Chris–Perfect timing

So, I’ve cracked open The Stand and in a strange coincidence have also been felled by a terrible cold.

CAPTAIN TRIPS!!!

More sleeping than reading, unfortunately.

 

Chris–Starting The Stand

OK–Neil Gaiman is out of the way (Trigger Warning is an excellent short story collection, by the way–highly recommend!), so now it’s on to The Stand.  This book is massive.  My copy clocks in at 1,153 pages.

This is going to take a minute or three to get through.  Please bear with me!

 

Chris–The Stand

Up next, King’s epic end-of-the-world tale, The Stand.  I’ve got the complete unabridged version, which, if I remember correctly, has an ton of “behind the scenes with Trashcan Man!”

The basic rundown:  the government creates a super flu virus, which escapes the lab and kills pretty much everyone, setting up a final showdown between good and evil–literally.  This is a massive book with a ton of characters.  So let’s get started!

Well, maybe not just yet.  Neil Gaiman just put out a new short story collection, so I’ve got to read that first.  And yes, I do HAVE to–I already marked it on Goodreads!  🙂

 

Chris–one more thing about The Shining

Let’s talk about Dick Halloran for a minute.

Dick Halloran is a flipping HERO.  He’s retired.  He’s done with the Overlook, never to return.  He’s living it up in sunny sunny Florida–and then he drops everything, risks everything, to fly across the country to try and help out a kid that he has had all of 30 minutes of interaction with?  Man.  And to top it all off, Dick is certain that he’s going to die.  That sudden, odd urge to go see a lawyer and put a will together out of nowhere?  Now that makes sense.  And yet, he goes, and he makes all the difference.

Stephen King is rather fond of racial epithets in his writing, but I have never thought of him as being racist because of characters like Dick Halloran.  This is what we should all strive to be.  I don’t think that Danny Torrance would have been around for a sequel had Dick not risked everything and more.

 

Chris–The Shining

Ok, computer is all put back together, and most of the data restoral is done, so back to the books!

A few years back, Dean Koontz wrote 77 Shadow Street, a book about a haunted apartment building.  And since his focus was on the building, inevitably we had to see what made the building haunted–which was pretty disappointing (at least for me).

The Shining is not a book about a haunted hotel; it is a story about a family, with problems that families have, having to face a haunted hotel that knows and exploits their fears.  That’s why this story works so well.  We don’t get to see exactly why the Overlook is haunted, and we don’t need to.  We just need to know that it’s a bad place where bad stuff happens.

King shows us this right off the get go.  He almost abandons any sort of foreshadowing by letting us see Danny’s vision–Jack roaming the hallways, threatening to bash in some skulls with a roque mallet.  But instead of giving away the ending, this builds up pressure tremendously–much like the Overlook’s boiler.

All three Torrances have reservations about taking this on.  Danny can actually see the future, so he knows what will happen if they go.  Unfortunately, he’s 5.  He doesn’t quite understand what he’s seeing, and he certainly doesn’t know how to explain it.  He does know that this is a chance for his Dad to put things back together, so he goes along with it.  Wendy knows that something is wrong with Danny, and soon sees that there is something wrong with Jack.  But she knows that they have nothing at the moment, and that this will be good for Jack if they can just get through it.

Jack is a real tragedy.  At his center, Jack Torrance is just a guy who loves his family, who tries to do the right thing, and always, always screws it up.  But he never stops trying.  And that’s where the Overlook gets him.  Jack tries to share something from his childhood with his son in the wasp nest–and the Overlook turns it against him.  Jack’s play is going well–until the Overlook steps in.  The Torrances are strengthening their bond–until the Overlook shows Jack another perspective.  The worst thing is that Jack even sees this, and understands that they have to leave.  But again, where to?  They have no money, no jobs, no car, no prospects.  “I can’t win,” Jack says.  And once more, makes a choice, trying to do what’s best for his family.

If you’ve only seen the movie, you miss out on that.  Jack Nicholson never seems to care at all for Shelley Duvall.  In fact, he seems ready to bash her head in from the very beginning.

So far, out of the three books this one is definitely the scariest.  There are some seriously terrifying moments in this story.  The hedge animals?  Are you kidding me?  And the moment with Danny at the playground is intense.  And then, when you step back and realize that this is just a 5 year old little boy, having to face these things with no one around to help…  Oh man.

 

Minor catastrophe….

So, computer blew up.  I (Chris) am done with The Shining, but I’ve got to get the pc back up and breathing.  Hopefully we’ll be back posting tomorrow!