I got The Wind Through The Keyhole almost a year ago, and I still haven't cracked it open. After the way the Tower saga ended, I'm almost turned off. Anyone else?
First episode went well I thought. Good effects on the Dome coming down and peoples reactions. The cast of characters seems to be very good....especially the red head! I'll stay with it and see where it goes and especially how they end it....but then they're talking of maybe extending it. That may be a king sized mistake, he didn't seem to know when to stop. Beginning---Middle---and the End..! Probably the King book I most enjoyed was called "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft" 'He' should re-read it..!
I was actually going to post this. Instead, I'll just second the recommendation. He calls it a "Memoir of the writing craft," as opposed to a how-to, which is what makes it interesting. I'm still not a big fan of the horror genre, but thanks to King I went on to read a bunch of novels by Somerset Maugham, which were pretty good ( as is Maugham's own memoir on the writing craft, The Summing Up. So I'll always give King credit as a defender of popular fiction.
It was a really good insight on how the system works for writers. It was a testament to him that he kept going after having so many rejections. That 6inch nail on the wall with all the rejections slips stuck up on it. Seems just as he was about to get a real "Day Job" His luck changed with "Carrie"
For me, King could have just extended the Dark Tower series into oblivion and I would have bought every last one of them. It was never about the end, it was about the adventure of getting to the tower. I don't know how he could have come up with an end to that series which would have been completely satisfying. As for The Wind Through the Keyhole, I guess I haven't picked it up because it would feel a little weird going backwards into a storyline that was already concluded. Also, Under The Dome irritated me so much that I've steered clear of King the past couple of years.
'The Stand', extended version, exactly as King likes it, remains my favorite King novel and one the most enjoyable novels I have ever read. 'The Running Man' is another King favorite. But circa 2009 I became sick of King. Consequently, I have yet to read 'Under the Dome' or his JFK one.. When I was but a little boy, R.L. Stine captivated me with his 'Goosebumps'; in my early pubescence, Pike wowed me with his, 'Last Vampire' and 'Remember Me' series.. 'Remember Me' was the first book that really moved me powerfully. I have been reading Erotica since I was nine.
I don't like horror in general. I don't get scared by entertainment or don't enjoy being scared. Some do. Some use it as a mental safe distance to rehearse death. That said, I enjoy Stephen King because he is a good storyteller, a writer's writer. He can make me care about scary scenarios for reasons other than being scared. The only thing I don't like about him as a writer is that when he was coming up in the bookselling world critics gave him shit for not being literary enough, and now he does that in interviews about other writers, saying they are not quality in the literary sense. I thought his experience with those critics would stop him from doing the same thing. Now that he's accepted, he seems to relish in saying things like the Twilight author is no JK Rowling. Still a master though.
Not a horror fan or even a SK fan but I ended up reading both JFK and Under The Dome and have to say I really enjoyed both a lot.
Finished the Dark Tower series on Friday, 25 years after reading the first two. An old girlfriend's mom bought me the first two books for a gift. The huge gaps between a couple of the books in the series (3-4 and 4-5, I think) almost did me in. I started the final three books last year after re-reading the first four.
Time to resurrect "Steven King" With his new book "Mr Mercedes" If you're looking for an actual resurrection or walls running with blood and pulsating, or perhaps getting the evil eye from a malevolent crow. You'll be disappointed. This is Steven King as a crime novelist without the supernatural. So says my Seattle Sunday Times this morning. Doesn't mean it's not bloody or horrific. I'm quote intrigued and have it on my list. Oh, and with just 400 pages, it doesn't weigh 50pounds.
"Under the Dome" is being pushed on the TV for the second series. I'm going to pass on it. They're going round and around going nowhere and getting sillier each time.
The family has been watching it and I've been forced to provide commentary. My distaste hasn't abated, despite the fact that the plot bears little resemblance to the book. Lots of Lost vibes going on, which for me isn't a positive.
Maybe he is making the point that in a closed and to some extent controlled society, it is essential to mock the brutally abysmal and the essentially silly - that this is a primer in the nature of survival? I haven't read the thing, but I could see why an author might want to do that as open counterpoint to the main structure of the narrative, in a novel like that.
I found myself watching "Children of the Damned" the other night. Don't ask Christopher Reeves and Kirstie Allie. It's probably the 3rd or 4th remake from a book I read in the 50's. one of my first scifi books called "The Midwich Cuckoo's" that was the first "Dome" story I read....and the best.
New book of stories comes out the first week of November, I believe [edit: November 3]. From the cover, it looks like he might be doing something scary. By the way, if you haven't discovered Mark Laflamme yet, you should. He's another Maine writer, and some of his stuff is quite cool. He has a book of stories called Box of Lies, and I've enjoyed it quite a bit. Some horror, some science fiction. Varied and enjoyable.
He really doesn't know. Any of his books. Most of the endings suck. He should spend a lot of time reading the last two chapters of each book in the Harry Potter series. Rowling, on the other hand, knows how to end a book.
I'm semi-skimming an earlier King non-fiction collection that predates the above-mentioned On Writing Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing, the most interesting essay being the 160 page essay "On Horror Fiction," reprinted from Danse Macabre I don't know much about the genre, but should I make an entry, this seems to be a good place to start drawing up reading lists.
I remember when I read "It". I felt trounced, in the sense that he had gotten me to waste that vast amount of time for no real payoff............ His weak endings are, I feel, a consequence of writing too fast. An ending to a novel needs the time to congeal somewhere between the mind and the fingertips......
I've read about half of Steven King's other fiction, but I never could get into that Dark Tower nonsense..... gave up after 100 pages of boredom many many years ago... my brother loved it though, so I'm guessing there's some worth in it.
The Gunslinger is a book that needs to be gotten through in order to get to the good stuff. I read an article not that long ago called something like "The case for not reading the gunslinger." Something like that... the writer said that you should just go find a summary, read that, and start with the drawing of the three.