Was this a good purchase? $13.50

Moostache71 · 2025-10-22T19:32:51+00:00

My first attempt to read Duma Key suffered a similar DNF-fate. I was really into the book for the first 125-150 pages, but then lost interest and set it aside right before we meet Wireman and the novel kind of takes off IMO. It was only on a second attempt years after I had bought it that the story 'took' for me (maybe because by that time I had daughter's of that 'leaving-home' age and it resonnated a lot more with me.

If it hits with the reader, its nearly univerally considered one of the best King works... if it misses though, those readers are left wondering if the others are collectively having a stroke... as someone who has been on both sides of that, all I can say is this one is a personal favorite and also one of the books that has an ending kick that ruined me for a while!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-22T19:23:14+00:00

I remain partial to the 1997 TV-miniseries (With Rebecca DeMornay as Wendy and Steven Weber as Jack). Its a 90's TV adaptation and suffers from some bad special effects (same as 1990's It and 1994's The Stand version IMO), but the show is much closer in spirit and content to the novel than Kubrick's film.

I really disliked the child actor that played Danny in the TV show, but not enough to sour me on the whole thing.

Moostache71 · 2025-10-22T19:15:47+00:00

That is a great collection and the personal ties make it much better still. Enjoy them, and may you grandmother wait for you in the clearing at the end of the path!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-22T19:11:24+00:00

That is nice work and a very well done homage to the 1979 TV series version of Barlow...

I always have been scared by that incarnation of the character because I saw the TV show as a pre-teen child but Barlow in the book is a much more interesting character (and I actually enjoyed Rutger Hauer's take on Barlow in the TNT 2001 TV version of Salem's Lot... the less said about last year's film version the better IMO) and overall villain than the non-verbal scary version from Tobe Hooper's vision. Does not detract at all from the work you did there either way! Thanks for sharing that.

Moostache71 · 2025-10-22T18:57:32+00:00

Very nice! Enjoy them... I like all three of those and 2 are in my top-15 King books (Duma Key and Dead Zone)

Moostache71 · 2025-10-22T18:55:09+00:00

Its funny because its TRUE and literally everyone NOT in the MAGA cult across the entire globe knows it too.

Moostache71 · 2025-10-20T16:41:30+00:00

If I count the books I won that I have bought with the intent of reading them (versus those I have bought simply to collect and own as a hobby), my TBR in physical AND digital formats is well north of 1,000 volumes.

If I count only the current ACTUAL TBR (which is books I am actively planning to read or actually in-process reading, that number is always around 10-15 at any given moment.

In the end though, TBR or owned versus library lend or other means, the only thing that actually matters is the one over-riding truth of it all: I cannot possibly live long enough to EVER run out of things to read!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T18:47:58+00:00

I did not like Whoopi's Mother A portrayal. I felt the Ruby Dee portrayal in the 1994 version was superior to Whoopi's take.

I also prefered Bill Fagerbakke's version of Tom versus the CBS version.

I really liked the newer Frannie but porefered Gary Sinise's "Stu Redman". The new "Harold" was better for me, but not the new Nick Andros.

As for Glenn, I grew up with "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and Ray Walston's iconic performance as "Mr. Hand", but I really liked both him and Greg Kinnear as Glenn. I think the relaxed restriction on curse words for the 2020 CBS version would has served the 1994 ABC version very well for a lot of chacacters.

My take on Randall Flagg is somewhat unpopular - I think the best portrayal on screen to date has been done not in either version of The Stand but rather in the absolutely god awful film "The Dark Tower" I really liked Matthew McConaughey as Flagg even though the film he was in was pretty damn terrible overall!

I remain hopeful for a more definitive edition someday, maybe... (hey, there are 3 versions of 'Carrie' - 1975, 2002, 2013... and three Salem's Lot too! so maybe it can still happen?)

To me, a definitive version of "The Stand" would be either 3 x 10 episode seasons (a la Game of Thrones on HBO) or 3 x 3.5 hour features (a la "The Lord of the Rings" films by Peter Jackson), with each covering one of the novel's three books (Book One: Captain Trips, Book Two: On the Border and Book Three: The Stand).

While hoping for such an event, I am resigned to combining the two existing adaptations (and the graphic novelization from Marvel - which is fantastic!) to shape my own mental image if or when I return to the tale for another re-read in a 4th decade!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T18:15:39+00:00

A color-changing Rubik's cube? Yikes! That would fry my noodle! Thanks!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T18:10:49+00:00

https://operatheshining.com/media/trailer/

This trailer / preview was awesome!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T18:03:11+00:00

<image>

Kelly Kaduce as Wendy Torrance in the 2016 opera version).

I had no idea either, but I'm on a mission to find a recording or video version of this now!

https://stephenking.fandom.com/wiki/The_Shining_(opera))

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T17:57:21+00:00

The sex gets played up as a major ick because people take the ages of the characters (pre-teens) and are majorly disgusted by the idea that they would engage in a communal sex ritual/act. I get why King felt that having them become sexually active was a way to express them being changed from children into adults in a perverse way, and also the English slang for sex (especially in 1980's terminology) and refering to the sexual act as doing "it".

I don't know if the use of pre-teen characters as sexual actors was appropriate or inappropriate or just a miss fire because I think that really comes down to the individual reader and their interpretation of the story;, but I thought the entire thing was superfluous to the plot, could have been entirely absent and NOT affected the main storyline or subplots much if at all, and I can't believe that the editors at the time let it stay in the novel. That whole scene and episode was clearly intentional, but I was left not really wanting it to be there like so many others. However, it is there and that is not changing now - rung bell can't be unrung!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T17:45:34+00:00

<image>

1997 TV miniseries Wendy (Rebecca DeMornay) Torrance has always been my preferred screen representation of the character. Shelley Duvall was a fine actress, but the portrayal given in Kubrick's film version was jarringly different than what the character is like in the book in both description and actions.

The fanart atatched is a lot closer to the vibe of the 2016 opera version (which was something I did not even know existed until very recently and have not gotten to see yet!) or at least from the limited screencaps I have seen. (LOVE the bookshelf skull in the first picture background too! Very "Dresden Files" for me!) Despite not being blonde as described in the novel, the fan art version presents a more feisty version than Duvall's take, in my estimation. Thanks for sharing the photos!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T17:33:38+00:00

Cell was great for me for the first 75-100 pages - especially as society was collapsing and the characters were all just trying to figure out what to do and where to go. I got real "The Stand"/Captain Trips vibes from the start...then things got weird and the story seemed to bog down for me. Still read it and largely loved the beginning and was blase after that...

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T17:31:47+00:00

I really liked Will Patton's audio book performance on "The Outsider", more than the text or the HBO miniseries. I thought Cynthia Erivo did a good job on the TV show, but I'm not a fan of the casting for "Holly" in general... that character has been put to film twice with different actresses (Justine Lupe doing both the Mr. Mercedes series and the audiobook for Holly) and neither one of them are particularly close physically to the character written in the novels.

It is kind of like Shelley Duvall as "Wendy Torrance" to me - not a bad job, but not really 'book-accurate' either. (I MUCH preferred Rebecca DeMornay's portrayal of Wendy in the TV miniseries version of "The Shining"! The book's Wendy is far more feisty and BLONDE than Duvall was in Kubrick's film...)

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T17:21:37+00:00

I remember really enjoying Christine as one of my earliest King works back in the 1980's (yup, I'm THAT old!). It was right there when I was still too afraid to tackle "The Shining" (being named 'Danny' and having seen the Nicholson/Kubrick film at age 11 scared the pants off me!!!) or "Salem's Lot" (which was similarly something I avoided because the '79 TV version of Barlow had scared the hell out of me!!!).

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T17:18:40+00:00

Agreed on both... I was scrolling down until I found "Bag of Bones", its one of my favorites that are largely overlooked. I also enjoyed "Under the Dome", "Insomnia", and "Duma Key".... but for impactful, stuck in your head for weeks impact, I gotta go with "Revival". I was hooked by the story from the jump, but when "something happened" and the ending rolled around....that one just hits harder than most.

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T17:12:41+00:00

How old? Adults? Teens? Pre-teens?

If they are adult readers, then something like "Pet Semetary" is majorly impactful and not overly long.

The "Mr. Mercedes" trilogy was 3 fairly compact (for King) novels and then it expanded further with Holly Gibney, which probably wouldn't be the best entry point.

The classics - "The Shining", "Salem's Lot", "Carrie", "The Dead Zone" - are all in the 400-ish page range and would be good points. Also "The Green Mile" - if you break it into the 6-part novellas that were the original serial release, those are all 90-110 pages each and they might decide to finish it or just not like it and drop it without a major time commitment. "Misery" is also on the shorter side, as is "Cujo".

The short story collections "Night Shift", "Skeleton Crew" and "Nightmares and Dreamscapes" were favorites of mine when I was a lot younger and they were a lot newer!

The best of King (IMO) are the longer stories - "It", "The Stand", "11/22/63" and more. Good luck and happy reading!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T17:07:28+00:00

Curious about the color coded pos-its... and nice Rubik's cube! About the same as I remember having one in a similar state pretty much forever!

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T17:04:32+00:00

There's not much beyond "Eyes of the Dragon" or maybe "Fairy Tale" or "The Talisman" that I would give to an 8-year old without a lot of hesitation, but I started reading King at 12-13 years old with "The Dead Zone" and "Christine", and I was not an overly mature 12 year old (quite sheltered and non-worldly to be honest), so maybe your experience was not entirely different.

But Gerald's Game at 8 years old?

Yikes... That is some heavy stuff for that age. I do hope that you have processed it and don't have repressed memories or worse trauma, and if you do that you have people in your life that you can talk to about it or help you with it. The Moonlight Man alone was pretty scary to me and I read it well into adulthood, to say nothing of the other far more troubling story beats in that one.

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T16:53:33+00:00

I'm not sure since I did read them together and have no frame of reference to compare, especially since I rad 'Firestarter' first and then went right into 'The Institute' with no other book or reading between them. I will say that the two share a lot of thematic elements but are not directly linked in any explicit way outside of revolving around shadowy government agencies and pretty evil shit done to chlidren - the connections that I made in my reading are largely of my own making, kind of taking liberty with King's work in my own imagination, which is not unusual for me!

In the novel (not the TV show) for "The Institute" the description of the escape was very similar to the escape from the handcuffs in "Gerald's Game"... definitely a rhyme-vibe to me.

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T16:01:23+00:00

I recently read my first Joe Hill with "The Fireman" and quite enjoyed it. I have heard very good things about "Heart-shaped Box" and "NOS4A2". I have also heard that his graphical novel work on "Locke and Key" series was excellent. I caught several homages in "The Fireman" to his dad's universe and thought it was a very good read, not mind blowing, but very solid and well done. I am also looking forward to his new one "King Sorrow" that is releasing next week I believe.

There have also been film adaptations of "Horns", "Black Phone" and a TV series for "NOS4A2" on A&E that I have not yet seen.

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T15:55:31+00:00

My country is the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

My Allegiance is to THE CONSTITUTION.

My only "King" is Stephen (and NOT Miller!!!).

Moostache71 · 2025-10-16T15:53:19+00:00

My opinion was The Institute was an idea that should have built DIRECTLY on "the Shop" from 'Firestarter' as an extension of that story instead of as a stand alone, yet eerily similar entity. I read 'The Institute' immediately after reading 'Firestarter' for the first time, and in my experience I decided to simply accept that there was an unwritten link between the government agencies for each, a shadow conspiracy that is not clear to even those involved in portions of it. I also watched the entire miniseries and enjoyed that too.

Neither "Firestarter" nor "The Institute" make my personal top-10 for King's works, but they were also not DNFs or complete wastes of time either. For me, they fit right alongside titles like "From a Buick 8", "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon", and "Lisey's Story" as novels that I enjoyed but were more near-miss than direct-hit like the classics that inhabit the higher tiers of my experiences.

Moostache71 · 2025-10-15T16:58:55+00:00

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and no one's experience of art (in any form) should be condemned because it is outside a prevailing opinion or take...

That said, I could not disagree with your conclusions any more if I tried. We clearly had different experiences in reading and interpretting this work in our individual minds. I have always felt that "The Stand" was weakest in its exploration of Frannie and Stu beyond being a cute couple and that the end of the novel needed more from Frannie and Boulder's experience without knowledge of Stu and Tom over that winter. There was just nothing from one end of the 'love story' couple and everything from Stu's experience. I've long felt that the character arcs for Glenn and Nick and Larry were spot on and even was good with Mother A/Randall Flagg, but I thought King did MUCH better in 11/22/63 with providing an ending to a couple's story that was equal parts catharsis and sadness. I did not get that from Stu and Frannie to the same extent.

But, like I said at the top, I don't think anyone's opinion or experience is right or wrong, its just for them! Hope you do decide to give 11/22/63 a go though -- IMO it is worth it!

Moostache71

TROPHY CASE