Under the Dome - starting out

Under the Dome is quite a big deal to me.  I haven't read it before, so have no emotional attachment to the story and characters. Instead, the book functions as something of a milestone, a monolith and a line in the sand. It was the first book King published following my decision to start this chronological reading of his works. My mother-in-law bought me the book the following Christmas and there it has sat, calling me from a shelf, a box and, latterly, the top shelf of a wardrobe for the last six years (I might sort out some bookshelves again one day.)  I also bought a copy of the book for someone who binge read it soon after and they loved it. Vicarious enjoyment bears weight.

I've heard good things, I've heard bad, but nothing has dampened my anticipation and longing to read this book. It's a hefty thing and I want to get lost in it. When I finish it, I'm going to plough straight into the tv series. I'll probably watch the Simpsons movie again too. I'm going Under the Dome it's going to be awesome. It is.

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.

The Regulators - 2nd Mar 2013

Right then. I'm in two minds going into this one. On the one hand, I'm eager to find out how the book ties in with Desperation, even though I've been told it's not that much. Having gotten all sloppy over Cynthia from Rose Madder showing up in Desperation, it's a bit gutting that in The Regulators, the names will all be familiar, but the characters are all different. I'm sure I'll get over it.

The other vibe I've got for The Regulators from the internets is that it just isn't very good. Exciting.

In my post for The Green Mile I talked about whether I had become numb to graphic descriptions of the horrors of physical violence. While Desperation didn't really get under my skin in this regard, a story told in The Walking Dead comic last week did. One of the characters talked of a guy that, before the rise of the dead, had sucked out and eaten the eyes of his four year old son. Fuck.

So I'm not totally dead inside.

Desperation - 4th Feb 2013

I didn't know the first thing about this book other than that the next one in line, The Regulators, was published under the Richard Bachman name and acts as a sort of companion piece.

As I write this, I'm already more than halfway through Desperation and have read a little about The Regulators, so know that any assumptions I had about the relationship between the two books is completely wrong.

I'd imagined the two books being two perspectives on the same story and highly anticipated seeing how King would handle this approach. While it turns out that it's completely unrelated, I'm still going to bluster ahead with a recommendation of Lucas Belvaux's 'La Trilogie' - three films with interlocking plots and characters that are played out in different genres - Cavale/On the Run (thriller), Un couple épatant/An Amazing Couple (romantic comedy/farce) and Après la vie/After the Life (melodrama).  They're not perfect films either individually, or even as a whole, but they're mightily impressive and very powerful.

Now I've got that out of my system, I'll get back to reading Desperation, as it's treating me very well so far.  There are some echoes of The Stand, except I'm actually enjoying it and hammering my way through it.  Sweet.

The Green Mile - 28th Jan 2013

It's going to be hard to read this one without visualising the characters from the film.  I'll give it a go, though.

Rose Madder: 12th Jan 2013

Here we go.

Insomnia: 23rd Oct 2012

I'm looking forward to this one quite a bit. I don't know the first thing about the book itself other than the subject matter inferred by the title. What I did know was that I'd read a glowing review of it somewhere. Just before I started this project, I wrote a couple of posts talking about why I'd decided to read all of Stephen King's works in chronological order. One of these concerned a gorgeous blogpost written by Ryan McKenney (Trap Them - http://www.wecraftindarkness.com - http://trapthem.bigcartel.com - http://insomnialways.blogspot.com - @trapthem on Twitter) enough links? You can read the whole thing here: http://insomnialways.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/constant-reader.html but here's the part I'm talking about:

"I read Insomnia over the course of four nights, two hundred pages at a time. I learned the story of Ralph Roberts and the end results of gradual sleepless nights. By the time I was finished, my heart was aching. Part of it had to do with the story itself. It was, at the root, a perfect story of life and death. The other part of the ache came from overflowing of anticipation. I simply couldn't decide which of his works I wanted to read next."

So, as you can imagine, my expectations are high.

On an unrelated note, if you haven't seen Bob Mould on Letterman,
here you go. If you have, you know what I'm talking about.

Nightmares and Dreamscapes: 8th Sep 2012

The only thing I know about this collection is that Dolan's Cadillac has been adapted into a film starring Christian Slater of which I've heard good things. I hope it lives up to the praise for two reasons. Bad Stephen King adaptations are painful. There are lots of them and they weigh heavy on the Constant Reader's heart. Perhaps they shouldn't, but they do.

The second reason is that *deep breath* I was/am a Christian Slater fan. Bearing in mind I'm going back to my impressionable teenage years and Gleaming the Cube, Heathers, Pump Up the Volume, Kuffs, True Romance and even Broken Arrow. Then it all went to shit. Maybe apart from the Austin Powers cameo - Sherrrberrrt. For those films alone, dude deserves a break.

Anyway, I've laid out my thoughts on the short story in previous posts. They'll be tagged short story, helpfully enough. I'm going into this collection with an open mind and plenty of hope.

Before I get stuck in, here's a quote from the introduction:

"...I still see stories as a great thing, something which not only enhances lives but actually saves them. Good writing - good stories are the imagination's firing pin, and the purpose of the imagination, I believe, is to offer solace and shelter from situations and life-passages which would otherwise prove unendurable."

You can't say fairer than that.

Dolores Claiborne: 5th Sep 2012

 

At this point, the only thing I know about Dolores Claiborne is that it was made into a film starring Kathy Bates (who I love).  I'm sure I've read somewhere that King wrote it with Bates in mind.  The best reference I've found for that is on the IMDb trivia page for the film. If someone could furnish me with a better one than that, I'd be especially grateful.

 

Onward.

Gerald's Game: 29th August 2012

This is the last of the books that I've read before, so everything's new from hereon in. To me at least. I'm sure there are some who claim that from a certain point, King has just pumped out rehashed versions of his (and others') earlier works.
We'll see.
For me, this is an exciting juncture of the quest.  Gerald's Game is the last Stephen King book I read before I decided to take on this challenge of filling my boots with his works, and that was nearly twenty years ago.  I was still at school and this fucker held me close and didn't let me go the whole time I was reading it.  A little reminiscent of the plot?  So I'm looking forward to seeing if it has the same effect on me.  You'll have noticed, if you've read any of the other posts that I'm more of a Bachman/non-supernatural fan, so this should be just as affecting to me as it ever was.
After this, then, it's all new ground and a whole host of books of which I only know the titles or have seen the films.  Fuck it, it seems significant to me, despite of my absolute failure to explain why.

In the last post, I got on about things that had hindered my progress in reading Needful Things -(now would be a good time to stop reading if you couldn't give two shits about me and only come here for the King vibe).  The biggest of these was writing the lyrics to ten songs in more or less one go.  I've been away from playing in bands for a few years (heroes for sale - http://www.soundcloud.com/heroesforsale12), mainly since having kids, but this year have hit upon the idea of emerging from my indolent state to see what, at 34, I'm capable of.  One of these things has been to get in the best shape of my life (since my mid-teens, anyway) and up the level of running I've been doing in the last couple of years to having a go at a half-marathon.  I didn't enter a race or anything, just mapped it out, put together an 'encouraging' playlist and just went for it.  It was a mixture of awesome and pure agony that left me almost in tears.  Oddly, I found myself doing it again four weeks later. Score.

Anyway, back to the lyrics.  I've missed writing, playing and recording music and, although my family situation rightfully and necessarily reduces my free time, there are ways and means.  I decided to it was within my means and abilities to write and record an album.  So that's what I've been doing (with hugely appreciated help from my good friends Jon and Marcus).  We've got the music of the basic songs I wrote hammered out and ready to demo, I've just finished the lyrics and are getting ready to put it all together before, at some point, recording.  There's not much ambition outside of creating and finishing the piece, but you never know.

So, the band is called Wolves and Vultures.  My wife hates the name, so it's obviously awesome.  It's always nice to have a flawless artistic barometer in the house, even if it's always contrary.  I could be wrong, of course.  As I'm a massive prick/slave to the times, you can find out more (not much at this point) on twitter - @wolves_vultures, facebook - http://www.facebook.com/wolvesandvultures.

Anyway, less fucking about and back to the book.

As always, thank you for reading.

Needful Things 7th July 2012

I don't know much about this one. I read something about it being the last Castle Rock book. That's about it. Let's go.

The Dark Tower - Volume 3: The Waste Lands - 6th June 2012

Despite having loved the second instalment of The Dark Tower (The Drawing of the Three), I've shuffled towards The Waste Lands. It has surprised me as I thought I'd have been much keener to dive in.
I think there are two factors at play. Firstly, after finishing Four Past Midnight I read Joe Hill's Horns instead of cracking on. It was a really good read and I'll take the opportunity to recommend it. You might as well swing by his website joehillfiction.com and follow him on twitter @joe_hill while you're at it.

Secondly, the cover for copy of The Waste Lands that I have is shit. It reminds me of those ridiculous illustrations on Jehovah's Witness pamphlets. I know it's a pretty standard sci-fi cover, but it's terrible. I'm sure John Avon doesn't care any.

That said, there's really no reason I shouldn't be buzzing off starting in on this book, so I'll shut up and get on with it.

Four Past Midnight: 28th April 2012

The only thing I knew about this collection before picking it up was that one of the stories had been adapted for a film starring Johnny Depp, John Turturro and Maria Bello. I saw it at the cinema and was steadfastly underwhelmed.

Since starting this reading project, I've also discovered that The Langoliers has also made its way to film. I'm not certain of its reception but, as Dean Stockwell's in it, it's pretty much nailed on that I'll hunt it out. For better or worse.

I've no doubt expressed my affection for short novels previously in this blog and, faced with the four here, it's fair to say I've got a bit of a book boner at the prospect of this collection.

The Dark Half - 9th Apr 2012

Here we go again. Once more I'll make the resolution to charge through it. I'll just have to see how strong my will is in fending off the relentless desire to read comics.

For a change, I've decided to read the flap synopsis. It sounds great. A horror-thriller-page turner would go down lovely about now.

The Tommyknockers: 6th Feb 2012

I don't know the first thing about this book and am not going to read the synopsis/'from the flap' info before I launch into it.  It's a rare thing for me to be able to go into a book without expectation or preconceived ideas of what to expect (other than those which come with reading a Stephen King novel, of course) and something I think worthwhile to maintain.

Expectations do influence our reading, right?  I'm not making this up.  Does anyone else think it's worthwhile to go into a book or a film etc. knowing as little as possible about it?

Misery: 31st January 2012

I'm really excited about this one. For a couple of reasons. I've read it before and know it's a goodie (not forgetting the film - I'll definitely be hunting it down once I've read it) but also, I've just read Walker Percy's The Moviegoer so am ready for an easier read. I know The Moviegoer isn't a densely, didactic tome, but its reading demanded a fair degree of intellectual application and interpretation. It does for me anyway. I'm currently researching critical thought on the book and Kierkegaard's philosophical influence and their confluence with Percy's own ideas on existentialism and subjective experience. All good fun, but I'm ready for a page-turner.Let's go!

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three - 19th January 2012

So, I read Jeff Lemire’s Essex County once I’d finished The Eyes of the Dragon and it was so, so good. I can’t recommend it enough. The artwork is stark, distinctive and beautiful and the story is heart-breakingly moving and real but its heaviness doesn’t drag it down. It’s a thing of wonder.

Anyway, back to The Dark Tower. I didn’t care much for The Gunslinger so am hoping for a vast improvement. I am reliably informed by Laura of http://devouringtexts.blogspot.com/ that it is “The Dark Tower is the best ever!” so my expectations are still pretty high.

Onward!

The Eyes of the Dragon: 8th January 2012

470 pages of bigger print. Easy street!Roland and Flagg are familiar names but, past that, it's all new to me. Let's go!

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 2011

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