Full Dark, No Stars, by Stephen King

So I was gonna say I haven't read much Stephen King lately, which is technically true, but then I realized that this is my third King book this year! Is it possible I'm coming around to King again, after many many years away? I think it might be.

I had heard of this book but wasn't interested in picking it up, because it's newer and I have this prejudice against "new King" that I picked up around the time I read and was greatly disappointed by Cell. I was like, King has stopped being creepy and spooky and interesting and is instead some crotchety old man and pfft whatever. This may not be a correct assumption on my part, but it's stuck, and so when I saw that this was next up for my book club, I was equal parts "ohhhhh this is going to suck" and "hey, maybe it won't be so bad."

And it wasn't so bad! In fact, I would go so far as to say that this is one of my favorite books out of King, and it is definitely my favorite of his collections (of which I have read not very many). There are four novellas included, though one is like forty pages and seems a little short for that category, and I found all of them to be awesome. And even better, I found all of them to fit in with each other in some way or other, which is a fun thing in a collection — I learned from this one that King has a thing against librarians, a thing for biting, a thing for people getting away with murder, and a thing for making me think a story will go one way and then totally not doing that. Fantastic.

I don't want to say too much about the stories proper, because they are short and I found that the descriptions I read after the fact just did not live up to the stories themselves and I don't want to fail you guys! But if you need something to get you started, I'd summarize the stories as follows: 1922 is a rambling confession letter, Big Driver is the story of an author's trip gone horribly terribly wrong (and then horribly terribly wronger), Fair Extension offers up an interesting way to deal with cancer, and A Good Marriage is about, well, a good marriage that's suddenly not.

Oh, I should also mention that there is rather a lot of violence and horribleness, especially in Big Driver, and so if you are not inclined to appreciate or tolerate such things, I would recommend against this collection. I have to admit I almost quit Big Driver more than once, and at least one person in my book club did give up on it. But in general I don't think it's too much worse than Misery, if that gives you a reference point.

Recommendation: For fans of awful things that aren't happening to themselves and awful people they hope they'll never meet.

Rating: 9/10
(RIP Challenge)

Thinner, by Richard Bachman

I'm always a little confused by authors who use pseudonyms but are also like, "I am totally this person," so people will read their books. Like I've cataloged a few books that are authored by NORA ROBERTS (writing as J.D. Robb) or... someone whose name I forget where her author bio is like "This Person is the pseudonym of That Other Person." Why are we bothering with the pseudonym, then?

All this is to say that I didn't actually realize this was a Richard Bachman book until well after I started listening, because everything I looked at was all STEPHEN EFFING KING all the time. It is also to say that when people know they are reading a Stephen King book it is a little weird to hear the narrator talking about how it's like he's in a Stephen King book, but according to my friend Cory this is not an unusual thing to happen in a King novel. I don't know if that's good or bad.

Aaaaanyway the novel. I had actually thought this was a short story, because the plot — a heavy guy gets cursed to become thinner, which is cool until all of a sudden he can barely eat enough to survive — did not seem like a story that could be sustained over 10 hours(!). And indeed, there were a few parts where I was like, "Okay I get it let's move it along now?"

But on the whole the story was delightfully horror-ful. It starts with a guy, Billy, who's like, "That creepy gypsy guy was creepy. Why did he say 'THINNER' at me?" And then he's all losing weight, and you find out that the creepy gypsy guy said that because Billy ran over the gypsy's daughter who ran out into the street and so he was found not guilty of manslaughter or whatever except that then it turns out that maybe he wasn't quite so not guilty after all? And maybe the gypsy isn't only targeting him? But Billy is a lawyer, so he's gonna fight back, even if he has to drive all the way up to Maine (you knew Maine was in here somewhere, didn't you?) to find these gypsies and bitch at them. Because that's really what it boils down to.

And really, the driving up I-95 bit could have just been completely excised from the story, because I really do understand that gypsies are creepy, and also why is it that everyone is like "Man, I haven't seen a gypsy in like 25 years" and then at the EXACT SAME TIME like "Oh, gypsies. You know how they roll." Do you? Are you sure?

But the whole cursing aspect is interesting, and Billy's visits to the other afflicted-types are quite creepy, and the ending is the only possible ending I would have accepted for Billy so it's fine that it's pretty well telegraphed. Also, I knew I liked Joe Mantegna, the audiobook narrator, from his work on the teevee, but seriously that man can read a book. He did some fantastic voice work to the point where I was sometimes like, "Isn't Joe Mantegna reading this book? Who is this guy? That is Joe Mantegna? Are you sure?" I think he should probably read every Stephen King book, because he can make with the spooky and terrifying. Maybe he should do a version of The Turn of the Screw! How much would it cost to commission that?

Recommendation: On the whole, I enjoyed my ten hours with Stephen and Joe. Especially Joe. And while I think the novel should be much much shorter, I do still think it's worth a read if you're in the mood for some gruesome.

Rating: 8.5/10 (bonus points for Joe!)
(RIP Challenge, What's in a Name Challenge)

The Shining, by Stephen King

Here's another entry from my TBR Challenge... I saw this movie a while back and thought it was terrible, so I got it into my head that I should read the book because maybe it was better? And then my mother said, "No, really, the book is way better," and then I found the book at the used bookstore for cheap and THEN I totally didn't read it. Hence its addition to the challenge.

So! Now I've read it. Well, okay, I listened to it. And, in fact, it is way better than the movie, or at least what I remember of the movie — the problem with the movie is that it's just so middling that there's nothing to remember. Even after reading the book, my memory of the movie is this: Dude gets a job at a hotel. He goes all Jack Nicholson (see what I did there). He says, "Heeeeere's Johnny!" There is snow and possibly a snowmobile. The end.

The book, on the other hand, goes like this: Dude gets a job at a hotel, the only job he might even remotely get as a recovering alcoholic who, while sober beat the crap out of one of his students. His plan is to lay off the booze (which will be easy with no booze in the hotel), do some writing that will make him awesome and employable, and fix the problems with his family that are not all related to his alcoholism. This is a good plan. His wife and son come with him to take care of this hotel, which is closed for the winter, but the son has "the shining" which makes him a little bit psychic and a little too attuned to the horrors that have taken place in the hotel and that threaten to take place again. Dude is not attuned to these horrors, even as they start seeping into him, ruining his plan a little at a time until he goes all Jack Nicholson. He does not say "Heeeeere's Johnny!" There is lots and lots of snow and one too few snowmobiles.

I didn't exactly like the book, but compared to the movie it is downright wonderful. There's so much more backstory in the book that makes things make sense, and that also makes things more interesting and creepy. Like, the dad was an alcoholic until one night he and his bud ran over a bicycle in the middle of the road that may or may not have had a child on it; they can't find a kid but also can't figure out why there would be a tiny bicycle without a tiny human. And the psychic kid sees a lot more than just REDRUM; he sees what his dad has been and will be capable of and somehow does not pee his pants in fear. And the hotel is dang creepy with its dead people and midnight parties and moving shrubbery and I really don't think I'll be able to look at an animal topiary the same way again. Like, ever.

There's a lot more depth to the novel, is what I'm saying, and it allows King to be more subtle with the creepy and the psychological, which is just the way I like it. It didn't hurt that the audiobook narrator channeled a little Jack Nicholson into his reading — just enough to be fairly terrifying without going all Witches of Eastwick.

Unfortunately, the depth also comes with a lot of long boring bits, which made me not like this book so much. Also, an epilogue. I have been reading an inordinate number of epilogued books lately. Someday I will find a good one. Today is not that day.

Recommendation: Read this if you didn't like or don't remember the movie; it'll make you feel a little better. Not sure I would recommend it on its own strength.

Rating: 7/10
(TBR Challenge)

Just After Sunset, by Stephen King (17 January — 20 January)

I'm not the world's biggest fan of short stories, but I do like Stephen King and I really like the cover of this book (sunset-y and out of focus), so I picked it up.

As I figured, some of the stories were cool and some were lame (mostly the ones that King describes in his endnotes as more dictation than fiction). They cover topics including what happens after we die, what you should do if someone wants to murder you, why you should (or shouldn't, I suppose...) pick up hitchhikers, and why you should never become a psychiatrist. One of these stories also contains feces.

All in all a good set of short stories.

Rating: 7/10 (for 8/13 stories enjoyed and the lame ones being short)
(Countdown Challenge: 2008, Support Your Local Library Challenge)

Misery, by Stephen King (4 October — 12 October)

My second book for the RIP Challenge... I'm a little bit behind in getting to four, but I think I can make it yet, as I've just started two challenge-appropriate books.

Misery is about an author called Paul Sheldon who gets into an horrific car crash and wakes up as the ward of a nurse, Annie Wilkes, who just so happens to be Paul's self-proclaimed "number one fan." Unfortunately, her love of Paul — and his series of popular fiction novels about a woman called Misery — coexists with a fragile mind that isn't prepared to let Paul go any time soon. She also has a bit of a mother mentality — when Paul does something bad, like, say, kills off Misery or tries to escape his captor, he's in for a world of hurt, both mentally and physically.

I very much liked this book. At first, I wasn't sure it would really classify as an RIP Challenge book, as there wasn't anything particularly scary or gory about the storyline, just a crazy lady keeping an author hostage. But when it started getting creepy, it was creepy. I was constantly stopping in the middle of a paragraph, looking at my man, and yelling, "This woman is CRAZY!" Let's just say I'm glad I'm not popular enough to be kidnapped any time soon.

Rating: 8/10