Book Review: Dr Sleep, by Stephen King

Since I can't seem to work on my novel, I'll come on here and talk about someone else's.

I'll be honest: before I heard about Dr Sleep, all I knew about The Shining was from snippets of the Kubrik film. That's right, I've never seen the damned movie all the way through and after reading the book and what Stephen King thinks about it, I'm glad I haven't. That's right. I said it.

Nothing against Stanley Kubrik, but I'm of the opinion that if you're going to base your movie on a book, you should probably, oh I dunno, base the damned thing on the book. The only thing the Kubrik film takes from the book is the names of the characters and the base plot. Jack Nicholson, though a great actor, plays Jack Torrance as crazy from the get go. Of course, look at Jack Nicholson: mofo looks crazy at the best of times, I don't believe him as a good guy driven insane by alcoholism and ghosts.

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, back to our regularly scheduled program.

I read The Shining in preparation for Dr Sleep and I'm glad I did, because without it, I would have been completely fucking lost. Sure, I would have understood the story; they explain enough about the shining itself and what happened to Danny and Wendy to get the point across. But just understanding the plot and point really isn't enough, especially with a King novel. One must understand the subtext, the little references and nods to other things, and there are plenty of nods to The Shining that I would have missed had I not read it.

Dr Sleep is, of course, the sequel to The Shining, and follows Danny Torrance after that fateful winter in The Overlook Hotel. Danny, when we meet him, is an alcoholic, following in his father's footsteps, with a temper to match Jack blow for blow. We see him hit rock bottom and begin the laborious climb back up with the help of AA. Danny is an orderly at a hospice and has discovered that his shining can ease the patient's passing, earning him the nickname Dr Sleep.

During the course of years over which this book takes place, Dan makes contact, at first through the shining, then email and finally in person, with a girl named Abra Stone, a girl whose talent makes Dan's look like a flashlight compared to a lighthouse. Abra has gotten on the wrong side of a group of vampire-like entities called The True Knot. The Knot feed off the essence of children with the shining, which they call steam. Abra oversees them killing a boy for his steam and eventually The Knot starts gunning for her.

I really don't want to say any more. This book is amazing, King truly at the height of his power. I bought it on Thursday and was done on the next Monday. If you're a King fan, like I am, read this book, but I do recommend reading or re-reading The Shining first. If you've just seen Kubrik's film, definitely read The Shining first.

Book Review: Joyland

Stephen King is the kind of writer I wish I was. Book after book, year after year, the man keeps truckin', no matter what. He's responsible for perhaps half of the reading material on my bookshelf right now, and was the author of the first book over 1000 pages that I ever read. I can even remember what book it was. I read the unabridged version of The Stand during the month of October during my seventh grade year.  The Dark Tower series remains one of my favorite series ever.

Now that you know where I'm coming from as a SK fan, let me get to the point of this: Joyland, the second of King's books published with Hard Case Crime, the other being The Colorado Kid, another book on my shelf. This book follows Devin Jones, most often called Dev or Jonesy, during his summer job at the amusement park called Joyland. For the most part, we follow the 21 year old through the normal new job stuff: learning where stuff is, the lingo and the technical bits of running the park. We also see him "wearing the fur", and no, I'm not going to tell you what that is. Read the book. There's a cast of colorful characters throughout the book, which every Stephen King fan expects.


I really don't want to say too much about what goes on, or this article will start to be spoiler-laden. All I will say is that it took me a little under 3 days to read the book. While it's not a beefy tome by any means, I'm surprised at how quickly it went. A very fast read, but now I'm bummed out that I've finished it. A great book for anybody who likes Stephen King, mysteries or gets off on the whole carny thing.

The Dark Tower 1: The Gunslinger Video Review

The first book review in video form, and I thought I'd start with a biggie. In honor of The Wind Through the Keyhole, I've decided to go through all of The Dark Tower books, one by one and give you my thoughts on them. Sorry, there really is no plot analysis for The Gunslinger, but honestly, there really is no plot for this one in and of its self. All we know is that Roland is chasing The Man in Black and ultimately is chasing the Dark Tower. We don't really find out why until later. Anyway. Cheers.

Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter

I apologize for the low volume; didn't know I was speaking that softly.

Dragon Blues by Edie Ramer

I don’t know what to say about this book. I sped through this book in about 2 days and now I’m just meh. It’s a good book, I guess, although while I read it I did nitpick the hell out of it like I was an English teacher or something. Several times I re-phrased sentences in my mind while I was reading, attempting to make them a bit more impactful. There were a few too many instances of repetition for my taste, such as the constant reminder that Lila’s a martial arts master. I got so sick of reading that her hands and feet were deadly weapons, I just started skipping over that sentence. Lila’s whole character really got on my nerves too, but I can get past that because I’ve met women like her.

Now, having said all that, I did enjoy the hell out of this book. Normally, I just read during break and lunch at work, but I read this all last night, because I needed to know what happened. The characters were great, especially Noah, who I identified with rather strongly. I don’t want to call it a romance, even though there are elements of it in the book. Really, the thing that got me reading was the premise. I’ll explain.

Noah Long is a dragon in human form. Running an antique shop called, appropriately enough, Dragon’s Lair, he presides over his centuries-old hoard of treasure. Having chosen to be human for the love of music, Noah is a loner, like others of his kind. One night, a pair of junkie thieves attempts to rob his store, but he catches them and the story begins. 

Gripping and for the most part, well told, the story can capture your attention and hold it until you finish. If you can overlook the repetition and odd phrasing and a few missing words here and there. Sometimes it seems almost like the rough draft got published instead of the final version, but otherwise it’s ok. It’s one of the better books I’ve read this month, managing to draw my attention away from the Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft. If you’re a reader, pick it up, I got it for free on the Amazon Kindle.

Stephen King's IT

Last week, the Nostalgia Critic did a review of this movie. He hammed it up, turning it into a Stephen King drinking game. Look, I have no issue with the NC doing this, it's his job to nitpick and go over-the-top for laughs, and the problems he pointed out with the movie are legitimate. But let's be fair to the movie: it was made for tv in 1990, so not only are the effects not going to be that good, but the story is going to have to be butchered. Not to say they did a bad job with the story, they hit the main points of the book and captured the atmosphere of Derry.

I'm going to compare/contrast events in the book and movie and explain a logical reason why they were changed.

Sightings of It


Almost all of the seven Losers' first sighting of It was changed from book to movie, but the changes make sense when you take into account budget and whatnot.

Ben: In the book, Ben saw It as the mummy while walking home from school in the winter. The movie was probably shot in the spring/summer and they couldn't afford to draw out the shooting long enough to actually shoot in the dead of winter. Also, Ben saw the creature on the frozen over Canal, a channel that keeps the Kenduskeag river flowing through downtown Derry. I don't know of any town in America that has something like this and it would have been to expensive to create some kind of analogue and so, Ben's sighting was changed to seeing It as his father in the Barrens.

Bill and Bev were unchanged.

Eddie: Eddie saw It as a leper under the porch of 29 Neibolt street. This would have introduced several plot threads into the movie that would have made it probably made it 2 hours longer, so it was changed for time.

Richie: Richie saw It as a moving Paul Bunyon statue. Let's face it; the computer technology that tv studios had to work with even now could not make a 30 foot Paul Bunyon statue look anything but fake. Back then, it would have been worse. This one goes to tech and budget.

Stan: Stan saw dead boys in the Standpipe. Once again, we deal with location and budget. What town has something like the Standpipe?

Mike: Mike saw a giant bird at the ruins of the Kitchener Ironworks. Once again location and budget. They would have had to create a field full of detritus from the exploded ironworks and on top of that make a giant bird chase a small boy. No way they could have done that on a tv budget in 1990.

So we can understand why these changes were made. Other changes were mostly for time; they left out the Neibolt street stuff and the children facing down the giant spider.

Another thing the Critic complained about was the flashbacks; and he's right to complain about that. Half of the story is told through flashbacks, both in the movie and the book. The thing is, in the book they make sense. The adults forgot everything about that summer and the phone call from Mike triggers their memories and they start to remember things that happened. As they remember, we learn what happened.  This isn't really explained in the movie and the flashbacks get kind of annoying.

I think the movie was made for fans of the book, who can kind of plug in the missing sequences from the book to make the movie that much better.

God I don't want to talk about what I'm about to, but it's all the people who trash on this book seem to focus on: the sex scene in the sewers between Beverly and the boys. Look, I know it sounds bad, especially when you take into account the kids are 12 but damnit, it's not the point of the book! First of all, did you pay attention to this book? Supernatural forces were keeping the kids bound together as one force to kill It. When they were leaving the sewers, the bond began to break down and they got lost. Bev used sex as a way to bind them together forever. IT MAKES SENSE WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THE BOOK!

Besides, it's not like its written in disgusting detail like a Penthouse Forum letter; its very downplayed and sweet, not to mention vague. This is sex from the point of view of a kid who's just starting puberty. If you let something like this, which amounts to maybe 20 pages in a 1104 page book, hey, too bad for you. IT is one of Stephen King's best. The man not only knows what scares us, but how to write it.