The Green Mile by Stephen King

So at one point, I was reading this book, got up to do something, came back and sat back down and looked at the tv, and wondered what happened to the movie.  That's right, it was so descriptive that for a moment I really believed I was watching the movie instead of reading the book.  The Green Mile is just one of those books that is that good (and the movie was quite good as well).

Paul Edgecomb is a head guard on the Green Mile.  That's what they affectionately call death row at the prison he works at.  Things are as normal as they can be in that kind of a job until a man named John Coffey comes on the row for murdering two little girls.  There's something special about John, but Paul doesn't realize how special until he witnesses a miracle involving another inmate's pet mouse.  And because of that, Paul makes a few decisions he might never have done before.

I like Paul the guard.  He seems to have his head on his shoulders right and he isn't afraid of the unknown.  He is also fair and hard working.  A general all-around likable guy.  And then there's Percy.  The one you're supposed to hate.  And he makes it so easy.  All of the other characters provided good background.  Even John was likable in his way, although he always stayed mysterious.

This book was written as a serial, meaning broken up into short stories.  I am awful glad that I just got a book that condensed all these serials, as I don't think I would have been very happy waiting for installments.  But maybe that's just a lack of patience.  It is an interesting way to do a book, and with the new technology of ereaders I can see it being more prevalent now than even when it was in print.  But regardless, reading this in one sitting suited me just fine.  It was gripping, well detailed, and had a lot of character depth, which is something that I sometimes find lacking in King's books.  It had the super natural, but it was all a believable sort of supernatural, which I appreciated since this book was set in a very real time period with real life plotlines and normal people.

A very good book, I enjoyed finally reading it after seeing the movie so many times.  It sure isn't going to disappoint someone looking for a gripping story.

The Green Mile
Copyright 1997
465 pages

Rose Madder by Stephen King

Stephen King is known for writing horror stories.  And what's one of the most horrifying things out there?  Domestic abuse.  Which he explores thoroughly in this book.  Sadly though, since it is King, he adds an element of the supernatural to it though, which it really didn't need.

Rosie's life is changed by one drop of blood.  She's been in an abusive marriage for over a decade and suffered many brutalities.  But seeing one drop of blood on her clean bedding one day wakes her up, and before she knows it she is fleeing.  She lands at a woman's shelter, where they help her find a job.  But she worries that her husband will find her.  He is a cop after all, and has ways of finding people.  But with so many things going wonderful in her life, and a new painting that symbolizes her new beginnings, she wants to believe that the best is out there for her.

Norman is probably one of the creepiest literature bad guys out there.  Granted he pushes it to the extreme at times, beyond human intolerance for pain really, but everything he does seems drastically real.  And it's something that could and does happen out there.  Abuse is very real and abusers have something inside them that just doesn't tick right and they can create their own little horror show for their victims.  Rosie is a pretty strong abuse victim though.  After what she's been through she bounces back pretty fast and while she has some accurate tendencies of an abuse survivor, her timeline is a little quick.  But she's got a wonderful group of people at the shelter to act as side characters and help her on her journey.  Bill, one of the men she meets in her new life is supposed to be a pretty good character, but I found him a little flat and not well developed. 

This is a good story.  In fact, it didn't need the supernatural added in at all and I actually found that it kind of ruined it for me.  Had King not done such a great job with Rosie's life and her abuse and the drama there, I would have welcomed his thriller odd happenings tone, but it just wasn't needed here.  And don't even get me started on the epilogue.  Maybe I missed something, but I couldn't quite figure out the whole lesson that was being learned in that.  Or really the whole ending of the book at all.  I do want to warn the reader that this is a gruesome book.  Foul language, racial slurs, violence, rape, abuse; pretty much everything you can think of is in this book.  And it's all done very descriptively.

This wasn't a terrible book, but as I said before, it was an intriguing story that was cheapened by supernatural elements.  Just average to me.

Rose Madder
Copyright 1995
479 pages

The Stand by Stephen King

The Stand is a very very long book.  I'd watched bits and pieces of the tv series before, and knew what it was about a little bit, but there was a whole lot more to the book than even the series got into (which is how it usually is).  I should note that I read the 1980 copyright of this book, as there seems to be several different ones circulating out there with changed information in them.

Because of a mistake, a deadly virus is loosed on the world and it quickly decimates the population.  The survivors are all driven by their dreams; some of a dark man west of the Rockies, others to an old woman, somewhere in Nebraska.  Based on their morals and interests they head to these two different people, meeting up with other survivors along the way.  And once they establish their own societies, it is quickly realized that both can't exist in the world.

There are a lot of standout characters in this book and there are a lot of characters that are extraneous.  I really liked Stu's character as he seemed to be a decent guy with only a few flaws and he genuinely seemed to want to help people.  I don't understand his logic at times (or a lot of the characters for that matter), but he drives the plot along quite nicely.  Frannie, on the other hand, seems to only be in the story for the use of her pregnancy in the plot.  She could have been so much more but I felt like King only used her for convenience and she wasn't really a strong character on her own.  As for the bad guy, Flagg, I just didn't find him that menacing.  He seemed more bark than bite and while he did do plenty of awful things, they were all background and his henchman seemed more vile than him.  (Yes, I suppose it could be a lesson on how true evil uses others to do its work for it, but I'm not really wanting to go that philosophical with this book).  There were also a lot of loose ends with a lot of the characters too, like the boy Joe/Leo and a few others and I would have liked to have known what happened to them.

This is a long winded book.  King likes to use a lot of words and it works for him most of the time.  I think in this particular one there might be too much to it though.  I find my interesting flagging at times (no pun intended) and had to read it in several sittings.  Especially towards the end, I really had to push myself to finish the book.  The beginning was fantastic though, just the right amount of detail and the subject was compelling as they were trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.  It was when he started throwing in the supernatural that my interest waned as it could have been a strong story even without it.  It was still interesting, just not as intriguing as it could have been.  And the ending was a bit of a let down.  I don't want to give away too much, but it just seemed too easy after everything else that had happened.  King is known for doing the supernatural thing though, so I shouldn't be surprised that this book followed that formula.

I liked the book but I didn't think it was an epic story.  It started off strong and kind of ended with a whimper in my opinion.  3.5 stars from my perspective.

The Stand
Copyright 1980
817 pages

Thinner by Stephen King

I wasn't really a big fan of this book, which puts me in the minority.  I like a lot of King's other works, Different Seasons and The Shining were terrific.  But this one left a lot to be desired for me.

Billy Halleck is a local lawyer who has more than just a few pounds under his belt.  He's fat.  Or at least he is until he's cursed by a gypsy after running over one of the clan.  The problem is he got away with the manslaughter, and the man wanted revenge.  So now Billy is losing weight at an alarming rate and there's nothing he can do to stop it.  Short of finding the gypsy and reasoning with him, Billy is going to die.

Billy is not a sympathetic character.  He whines and moans and blames others for his problems.  In fact, I don't really see any growth in him at all until perhaps the very last chapter of the book, and by then it was too late for me to really care for him as a character at all.  And then there's the gypsies.  They're pretty much stereotyped and not in a kind way at all.  In fact, there weren't any redeeming characters in this book at all.  No one to root for, which aside from a cheap thrill doesn't really make the book worth reading.

I do have to say that the descriptiveness of the writing was very good and up to King's usual standard.  You can't complain that it wasn't filled with horrifying detail or scenes that you could absolutely picture through the description.  But when broken down the plot just didn't hold up because of the stereotyping, lame attempts at humor using racist jokes, and other flashy tricks with no real substance.  This could have been a great book for showing a man trying to do right and correct things to make his suffering go away; but instead you have him whining and blaming everyone else the entire time and ending up just the way you predict he will at the end.

I'll still read King's books, he's got some decent stuff out there and few clunkers like this one.  But I can't say that I'd recommend this particular book to anybody.

Thinner
Copyright 1985
318 pages

Different Seasons by Stephen King

Different Seasons is made up of four different short stories by King. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Apt Pupil, The Body, and The Breathing Method. I have to confess, I mainly picked up this book for the Shawshank Redemption and am a little biased because it was filmed at the Reformatory in my hometown. I loved the movie and couldn't wait to read the book, although I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a full novel. The rest of the stories I had heard little about and wasn't sure what to expect going into them.

The Shawshank Redemption centers around Andy, a man who claims to be wrongfully accused of his wife and her lovers murder and is sent to prison. While here, because of his astuteness of a banker he becomes an asset to the higher ups in the prison and this gets him special privileges and affords him some protections that other prisoners don't get. Despite this, Andy dreams of ways to escape from the nightmare that is life at Shawshank. His story is told through the eyes of Red, a man who's the person to go to to get what you need at the prison and a friend of Andy's.

The next story, Apt Pupil, is about a boy who has discovered the location of a Nazi war criminal. Blackmailing the old man, he makes him tell him stories of what the camps were really like, every gory detail. However, during this telling the tables are turned and the boy is slowly lured into a trap in which he cannot escape. Together they both rely on each other to keep secrets and keep them both from harm.

The Body is a story of young boys who, hearing a rumour about a body in the woods, set out to find it. It is filled with adolescent angst and the trials of trying to fit in with each other and their differently abusive families. The boys fears, hopes, dreams, and other emotions come out as they look for the poor boy who has nothing to hope for anymore.

The Breathing Method was the shortest of the books but somewhat intriguing. It is the tale of a man who has been asked to join a "club" (everything is quite secretive and there is an unspoken rule not to talk about certain things) where the main function is telling stories. Especially exciting are the stories told around Christmas time and the narrator uses this book to especially tell the story of the "breathing method" which is told by one of the doctor members and is about a young unmarried woman pregnant with her first child.

The characters in all of these books were well written. My favorite of course was Andy and Red in the Shawshank Redemption. I felt particular loathing for all of the characters in the Apt Pupil, but I suppose that is what King was trying to get out of the reader as no one was a very likeable character in it. The boys in The Body were ok; most of their lives were pitiable but I never really felt any connection to any of them. The characters in The Breathing Method were nice, but nothing special and there wasn't enough about them to make you interested in their lives.

Kings writing was fabulous in all the books. His books are very mature in theme though and this particular one includes gore, sex, rape fantasies, racial slurs and other potentially offensive material. Most specifically, Apt Pupil was very sickening and had loads of crass material in it. The most mild would probably be The Breathing Method. I would have liked King to expand more on this story as he had an interesting side story, but it wasn't fully fleshed out and what could have been a marvelous idea, was cut short.

Overall I thought this book was fantastic because of Shawshank. The other stories were good but they just didn't capture my interest as much.

Different Seasons
Copyright 1982
507 pages

The Shining by Stephen King

Somehow I've made it to this age having only read one Stephen King novel (Pet Sematary). So I decided to remedy this by reading The Shining, which I had heard was immensely creepy. I had also liked the movie as well, which also inspired my reading of this novel. I did enjoy the book, it was frightening at some parts but also had a good back story as well.

Jack Torrance and his family have been hired to be caretakers at the famous Overlook Hotel during the winter season. Since roads become impassable in the winter to get to the motel, they will be the only ones around to take care of the place. It will also help Jack get back on his feet after being fired from his last job and also his recovery from being an alcoholic. With him is his wife Wendy and his son Danny. Together they will spend their time at the hotel with a fully stocked larder preparing for winter and just enjoying each other's company while being a healing family. The Overlook has other plans however. With a warning in his head from the hotel chef before he left Danny knows the place is sinister. He has what the cook (Hallorann) calls the "Shining" which is the ability to perceive things and have precognition. The Overlook wants Danny and this ability, and with its dark history, will stoop to using Jack's weaknesses to get its way. The Overlook wants to party once more.

Jack is a very tragic character with few redeeming qualities. He tries to be a strong family man, but really is just too weak. Between the temptation of alcohol and his fondness for chewing aspirin he has several addictions. And these addictions make him dangerous before the hotel even starts influencing him. Wendy was more of a filler character. She was there to be strong for Danny and offer Jack a few problems, but the book doesn't give as much focus to her. Danny of course is greatly intriguing with his "shining". It was an interesting concept to give the boy and really plays an integral part in the book. I liked Hallorann really well. He was a very cool character and helped explain some of the more complicated aspects of the story.

King is a very entertaining writer. He comes up with these crazy ideas and is able to get them down on paper. He does a lot of character development in this book and while I always appreciate that, it does make the first third of the book somewhat slow moving. I also would have liked to see more scary scenes in the book although possibly the movie could have made me crave this more. As a warning there is a lot of harsh language in this book and it might not be appropriate for some children. Parental discretion is advised. Otherwise, there were a few things that were offensive as well which could affect all ages.

It was an interesting book and some parts really kept me at the edge of my seat. Yes, there were a few things that could have been improved, but overall the book was good. I look forward to reading more of his work.

The Shining
Copyright 1977
464 pages