLEASE stop!!. Maybe it's just me but this isn't one of Steve's best written books either, and it's full of trite references (even more than usual) that started to get on my nerves, especially near the beginning. Normally these are fun but this time I was not impressed. There's something a bit flat about the writing,...something about it just didn't grab me. I even prefer the style he used in Delores Claiborne, and while reading this I began to miss her colourful voice a little bit, believe it or not. I was losing interest and tuning out after about 50 pages, at this point King goes all Cujo on us by unleashing a stray dog into the bedroom to feast on Gerald's corpse!! He's a poor man's Cujo though, half-starved and mangy, a bit of a mongrel. As a matter of fact though he fits right in in this case because he matches Gerald's Game the novel which would make a poor man's Cujo as well, in terms of a quality read. A woman was trapped in that story too, trapped inside a car with a dog roaming around outside, but at least we got to see other characters in Cujo, other goings on, poor old Sheriff Bannerman's sad demise for instance, the rest of the world at large too, well the rest of Castle Rock anyway. In Gerald's Game all we get is the inside of a bedroom for 90% of the novel... I totally forgot about a dog being in the story, which is strange because it was the one element that brought something interesting to the table. I liked this book in the 90s, or I thought I did, what the hell was I doing in the 90s? Anyway I got to this Cujo section and I stupidly got my hopes up a bit, hoping that maybe the storyline was going to carry on in this vein and maybe even improve a little, but alas my hopes were sadly dashed. What else can I say? That Chapter 9 and 10 were the most boring chapters I've read since ohhhh From a Buick 8? Chapters tediously describing Jessie trying to get a glass of water off a shelf mostly. I seriously thought about quitting the book altogether a few times during these chapters. The On Writing version of King would surely have cut 50% of that 30 pages or so, where was he when we needed him?  The escape section was dragged out beyond belief and the way Jessie messed about and wasted time once she was free was totally annoying. How could she act so stupidly? It's like she wanted so badly to live one moment and do anything to get free and then all of a sudden it seemed like she wanted so badly to die. King just loves to draw these sequences out, she'd have been dead by the time she finally got to the hospital with those wounds, no question... Come back Delores Claiborne all is forgiven? Actually I'm not sure if this is better or worse than Delores to be honest. One thing I am sure of it's better reading these two books in this order if you do read them back to back like I've just done. It seems to work well as regards the psychic link between Jessie and Delores. I can't say I really thought either of the novels themselves worked that well though... But let me grope for some positives a moment, there were some good parts in the book, such as the aforementioned dog eats man bit and the section with the creepy prowler in Jessie's room, that was an effective sequence, really chilling, but it was just 10 pages long and then we were right back to the inner voices and the handcuffs, though that's not the end of his contribution. The flashback chapters were pretty decent too. Thinking about it now It might have been better if he'd made two or three short stories out of this novel: a 60s eclipse/abuse story, a creepy prowler story and a woman handcuffed to the bed while a dog eats her hubby story. Each one about 40 pages long.  Also on the positive side I'll say this, the character grew on me as the book neared the end and obviously I put myself in her position several times (and I have the red marks on wrists to prove it!!), so I did feel sorry for her somewhat. The last 60 pages, once she's free are pretty good but again it's very drawn out. The courtroom scene right near the end is very good though. Thinking about these good parts again makes me feel it just edges it's sister novel Delores slightly. Mind you who care, neither of these books are King at his best, that's the bottom line. The thing is Gerald's Game doesn't work, the good parts of it are all just bits and pieces spread here and there throughout the story and I suppose I just don't like the whole lone person chained up in a room for 300 pages idea at all. If I'd've had this idea for a book I would never have even made it to the keyboard. If I'd been a close pal of Steve's and he told me he had an idea for a novel about a woman who would be handcuffed to a bed, all on her own for almost the whole novel and that's what the narrative would concentrate on entirely, I'd say forget it Steve, do one about a haunted hot-dog stand instead, a scary kettle, a spooky tea cosy, a zombie cleaning woman (Delores is that you?) anything at all, but whatever you do don't do the handcuffed to a bed book!! In fact I might have handcuffed Steve to his medicine cabinet for a few days, get him hooked on listerine again and maybe he'd come up with some better ideas!!  The last three books featured here have got progressively worse, Delores is better than Gerald's Game and The Green Mile, which I don't rate at all, is better than both of them. Gerald's Game is right down there sitting on top of the real King clunkers. It could get worse yet, the next one is another dud from the 90s...oh well at least I haven't wasted about a thousand of words babbling this thing... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted February 14, 2009 Author Share Posted February 14, 2009 There's a good chance that the next KING thing is the worst book of his career. One of his worst anyway. That's what I though back in 1994 when I finished reading Insomnia. There's a good chance I still might think this when I finish reading it again, but I'm prepared to give it a fair hearing. If not well, it'll have officially earned the special addition to it's title (Cure for)Insomnia... Here's how my UK hardback copy looks. http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/4672/insomniaxgh8.jpg Mine has the same wear on the blue KING foil on the front of the dust jacket. Must have been a bad batch of blue foil that year... So Anyway when I bought this I had high hopes for it, the synopsis sounded interesting, the cover was unusual and more importantly it was a big, long book set in the town of Derry, Maine beginning with the letter I. How could it go wrong, right? But it did... More on that later no doubt, unless it somehow turns out to be amazingly different to how I perceived it in 94...one can only hope... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted February 17, 2009 Author Share Posted February 17, 2009 I didn't read Insomnia at all the first two days, I just didn't feel like it. The last two days have seen me crawl through about 70 pages and although Ralph Roberts can't sleep I can, especially when I start reading this book!! It's got to be one of the most boring of Steve's career, mundane is a good word to describe it. It's gonna be a real struggle to get to end of the other 500 or so pages...I won't quit though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted February 22, 2009 Author Share Posted February 22, 2009 I'm only half-way through this novel, it's been a real slog, plus I've been busy so I've been reading it in snatches of 20 and 30 pages here and there. At this point, 300 pages in, I've actually got into the Ralph Roberts character a lot more than I did last time and there are good bits in between the drab slabs of seemingly pointless jabber. I like the whole aura thing and there were some interesting segments on sleep loss. It's down there in the basement of the Stephen King hotel but I think it's got itself above the real stinkers like Bag of Bones and From a Buick 8, worse than the last three I read though, which puts it in perspective, from my point of view. Mind you there's still the second half to go yet... Oh yeah talking of Bag of Bones, Ralph Roberts, who's the centre of Insomnia's attention, reminds me of the protagonist from BOB, Mike Noonan; both have recently lost their wives, both are middle-aged or older, both tend to cry and get emotional easily and both are experiencing a slow-burning supernatural event or events. Ralph is much more enjoyable to read about than Mike though.  Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treeduck Posted February 28, 2009 Author Share Posted February 28, 2009 http://img216.imageshack.us/img216/4672/insomniaxgh8.jpg King quotes a poem in Insomnia and it starts off: Each thing I do I rush through so I can do something else, well no one can say I rushed through this book, it seems like ages since I started it now. It's definitely not one of King's better ones but I did get into the story much more the deeper I got and even though I don't like it overall there are some good elements to it. Ralph and Lois are pretty good characters who I came to really like by the end of the book, for some reason though I hated their little romance, partly because it kept helping to stall the story right in the middle of important scenes and partly because it's so vomit-inducing (and nothing to do with their age) they just made me go ugghh every time they went all gooey.  SK is actually guilty of stalling and dragging things out during nearly all the most important and the best scenes throughout the book, spoiling all his own hard work. This 650 page novel could have been about 400 pages without taking any (major) scenes out, if he'd only cut down on the drag factor. It's almost like he didn't know what the good parts of the novel were and what the bad parts were, so he ended up keeping everything waffle and all. Even the epilogue was drawn out until it felt like a meandering, disjointed anticlimax...if you can truly say the main body of the novel came to any kind of climax that is. As I said, I did get into the story somewhat once I'd burrowed through the waffle of the first 200 pages, but it never really impressed me completely, the whole little bald doctors idea and their secret world of colours just seemed too silly to me at the end of the day. And in the last hundred pages it gets really annoying, especially the scene where Ralph threatens the bald docs with not helping them stop Ed. And then all of a sudden we get the viewpoint of Lois who just happens to be unable to hear all of the conversation, all the important bits anyway, then she gets lured away by some green mist? Meanwhile Ralph and the docs have decided to slice his arm open with some mystic scissors while he gets ready to teleport into a plane. I was starting to shout at the book at this point! Something with the words "off" and "f**k" in it. Other annoying things are some of the usual devices King uses to make us feel something for the characters, like killing Ralph's old pal off while Ralph is busy in the world of auras and bald docs and right after they'd had an argument about Ralph's state of mind, so they never make it up. Why does this annoy me? Because I know it's deliberate plot tactic and I feel it didn't work here and it just robbed the reader of some interesting possible scenes. Also the way they all of sudden forget about all the crazy mind blowing events they just went through at the end is pretty stupid and something that King does a lot with his characters, he's big on character memory loss is Steve. There's some mention of other King books; IT of course, the Dark Tower and Roland get a mention too and appeared to be deeply involved with the force at work in Derry in Insomnia, there are many references to them, and also we discover, in a little aside during the description of the bad doc's lair, that apparently it was one of these bald docs that ultimately caused the death of Gage Creed from Pet Semetary by cutting his balloon string. Anyway it's daft, a lot of it is boring and it's a bit of a mess really with tons of needless waffle, but it does have some enjoyable passages and sections here and there. So it's not the worst book of King's career after all. Certainly I rate it over the awful Buick 8 and Bag of Bones plus the stinkfest that is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - I'm not even going to read that one again - but it's got to be among the top ten of King's worst books. Having said all that I do think it was worth reading again because I realise now that the first time I read it the whole thing really went in one eye and out the other, so to speak. I didn't remember much about it at all. There were enough good parts to make it worth reading a second time...just about. Would I ever read it again though? Definitely no. Right I've had enough of all these 90s King books for now I'm going back to the 80s next, but hmmm I'm not sure exactly when in the 80s??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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