Joey – DaneCobain.com

Title: The Shining

Author: Stephen King

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 416

Rating: 7/10

Stephen King – The Shining

You remember that scene in Friends, where Joey is so scared of The Shining that he hid it in the freezer? I’m not entirely sure what scared him so much. It’s suspenseful, for sure, but that also means that there are long periods in which nothing much seems to happen. I was left with the feeling that big chunks of it could be removed without a problem, leaving it as a better book – then again, I guess that’s kind of what they did with the film.

There are a few things in the book that don’t get a mention in the movie, and there are also a few subtle differences including a strikingly different ending – unfortunately, though, I still prefer the movie, and I’m not exactly a massive fan of it. I just enjoy it as much as the next person.

The problem is, I can’t put my finger on what the problem is – there’s nothing inherently wrong with the story or with King’s writing, I just didn’t really think the book lived up to the hype. Perhaps you’ll have a different point of view, but I regret reading this before any other Stephen King book because it put me off him. Then I tried The Green Mile a couple of years later and was instantly converted.

Stephen King

In fact, I much preferred The Shining’s sequel, Doctor Sleep, which follows the story of the now grown-up Danny. There was more menace behind that, perhaps because King had a long period of time between the two books with which to perfect his craft. That said, you’d still need to read the first book before reading the sequel if you wanted to get the most out of it. And I highly recommend reading the sequel, so I suppose you’re just going to have to grit your teeth and get ready to read it.

So if you still want to go ahead and read The Shining then do it, but prepare to bed yourself in for a couple of weeks because it’s a long old read, and not something that you can just casually approach. If you don’t psyche yourself up for it beforehand, you’ll probably give up a third of the way in and go off and read something else instead. If you’re wondering how I know, it’s because that’s exactly what I did when I first read it.

Stephen King Quote

Click here to buy The Shining.

William Peter Blatty – The Exorcist | Review

Title: The Exorcist

Author: William Peter Blatty

Type: Fiction

Page Count/Review Word Count: 364

Rating: 9/10

William Peter Blatty – The Exorcist

“Like the brief doomed flare of exploding suns that registers dimly on blind men’s eyes, the beginning of the horror passed almost unnoticed.” When a book begins like this, you know it’s going to be good.

William Peter Blatty’s tale of a possessed little girl and a mother who will do anything to save her is probably best known as one of the greatest horror films ever made, and the novel is often overlooked. It shouldn’t be – it really is a phenomenal tale, extremely well-written and full of little details that didn’t survive the transition to the cinema screen.

It’s terrifying, too – remember that episode of Friends where Joey puts The Shining in the freezer? That’ll start to seem like a good idea, although the book is so demonic that I can’t help but wonder whether ice or flames could even damage it.

Regan MacNeil

The characterisation is also much more explicit in the novel than in the film, and by the end of the book I felt like Father Karras was… well, a father to me. In fact, all of the characters are much more believable, and it’s easy to feel both empathy and horror towards young Regan, often at the same time.

Perhaps it’s so believable because parts of the novel are based on real events – Father Merrin is based upon Gerald Lankester Harding, a British archaeologist who excavated the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found. In fact, Harding and Blatty met each other in Beirut, and Blatty himself has confirmed that the character was based on his real-life acquaintance.

It’s also thought that the novel is based on the actual exorcism in 1949 of a young boy in Maryland, known under the pseudonym of ‘Roland Doe‘. Blatty himself studied at a Jesuit school in the 1950s, and it was there that he first heard Doe’s story.

It’s Blatty’s Jesuit influences that allow him to write so convincingly on a subject that most would look upon as religious fiction – I’m a thoroughbred atheist, so why was I so terrified by a story about possession?

By J.T. Blatty – Photosubmissions 2014042010008501, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link