Wizard and Glass: The Dark Tower IV - 18th Mar 2013

I really, really want to love The Dark Tower.  Really I do.  As it happens, I didn't care too much for The Gunslinger, loved The Drawing of the Three and found The Wastelands veered too heavily between being totally compelling and rambling into the wasteland of abject boredom.

I think part of my problem is that fantasy lit. requires a level of reader engagement beyond your average popular fiction. You've got to take your suspension of disbelief to a whole other plane before you even start. I'm aware how lazy and ignorant I sound, I'm just explaining the shit my brain makes me deal with when I read. That I'm on a mission to devour these books as rapidly as time and commitment allow (partly because I'm feeling the pull towards eventually reading something other than King for a change) doesn't help getting in the mindset of full mental application. Having actually typed that, I'm realising I'm wrong, that's exactly what I need to do. I've probably already made the same point in an earlier post, so I'm obviously not bothered about making myself look daft.

Anyway, onward! Please be awesome.

Six Stories: 12th-17th Mar 2013

Considering this is out of print, was limited to 1100 copies, isn't available for Kindle and all the stories appear in later collections, let's pretend I haven't read it.

The Green Mile (film) - 3rd Mar 2013

So good.  So, so good.  It's nice when you don't have to watch a Stephen King adaptation and constantly make excuses for the quality and convince yourself that it's at least worth watching for the story and revisiting the novel or short-story.
If you haven't seen it, you should.  The ending is utterly crushing, no matter how many times you've seen it.

The Regulators: 4th - 11th Mar 2013

So, it turns out there was a much greater connection between The Regulators and Desperation than I expected.  I'd got the impression that the links were more or less nominal, but it turns out that some of the characters (Johnny, Steve and Cynthia at least) were pretty much the same people. Oh, and it's the same Tak, his possession is just a bit different.

Overall, the book's a bit daft.  Crushingly insightful criticism, I know.  But it's all I've got.  I agree with Laura @devouringtexts.blogspot.co.uk that The Regulators feels designed to offer Johnny redemption for being such a bell-end in Desperation.
The violent deaths and dismemberments were pretty arresting/cool this time around.
I recently read a comment on a message board in answer to the question of whether one should read Desperation or The Regulators first. The guy suggested that one would be better taking both books, putting them in the bin and forgetting all about them. Dude had a point.

p.s. Apart from Cynthia. I could have used more Cynthia.

Desperation (TV mini-series) 11th Mar 2013

Seriously now, WHY?  This was terrible.  Ron Perlman was about the best thing in
it.  The smugness of the 'god is good/terrible/great' thing was nauseating.  I
really need to stop watching these.  I won't.  I'm an idiot.

Dolan's Cadillac (film) - 21st Feb 2013

Why? Seriously, though. Why?

Why do I read Stephen King novels/stories and then watch film adaptations? I know there are some exceptions that don't need to be listed here, but there are so many more that just didn't need to be made. Maybe that's not entirely true. Some of them work well enough on their own, when compared to other films of their quality and production value. For example, I've seen Dolan's Cadillac likened to an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and other stories described as perfect for The Outer Limits. Now, that's all well and good. It's just, when you read Stephen King, you don't ascribe the movie in your mind with the production value of a 70's TV mini-series. That's being a little unfair towards Dolan's Cadillac as it's a pretty good looking film and, while Christian Slater and Wes Bentley are no longer the big hitters they once were (moreso Slater), they're not shit.

And neither is Dolan's Cadillac shit. It's not great and, as a fan of the story and Slater (yep, you heard), I really hoped it would be. One thing that threw me was that, having heard Slater was in it and looking no further into the film until it came through my letterbox, courtesy of Lovefilm, I'd assumed Slater played the part of Robinson. So fully formed was this assumption - made before I'd even read the story - that I read it with Slater in mind. I'd got him looking all harried, sweaty and balding like he did in the film He Was A Quiet Man. Error on my part. Or maybe theirs.

Stephen King film adaptations are a bit like when you go out to eat and have something that blows your mind. Then you have a go at making the dish yourself and it may range from a passable imitation to an inedible mess or on those rare occasions, you nail it or make something not quite the same, but due to the quality of the ingredients and the skill/luck of adaptation it's just as mind blowing. Most of the time, it just won't be as good and you'll realise that you'll never equal the restaurant version and should just save that dish for when you eat out and know that the chef will nail it.

All that said, you know I'm still going to watch all of them. Idiot.

Desperation: 4th - 27th Feb 2013

I had such high hopes for Desperation.  It totally grabbed me by the scrote within the first few pages. For a Stephen King novel (at least so far in my chronological reading) it's not all that common. Sure, he posits ideas that that are immediately intriguing, but he rarely hits the ground running in such a forceful way as he does here in Desperation. I had chills within minutes. Needless to say, I was very excited.

As things progressed and the cast of characters was assembled in opposition to the evil adversary, I got echoes of The Stand. Not so much Captain Trips, but the classic battle of good* versus evil and the character of Johnny Marinville reminded me of Larry Underwood. King certainly likes his washed-up artists.

*Unfortunately, for me, this "good" is here represented by the plainest Christian representation of god, not only as a focus of faith and hope, but a direct agent of action and influence. I say unfortunately, but I don't suppose it's totally impossible to regard it as a literary device based on the tradition of other great works of fiction. That some people don't realise that they are works of propaganda and fiction is another, more troublesome, matter entirely.

While The Stand didn't light my fire in the way I'd hoped, particularly considering its almost universal acclaim among King's fans, I was hopeful and very willing, considering how well it started, to love Desperation. As I wrote in my opening post for the book, even at the halfway stage, I wasn't disappointed. Somehow, though, things went awry as I hit a lull, both in the narrative and my momentum. I'm not sure to what extent spending a good week catching up on about fifty issues of The Walking Dead comic was a cause or effect of this lack of motivation, but it was a welcome relief.

I eventually stopped farting about and went back and finished the book. It pains me to say that my liking of the book steadily decreased throughout the second half. I just stopped caring. And this was in spite of the inclusion of Cynthia from Rose Madder. I was inordinately happy about her inclusion in the book and actually rather liked the fact that she didn't have the largest of roles, she was just there - at about the same level as she was in Rose Madder.

I hadn't really paid much attention to or recognised the fact that King's endings tend to be somewhat hurried and almost anticlimactic - I'm obviously not the most involved or perceptive of readers. Maybe it's that he doesn't signpost his transition into the third act as clearly as I need him to. I'm dumb.

Alright, that's enough. I wanted to like it a lot and, for the first half, I really did. Then I started liking it less and less until I thought it was just OK and can't imagine I'll ever read it again to see if I was wrong. On the plus side, it stands out as the book that got right inside my mind and put a knot in my belly within minutes. So there's that.