(Gerald's Game) Safe. Sane. Consensual. Seriously, the moral of this story is: if you want to get kinky, make sure that you follow these rules. This whole book may not have happened if the characters in the story had had a safe word and if Gerald had respected his wife’s wishes and boundaries. And if … Continue reading Some Nightmares Are Never Completely Ended
(Needful Things) Needful Things was written well in the past. So clearly, it’s not about now, nor even about the recent past. And yet… who do we know who came to a new town and spent his time there riling up the prejudices, grudges, odd conspiracies and paranoias, and hatred of anyone that he could? … Continue reading Everyone Loves Something For Nothing… Even If It Costs Everything
(The Waste Lands: The Dark Tower III)4 The first three Dark Tower books have always been the ones I find most difficult to get through. Of the three, this is the easiest one. I like the beginning of the book where they’re getting Jake from New York into Mid-World. And Blaine the Mono shows up … Continue reading I Kill With My Heart, Motherfucker
(Four Past Midnight, "The Library Policeman") It’s just my observation, but when I see Four Past Midnight come up in Stephen King groups or subreddits or whatever, it’s not very well liked. Usually, people will say that there are one or two stories they can’t stand, and that the others are OK. And the funny … Continue reading Fear is An Emotion Which Encloses and Precludes Change
(The Stand) The next book on my list is The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition. Here’s the deal. This post is my post on The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition. I have never bought, borrowed, or even seen the abridged version of The Stand, and it never actually occurred to me until now … Continue reading No Great Loss
(The Dark Half) It’s difficult for me to imagine writing a story on a typewriter, let alone a pencil. I have actually done both in the past, of course, I’m old enough to have used typewriters, and, at least when I was in school, it was much more common for kids to write assignments, including … Continue reading Starting Off Always Felt A Little Obscene To Him, Like French-Kissing A Corpse
(The Tommyknockers) I’m going to get this out of the way up front — I don’t like The Tommyknockers. It took me multiple tries to read through it the first time, and when I was done, I used the book to prop something up in my kitchen because I was just never going to read … Continue reading No One Gets Taken Who Doesn’t Want To Be Taken
(Misery) Misery is fascinating to me on at least two levels — as a story, yes, but also as insight into the way both writing and reading for pleasure works. King will, of course, take his lumps for having so many writer protagonists in his pantheon. He really does do that a lot. Write what … Continue reading Art Consists of the Persistence of Memory
(The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of The Three) If it’s a question of quality, I personally think that the second Dark Tower book is far better than the first. It might be because the first one has been re-edited — it always feels a bit disjointed to me, and the second one flows better. … Continue reading We Are Going To Fight. We Are Going To Be Hurt. And In The End, We Will Stand.
Uniquely Portable Magic 