Tag Archives: Stephen King

The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King (The Dark Tower)

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Synopsis:
The gunslinger steps into the lives of three different New Yorkers, and must figure out how they fit into his quest before he dies of an infection.

Review:
The contrast between The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three always astonishes me. As King puts it in his introduction, in book 2 of the Dark Tower series the story really takes off. I always spend the first few chapters mourning the elegiac tone of the first book, but soon am swept away by the power of King’s characterizations.

Eddie’s story always gets me, mostly because of the subtle poignancy of his relationship with his older brother Henry, the “great sage and eminent junkie.” Couple that with a drug deal plotline that takes Scarface to a supernatural plane and I just devour the first huge chunk of The Drawing of the Three. The shootout at Balazar’s is one of King’s finest sequences, expertly plotted and staged and visualized.

I slow down a bit when I get to Odetta/Detta, because King takes Detta to such an odious place that I need to look away. I can’t get too close to her. And because I know Jake is coming (though not until the next book), I end up rushing through the Jack Mort stuff. I love watching Roland work Jack Mort, giving the first hint of the diplomat that we’ll find in later books, but knowing that we’re not going to stay with Jack keeps me from getting too invested in that chunk. Reading it now, knowing the ending, I’m struck by how little of the Jack Mort stuff ends up figuring into the larger mythology. He’s pretty much just a plot device at best, filler at worst, a way for King to take a long time getting where he intends to go. I wouldn’t advocate cutting it, but I do wonder how those scenes would’ve played out had they been written closer together with the later books.

The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower)

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Synopsis:
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

Review:
I’ve read The Gunslinger about nine or ten times by now, having discovered it when I was still in college and there were only three books in the series. I was instantly captivated by how different the book was from anything else I’d ever read, by King or otherwise. The Gunslinger felt like an open text, fraught with possibilities, and I had no idea where King would take the story. The absence of explanation in the minimalist storytelling kept me rereading sentences and paragraphs, searching for the key to unlock King’s mythology.

This is my second re-reading since the trilogy was completed. The last time was probably 2005 or 2006, sometime before I started this blog. Despite the fact that King has now finished the series, the book still retains it’s allure, hinting at a larger story that can only be grokked by grabbing at slippery corners sideways. (Could be something to do with the way King finished the story, but I’ll save that for a later post, say true and I’ll say thankya.)

It’s not hard to spot the scenes that were added at a later date, since they reference specific events from books that were far from plotted when King first poured out Roland’s tale from the most uncensored part of his unconscious. However, they are integrated well and feel like they belong.

A friend of mine observed that The Gunslinger reads like the work of a young, inexperienced author with a story too big for his skills. I agree, mostly–I mean, King has admitted as much so far be it from me to contradict an author’s assessment of his own work. But I don’t think The Gunslinger has the same youthful awkwardness as the framing device in Carrie, for example, and it’s refreshingly free of the logorrheic attention to detail that plagues his later works (not that I really mind). To steal a term from genetics, The Gunslinger is a sport, a book that isn’t like anything else that King has ever written, even like the other books in the Dark Tower series. It’s a metaphysical western, with its pretensions mitigated by King’s imagination. It’s not my favorite book in the series, but in many ways I think it’s King’s best book.

Posted in American Literature | Tagged , , , , | 3 Replies

The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

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Synopsis:
Falsely imprisoned for regicide, Prince Peter plots his escape, determined to defeat the wizard who framed him.

Review:
As far as I can recall, The Eyes of the Dragon marks Stephen King’s sole foray into fantasy, apart from his Dark Tower series (which I adore). It’s a shame, because he writes masterfully in the genre.

I’ve read The Eyes of the Dragon six or seven times now, and never fail to be sucked in by its simplicity and moral depth. King’s excellent characterizations imbue the tale with a tragic poignancy, and his plotting is masterful. And the quasi-historical fantasy mode frees King from one of his tragic flaws: relying on pop culture as shorthand. The book really works. It’s a story I know I’ll reread again.

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Favorite Author Meme

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Heather at Errant Dreams came up with a wonderful meme–enjoy & consider yourself tagged!

* Answer the questions as you see fit. Although they’re all phrased to ask about a singular author, feel free to respond with multiples, or even a list.
* Where possible & convenient (you don’t have to go as crazy as I did!), include a link here or there to an author’s website, your review of one of their books, or a review that inspired you to try the author(s), so your readers can get more information on anyone that sounds interesting.
* Tag five people and drop by their blogs to let them know you tagged them, or open-tag your readers.
* It would be nice if you included a link back to your tagger.

1. Who’s your all-time favorite author, and why?

I think I would have to say CS Lewis. I’ve read all of his books, many of them several times. I’ve read the Narnia Chronicles at least a dozen times, and books like The Great Divorce and The Screwtape Letters have meant a lot to me at certain times in my life.

2. Who was your first favorite author, and why? Do you still consider him or her among your favorites?

The first author I remember being obsessed with–as in, I’ve got to read everything by this person–was John Bellairs. He wrote gothic stories for kids illustrated by Edward Gorey that were imaginative and just scary enough, and the first one I read was The House with a Clock in its Walls. I’m saving a few for Superfast Baby when she’s old enough. I had read multiple books by other authors, but I was more into the series, than the author, as with the All of a Kind Family books.

3. Who’s the most recent addition to your list of favorite authors, and why?

Robin Hobb, without question. She’s a superlative storyteller and I just lost myself in love starting with Assassin’s Apprentice. I’d also add Leo Tolstoy and Jhumpa Lahiri to the list, having read both of them for the first time in 2007.

4. If someone asked you who your favorite authors were right now, which authors would first pop out of your mouth? Are there any you’d add on a moment of further reflection?

Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Stephen King, Madeleine L’Engle, CS Lewis, Robin Hobb, George RR Martin, Shirley Jackson, Patricia Highsmith, Charles Dickens, Kathleen Norris, Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine, Dan Allender, Edith Wharton, Jhumpa Lahiri.

Nothing really to add on further reflection. I spend a lot of time thinking about my favorite authors!

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

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Synopsis:
An aging rock star buys an old suit that brings with it a vengeful spirit with a personal vendetta.

Review:
Let’s just get it out of the way. Joe Hill is Stephen King’s son. His debut novel, Heart-Shaped Box, is a work of horror. And not only is it damn good, it’s good enough to stand on its own.

Hill has crafted a simple, elegant, scary little story that manages to delve deep into the nature of regret and repentance. The spectral figure who haunts Judas Coyne is a terrifying creation from the outset, yet as the story progresses it’s Judas’s inner demons who prove to be most menacing. That makes the book sound pat, glibly matching metaphor to meaning, but that simplicity is the key to the power of the book. By keeping things clean, Hill gives himself a lot of room to explore all kinds of complex emotions, and he manages to do so without sacrificing the relentless forward motion of the horror plot.

More than anything, however, I was taken by the love story. I don’t expect romance from books like these, not the real kind, anyway. So I was surprised to find myself captivated by the relationship between Judas and the ex-stripper he calls Georgia. As the story begins, he’s tired of her, doing all sorts of passive aggressive things to make her leave him. Of course she won’t–and of course this is a worn out story. I would’ve forgiven Hill for leaving it at that, so when he started to tease out an evolution in their relationship I got really excited, and ultimately bought the love story whole. What an unexpected treat.

Posted in On Reading | Tagged , , , , , , | 5 Replies

The Alphabet Meme

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Picked this meme up from Melanie, in honor of two YA books I read for work this weekend.

The goal of this is to list favourite authors according to last name (with a representative fave book as well).

Atwood, Margaret — Cat’s Eye
Bronte, Charlotte — Jane Eyre
Card, Orson Scott — Ender’s Game
Dragonwagon, Crescent — The Year It Rained (with Paul Zindel)
Eager, Edward — Half Magic
Forster, EM — Howard’s End
Gibson, William — Neuromancer
Hobb, Robin — Ship of Magic
Ishiguro, Kazuo — And Never Let Me Go
Jackson, Shirley — Hangsaman
King, Stephen — The Gunslinger
Lewis, CS — Till We Have Faces
Martin, George RR — Game of Thrones
Novik, Naomi — His Majesty’s Dragon
Oates, Joyce Carol — Blonde
Percy, Walker — The Last Gentleman
Queenan, Joe — If You’re Talking to Me, Your Career Must Be in Trouble
Rendell, Ruth — Judgment in Stone
Smith, Wesley — Culture of Death
Tolkien, JRR — The Return of the King
Undset, Sigrid — Kristin Lavransdatter
Vine, Barbara — A Dark-Adapted Eye
Wharton, Edith — Twilight Sleep
X — I’ll read the next book someone recommends by an author whose last name starts with X.
Yancey, Phillip — Where is God When It Hurts?
Zarr, Sara — Story of a Girl

Mayday! (Booking Through Thursday)

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Quick! It’s an emergency! You just got an urgent call about a family emergency and had to rush to the airport with barely time to grab your wallet and your passport. But now, you’re stuck at the airport with nothing to read. What do you do??

And, no, you did NOT have time to grab your bookbag, or the book next to your bed. You were . . . grocery shopping when you got the call and have nothing with you but your wallet and your passport (which you fortuitously brought with you in case they asked for ID in the ethnic food aisle). This is hypothetical, remember?

This is a no-brainer. If I had to sell my plasma to do it, I would buy books. If I had to sell my passport, I would buy books. There is no way in all the universe that I would get on a plane with nothing to read but Skymall.

I would pick up a new hardcover that I’ve been wanting to read, a Stephen King or Ann Rule paperback I’ve read before, and probably a trade paperback I have not read. Plus a Vanity Fair and some trashy women’s magazine. That should get me through a six hour flight–not that I will read all of that, but I won’t be anxious about running out of things to read.

As Amazon is my witness, I’ll never go bookless again.

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Top 20 Meme

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Picked this up from Becky:

The rules: Top twenty favourite books in no particular order. Don’t think about it for too long. Take twenty minutes only to compile your list. Bold the ones you’ve read, or reread, since you’ve started blogging. Include novels, non fiction and plays.

1. The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
3. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious
4. Wolves of the Calla by Stephen King
5. Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
6. Till We Have Faces by CS Lewis
7. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
8. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson
9. Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
10. Asylum by Patrick McGrath
11. Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier
12. Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
13. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
14. Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson
15. Private Demons by Judy Oppenheimer
16. Bird by Bird by Anne LaMott
17. The Cloister Walk by Kathleen Norris
18. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
19. The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler
20. Birth at Home by Sheila Kitzinger

May I Introduce… (Booking Through Thursday)

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    1. How did you come across your favorite author(s)? Recommended by a friend? Stumbled across at a bookstore? A book given to you as a gift?
    2. Was it love at first sight? Or did the love affair evolve over a long acquaintance?

    You can find my favorite authors listed in the first sidebar column. Here’s a rundown of how I met them all:

    • CS Lewis–My father read the Chronicles of Narnia to me when was a little girl. For my 6th birthday, I had a cake featuring the old cover art from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. In college, I attended a two-week symposium in Cambridge, England, sponsored by the CS Lewis Institute, and that’s where I fell in love with his non-fiction.
    • Edith Wharton–I hated Ethan Frome, but fell in lover with Age of Innocence in college. I tore through the rest of her books. Still don’t like Ethan Frome, though.
    • Flannery O’Connor love came from reading Wise Blood in high school.
    • Jane Austen–now that’s an interesting case. I had to read Pride and Prejudice in ninth grade and hated it. Just a few years ago, I decided to give her another chance, and read Sense and Sensibility. I adored it, and adored all the rest of her books… including Pride and Prejudice.
    • JRR Tolkien love grew from a lifelong adoration of Middle Earth from reading The Hobbit and watching the animated movies. On that same trip to Cambridge, I read The Lord of the Rings for the first time and my passion was sealed.
    • Patricia Highsmith, Ruth Rendell, and Barbara Vine were library reads. I had heard good things about them, and decided to take a chance.
    • Shirley Jackson I picked up while working in development for a film producer. We were looking for material and somebody suggested I check out her work. Ah, me! One taste and I was lost. I found a book scout in Canada who tracked down all her out of print books for me.
    • Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising was assigned reading in sixth grade. I immediately got my hands on the rest of the series, and have since reread it several times. I can’t wait to introduce them to Bean.
    • Walker Percy was yet another author I discovered in Cambridge. I read Lost in the Cosmos, then his fiction, then the rest of his non-fiction essays on semiotics. He played a big part in forming my identity in my early 20s.

    You may also notice I have a list of Author Sites I Love. Here’s how I met those folks:

    • Dan Allender was thanks to counseling with a former pastor.
    • David Bordwell from a grad school course on film narrative.
    • George RR Martin was a recommendation from my best friend from college.
    • Jeffrey Overstreet is a great blogger.
    • Laurie Halse Anderson wrote Speak, and there’s a whole story about me and that book that I’ll save for another day.
    • Libba Bray was recommended to me by an eighth grader at my old high school. I did a speaking engagement, and this girl was my mini-me–frizzy hair, socially awkward, and a huge bookworm.
    • Madeleine L’Engle I’ve blogged about before, in a post on books that evoked a strong emotional reaction in me.
    • Robin Hobb was a recommendation from the girlfriend of a college friend of my husband’s. This guy teases Melissa for reading what he calls “vampires in space” books. My husband likes to say, “How can you write a book about a dragon?” She and I hit it off immediately.
    • Save the Cat! is the site of a recent book on screenwriting that my manager made me read. I wish I had read it ages ago… it really does live up to its own hype.
    • Scott Westerfeld was discovered by me during a search to find young adult books that would make great movies. The Uglies series is being made into a movie, though not with me.
    • Stephen King saved my life freshman year in college, before I made friends and a life. I whiled away many a long boring night with one of his gazillions of books, checked out of the library.
    • T. Greenwood’s book Nearer than the Sky is quite special to me. A friend and I have an option on it and hope to turn it into a movie.

    And there you have it–wow, it’s amazing what I can do while the baby takes a nap!

    • Oh, Horror! (Booking Through Thursday) + Question from a Reader

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    First of all–happy NaNoWriMo & good luck to all who are participating! I’d be with you if my baby’s due date weren’t smack dab in the middle of the month.

    This week’s meme:

    What with yesterday being Halloween, and all . . . do you read horror? Stories of things that go bump in the night and keep you from sleeping?

    I do like a good scare, though I much prefer the Gothic kind of horror to any other kind. My love for Stephen King has been well documented, but I’ve never been able to muster up any love for Peter Straub, his erstwhile collaborator. And forget about the really really scary stuff like Clive Barker–definitely not for me. The horror novels I’ve enjoyed this year were The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons and The Harrowing by Alexandra Sokoloff. Anything more intense than that and I’m done for.

    Reader Carole emailed me to ask: Continue reading →