It : 24th September 2011

I've found that the latter stages of each book become almost as much about looking to the next one as finding out how this one turns out.  It's something I've come to regretfully accept as part of my being able to keep things, however slowly, moving.  With a couple of them, the steam-ahead mentality has definitely encroached on the current book and my immersion in it.  Most recently this was definitely the case with The Talisman.  To a lesser extent, it also affected Skeleton Crew.  The loom of a 1000+ pages and both the reputation and my own memories of the book will do that to you, though.

I'm looking forward to It though.  I can't remember a lot about it from my reading of it as a kid, which pleases me more than the failure of my memory worries me.  One thing that keeps cropping up in my mind when facing this book, or any of such a prodigious girth, is the feeling I always had as a kid where I couldn't fathom ever finishing the thing.  From my crawling start of new books, tapping away at the outer shell of the story, waiting for the crack to appear before I could wheedle my way inside, the road seemed so long and the horizon so far away that just getting moving seemed hard to realise.

Of course I always did and the walk through the first chapters turned into a jog and a run through the middle and a sprint to the finish.  But the cycle always reset and I'd return to that same awed approach to the next one.  I'm a bit older now, so the awe is considerably diminished (until I think about the writing process involved in creating these behemoths) but, facing It, there's a glimmer of it there.  It's just a case of putting one foot in front of the other and turning the page...

I was trying to show the heft of the book with the picture and thought I'd use another for comparison.  There was only one choice.  This shit writes itself sometimes.  Or maybe it's the Fornits.

Skeleton Crew: 22nd August - 23rd September 2011

So, I finished the last three stories of Skeleton Key.

With Gramma, I couldn't help wishing he'd stuck to the real horror of the situation and not drifted off to the supernatural.  The elderly and infirm carry an accepted weight of creepiness that is only surpassed by the idea of being alone with an actual corpse.  What the imagination is capable of in that situation is just as terrifying and debilitating as he describes and he does a great job of provoking our unease.  Unfortunately, the ending felt cheap and washed most of that away.

The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet suffered a similar fate by making the Fornits real.  There would have been enough mileage in real insanity for me. 

The Reach was just a bit shit. 

Overall, I enjoyed Skeleton Crew much more then I did Night Shift.  From the sounds of things, critical opinion agrees.  But who cares about that?

Considering the strength of the opening story/novella - The Mist - we were off to a flying start and, while there were a few dips, there were enough crackers in there to keep its head above the waters of 'chore reading' and wanting to cast the book aside to move on to the next thing.

Devour this...

I'm not the only one to have had this idea of reading the complete Stephen King and heartily recommend you check out Laura's blog - http://devouringtexts.blogspot.com
Not only does she write much longer and more interesting posts on the books, she also offers a much more critical review.
The thing that really blows me away about this blog is that not only does it not take Laura a month plus to read each book, she's reading and watching much more besides and writing similarly involved posts for all of them.
For her Stephen King posts, go to http://devouringtexts.blogspot.com/p/challenges.html and scroll down a bit. While you're there, get stuck into check the rest of the blog. It is awesome.

Skeleton Crew - the stories so far

So much for writing about each story… I’m partway through the antepenultimate story of the collection Gramma, and have the time for quick round-up so far. I haven’t stopped to do a bit for each story, mainly because I’m conscious of how long it takes me to get through each book and want to keep going. I’ve enough (mainly self-imposed) distractions, without constantly breaking off from reading to cobble together some trivial and obtuse reflections.

Here There Be Tygers
Meh.

The Monkey
Not bad.

Cain Rose Up
Not bad. An obvious precursor to the Bachman book; Rage

Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut
I liked this one quite a bit. I know the fantasy element was king, but I was most taken by the gentle earnestness and almost childlike honesty and wonder of Homer’s character.

The Jaunt
I realised, reading this story, what turns me off of science fiction as a genre. The gimmicky imagination of futuristic details, from the names of newspapers to spaceship systems, galaxies and planets and the attempt to make the impossible sound simultaneously fantastical and commonplace bores me. I’m a bit too lazy to wade through the assimilation of all of that conceit to find out whether the story is actually worth reading. It’s just the icing, when what really matters is how good the actual cake is. Luckily, I really liked The Jaunt. I didn’t see the end coming, but then again, I rarely try to second guess story arcs and endings and was happily swept up, surprised and horrified by it. Nice.

The Wedding Gig
A decent read, but nothing special. Probably most interesting to me for its Prohibition setting and detail.

Paranoid: A Chant
Poetry takes a fair amount of effort for me to even begin to give a shit. I’ll confess to being a lazy reader, especially in my approach to King. By that I mean I’ll be present enough to follow the narrative, suspend my disbelief and generally be an active reader in entertaining the ideas as presented and making necessary leaps, but I’m not approaching him with anything resembling literary criticism. Nothing has the potential to kill art quite like study and criticism. Poetry doesn’t do much for me. I can’t be bothered to deconstruct it or engage in trying to fathom the arcane references and stylistic implications of the form, meter and rhyme. I go through a perhaps biennial phase of immersion in poetry, but that’s about it. Sticking it in the middle of a collection of King’s short stories is met by a skim-read at best or skipped at worst.

I know, I’m an ignorant prick.

The Raft
Not bad, not great.

Word Processor of the Gods
Nice.

The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands
As soon as I realised it was from the same world as The Breathing Method from Different Seasons, I got excited. As the one story from Different Seasons that was completely new to me, I got a lot from it (http://thekinglongread.blogspot.com/2011/03/different-seasons-20th-february-29th.html) returning to that world heightened by anticipation. Unfortunately, it wasn’t nearly in the same league and not nearly as satisfying. Not shit, though.

Beachworld
Pah.

The Reaper’s Image
Bleh.

Nona
Pretty good but a part of me wishes it had been longer and Nona was real.
For Owen
See above – (Paranoid: A Chant)

Survivor Type
Great stuff. Proto-Palahniuk?

Uncle Otto’s Truck
Not great, not altogether shit.

Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)
A nice little sketch.

Big Wheels: A Tale of The Laundry Game (Milkman #2)
A decent enough read but there wasn't much point overall.  Bob killing his wife was a nice touch, though.

Listening
Marc Maron's WTF podcast.  http://www.wtfpod.com  Awesome.  Great guests.  I'd go so far as saying it eclipses his stand-up too.  Which is not a statement I make lightly.

Also, Chris Hardwick's Nerdist podcast. http://www.nerdist.com

Also reading:
Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth.  Amazingly good.

Watching:
The Office (US) - much better than I expected and a really good show in its own right.
Louie - the second series is as good as the first.

The Mist (Skeleton Crew) 22nd-31st August 2011

I thought I might as well do a post for each story as it’ll probably take an age to get through the whole of Skeleton Crew.


So, so good! I dawdled over the first third, slipping in a long weekend of comic reading, but I couldn’t put it down for the last hundred pages. It felt like the perfect horror story to me (and the perfect length – but that’s a whole other issue) with a tight, claustrophobic focus on the human reaction to the unknown threat. While there was some description of the physical detail of the threat, the fact that so much was hidden in the mist and left to the imagination made, for the most part, fear itself the bogeyman of the piece.

The way that the purported cause of the mist and its Legion was only alluded to in passing was also a huge factor in cranking up the unease. And the ending!!! You know that so many people will have put the book down unsatisfied with all the unanswered questions. Ha ha, fuck ‘em.

Skeleton Crew: 22nd August 2011

So, what was I saying about my boner for brevity?

Thinner: 19th-22nd August 2011

Loved it.

Saying what I'm about to say, I can hear you asking why I'm reading the the complete works of a man who has regularly dropped 600-1000 page books on us with frightening prolificacy. I know. You're probably right too. Anyway, I love short books. In the same way as I hold to the assertion that if your film can't tell the story in 90-100 minutes there's something amiss with your storytelling, authors who can't do it in 200-300 pages fail to understand the power of word economy and are presumptuous of their readers and the time they're willing to steal from them.

With that in mind, Thinner was a gorgeous oasis of brevity, taut suspense and skin crawling 'what if' and 'imagine that'. The plot wasn't next level, high-concept but a more classic dark tale. Lovely stuff.

Thinner - 19th August 2011

Very happy to be facing a mere 300 pages after The Talisman. The first Bachman book I've come to that I haven't read previously. I'm going to go and read it now. See you soon. If not after finishing this one I've a round up of the ten film adaptations I've watched in the last few months and more. Thanks for reading, by the way.

The Talisman - 8th May - 19th August 2011

For fuck's sake, I took my time with this bugger. The time I took to read it is fairly indicative of my enjoyment of the thing too; i.e. not all that much. Sure, there were sections that I had a good time reading (Wolf, in particular, and when Jack makes it to Thayer) but the book generally dragged its arse like a dog with worms.

Perhaps it was a labour of love or just a jaunt and a flexing of their writing muscles in a less typical, but not unrelated genre, for the co-authors but I could have done without it.

Tumbleweed

I'll save you the trouble of putting a mirror to the nose and mouth of this blog. It's still breathing. The Talisman is a big, lolloping bastard that has regularly been beaten out by comics. I'm down to the last 150 pages and ready to put the bugger back on the shelf.

Back soon...

The Talisman

I didn't know the first thing about this book, until I reluctantly read the back flap (I like to go in blind, not knowing what to expect) but am intrigued as I approach it, mainly in it being a collaboration with another author and also as a fantasy adventure story.  As long as it's better than The Gunslinger, that is.

I'm also interested to see how the collaboration thing works.  I don't think I've ever read a co-authored fiction book before.  I was going to ask the following questions:

Will the distinct voices come through?  Do I know King's style well enough to know when it isn't him writing?  How did the writing process work?  Did they go off and write sections separately and then edit together etc. and then went googling and found the following interview with Peter Straub - http://www.liljas-library.com/showinterview.php?id=8 where he talks about it and answers all of those questions.  Nice.

I've never read anything by Straub before either.  If any one has any recommendations, you can leave a comment below or you can find me on Twitter - @Mattowar.  I'm due for an audiobook mission after a few months' break.

Cycle of the Werewolf 4th - 5th May 2011

I really haven't got much to say about Cycle of the Werewolf.  I didn't do a great deal for me.  It was alright, but not much more.  A bit of 'owt and nowt' as we Yorkshiremen might say.

It was nice to be able to tick a book off the list in less than an hour, but I'm ready for the next brick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycle_of_the_werewolf

http://www.stephenking.com/library/novel/cycle_of_the_werewolf.html

Pet Sematary 26th April - 4th May 2011

Crikey! Now we're getting in to it!  Forget everything I've been saying 
about wondering whether any of his books are going to get under my skin and whether I might be truly frightened by them.  Pet Sematary got right in there and did a number on me.  Brilliant!

I don't know whether it goes without saying or I should have been saying this in every end post for the books, but there are spoilers ahead.

It was one of those books that you just want to recoil from and put down because you know how bad things are going to get and by not reading it, perhaps it won't happen.  A natural and childish instinct I'm sure; and somewhat nonsensical in the context of reading a book, but it was there. 
But, at the same time, there's no way you can put it down because you're deep in there and can't rest until you get to the end.  It was like when you're watching a film and you're willing the characters not to go somewhere/do something, knowing full well how inevitable (and essential) it is that they will/must do it. 

So, what was it about Pet Sematary that disturbed me so much?  For the 
greatest part, it was the horror of your child being run over by a lorry and the thought of losing someone so young. The complete negation of a future of possibilities, hopes and experience is crushing. I look at my own children and never imagine the worst. Where's the stock in those kinds of ruminations? It's fucking bleak, I tell you. One things for sure, the hugs I give them have gone up a notch on the tightness scale.

If that wasn't enough, King goes there and has Louis doing what we beg him, out loud (maybe just in my case), not to.  I sat there thinking there's no way you'd walk that road, but who knows until you've faced that (and of course, if there was such a thing as the supernatural)?

As I said earlier, as the book careered towards the conclusion, I didn't want to go on, to avoid coming face to face with the inevitable. No chance. You don't come this far and miss out on this unhappy ending.

I love that King is unafraid of the unhappy or ambiguous ending. Cliffhangers are so delicious. Some people hate them. That makes me love them all the more. The man has done enough work to be able to sit back and leave it with the reader. Only an unimaginative slob could be dissatisfied with the ending.

Anyway, I've been waiting for this kind of a reaction to the books and am now on fire for the whole endeavour.  I finished this late at night and thought twice about crossing the landing to go to the bathroom before going to bed. It also didn't help that my daughter woke up and began crying, only for visions of Gage to flood in and I'm trembling like a girl at the thought of going in to comfort her. And there was no way I was going downstairs to check the doors were locked. Fuck that. What a fanny?!!

Listening:
Ruth Ruth - Everything
Starkweather - This Sheltering Night

Pet Sematary – 26th April 2011

I’ve high hopes for Pet Sematary, not only from reviews and reader comments of it being the scariest of his books, but also, in the introduction King wrote in 2000, where he calls it his most frightening and he thought he’d gone too far and had to be persuaded to publish it. I haven’t got the book in front of me, so can’t provide the exact quote, but there’s the gist.


It’s safe to say, I’m really looking forward to this one. I’ve already made a start on the first few chapters and am hitting the ground running. Plenty of before bed sessions should get the dreams kick-started. Go on son!

Christine - 30th March – 26th April 2011

This was a new one for me and I wondered from the outset whether I’d be able to really engage with the story of a haunted car. Of course it’s about a lot more than that, particularly the shift from adolescence to adulthood and the inescapability of the past, but the fear factor is embroiled in the car’s supernatural self-driving, vengeful bloodlust and regenerative capabilities and LeBay’s possession of Arnie.

It didn’t really get to me. I got caught up in the build up and final confrontation between Dennis/Leigh/Petunia/Christine, but that’s more a testament to King’s suspenseful writing than submitting to the premise. There was a twinge as well, towards the end when Dennis is lamenting the disintegration of his friend and their friendship that gave the whole book an echo of the feel of The Body, in its part-reminiscence/part lament on adolescence and the loss of innocence.

While it wasn’t a scary book, it was a good read. I'm starting to feel like a bit of a blind apologist for King's works. Perhaps a part of me has auto-programmed to resist just coming out and saying this or that book was shit, as if it would undermine the whole endeavour of reading all of his books. We’ll see. There have definitely been one’s I’ve enjoyed more than others so far, but I wouldn’t say any of them were shit. I’ll probably do a list of favourite to least one of these days. Bet you can’t wait, you shitters.


Listening:
Trap Them - Darker Handcraft
Victims - A Dissident
Chris T-T - Everything
NOFX - Everything
Also had a second crack at Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell and finished it this time.  Is it possible to know and appreciate something is very good and be very impressed by it even if you didn't particularly enjoy it?  Yes? That's OK then.

Christine: 30th March 2011

It's about a haunted car, right?

Different Seasons 20th February - 29th March 2011

17th -26th March The Body

Great stuff. The unforced feel of the storytelling is its greatest strength. Free of the limitations of writing within the usual genre, it's a coming of age story that doesn't try to be anything other than the story.

27th - 29th March The Breathing Method

The thing I liked most about The Breathing Method was its use of mystery. The main story told by the fireplace felt like something of a cheap trick, but everything around the club and its workings was left deliciously to the readers' imagination. I love that level of invitation to be a part of the exposition. Stories are all about telling, but their power to bring you in are their true magic. The unanswered questions set me on fire. In a good way.

I'm almost surprised at how much I've enjoyed reading this collection. A break from type and shorter than usual length. On second thoughts, I shouldn't be too surprised as I generally like short novels most and am not much of a genre hound. Either way, Different Seasons is one of my high points so far.

Different Seasons: Apt Pupil 22nd Febuary - 16th March 2011

I'm feeling like a broken record by starting every entry with whether I've read it before, or seen the film but, in this case, it has some bearing.

Despite knowing I'd definitely read Rita Heyworth and The Body before I can't say for sure whether I'd read Apt Pupil or The Breathing Method before. I'm sure when I saw the Bryan Singer film years ago it all seemed new to me, so I'm guessing I hadn't.

Anyway, the point I'm labouring towards is that, based on the film, I wasn't particularly looking forward to reading Apt Pupil.  Sure, McKellan is always awesome, but it was heavy, close and intense and wasn't a read I expected to much enjoy.

I imagined it to be a book I'd plough through to get to the next, however, I found that I really got into it and is probably the first where the horror of it had a real effect on me.  I think the reason for that is that it is a very real story of very real human horror.  That there's nothing fantastical about the story, in terms of the terrors men (and children) are capable of exacting on each other, is the most affecting aspect of it for me.

I'm already the best part of the way through The Body and it hasn't disappointed. As with rest of the collection the reliance on realism* has been almost refreshing and reassuring. The stories speak for themselves. And I'm listening.

*Of course, realism is one of the most important ingredients of horror, fantastical or otherwise, in that it relies upon our real and universal response of asking ourselves how we would react and feel in such a situation.

Listening:

Trap Them - Darker Handcraft (Christ it's good)
Ben Marwood - Outside There's A Curse
Chris T-T - Love is Not Rescue & 9 Red Songs

Also reading:
Concrete: Book 1 - Depths / Paul Chadwick
Transmetropolitan / Warren Ellis
Preacher / Garth Ennis
Kick Ass / Mark Millar
Blankets / Craig Thompson
Maus / Art Spiegelman

Is it any fucking wonder this is taking me so long.

Different Seasons: Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption 20th-22nd February 2011

Yes.

I have this in-built mechanism that spurs me to retract from and deride the hugely popular or generally acclaimed. So it is that my fondness for both this book and the film makes me wonder whether it's just 'too easy' to be consistently blown away by them. I'm quite aware that this thinking is a rank and snobbish affectation of critical acumen which, when displayed by others, makes you want to fill the offenders pockets with sick. In this way, I'm more than happy to say that I love 'Rita Hayworth...'

Tonally, for me, it's King on fire. That conversational, confessional (?) style gets me. I'm sure there's a lot of film-love bias flooding my appreciation of the book, as it's almost impossible to read it without Robbins and Freeman in mind, so I'll pull this gushfest up short and end by saying I loved it.

Different Seasons - 20th February 2011

I've definitely read 'Rita Heyworth...' and 'The Body' before.  Not sure about the other two.  I'm guessing not, though, as 'Apt Pupil' didn't ring any bells when I saw the film.

Seeing as I'm dragging my feet enough with the reading and, subsequently, these posts, I think I'll do a separate post for each story/novella.  Don't hold your breath.

Thanks for reading.

The Gunslinger: Dark Tower I - 14th Jan - 19th February 2011

It pains me more than it probably should to say this, but I didn't care much for The Gunslinger.


I wanted to, but just couldn't get into it. That also goes to explain why a book of a little over 200 pages took more than a month to read. I grew more interested towards the end as the greater adventure was implied but couldn't raise much of an interest in the main character in the first place. I know he was trying his hand at something new, genre-wise and obviously stuck with it, so I'll give him a pass and reserve judgement until the next chapter of the series.


Not a lot more to say.


Currently listening:
Ben Marwood - Outside There's A Curse


and rabidly anticipating the new Trap Them and Victims albums.

The Gunslinger - Dark Tower I - 14th Jan 2011

I haven't read any of the Dark Tower series before.  I'm looking forward to cracking on with this bad boy.

The Running Man - 30 Dec 2010 - 13 Jan 2011

Outstanding! For a number of reasons. First and foremost is that it's nothing like the film. Yes, I know the book came first and I should be saying the film is nothing like the book...


However, my chronology is all messed up. As a kid, I definitely saw the film first, then read the book. The thing is, I may as well have been reading it for the first time, this time around as hardly any of it seemed familiar.

Anyway, to business; I loved the book. Loved it. It reeks of the same jilted nihilism as Roadwork and the world it evokes is much closer to the dystopian classics than the jingoistic, wronged lone justice-seekers of the eighties, typified by Schwarzenegger and Stallone.

The humanity of it, opposed to the brute murder and one-liners of the film, and the inevitability of our living in such a world in the not too distant future have made this book something of a surprise high-rater. Buzzing.

It struck me the other day when talking to my mum, and then considering her, my dad and mother-in-law's literary and televisual preoccupation with crime drama how their outlooks differ to mine. My mum and mother-in-law watch CSI and Law and Order like bastards. My dad and mum can't get enough of Michael Connelly (I'll admit I've read 6/7 of his books and was well into them). I think this speaks of a knowledge and understanding that we live in shit-horrible times where the wicked run amok, but there are always the forces of good battling away and proving victorious against the forces of evil. I suppose that's the vein tapped by comic book superheroes too. Plus the fascist cop element.

For me, it's just pure fucking desolation and any payoff comes from opening your eyes further than the average bear and seeing the world for what it is and realising things like popular entertainment, culture and faith in the powers (whether temporal or celestial) are only distractions from how utterly and crushingly bereft of hope we are. Jesus, that's depressing. It's like earning your place in an elite club where you get to eat these amazing, handmade gourmet chocolates. Except they taste of turd. All self-serving feelings of superiority hang by a thread when faced with such a bitter reward.

Our fascination with dystopian works is a bit weird. Whether they're indictments of the current state or portents of how bollocks it's bound to get, you don't get points for seeing it that way and those that do see it don't seem to be prepared or making preparations for it.

Anyway, the book is great and pisses on the film. That said I have a fondness for the film and, seeing as I bought it for £3 a few months ago, I'll be watching it again, any day now.