The Shining Directed & Produced by Stanley Kubrick Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Diane Johnson Based on The Shining by Stephen King 447 pp, Doubleday 1977 Starring Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny Lloyd Contains spoilers since I discuss the differences in how the two versions end. But the movie is over 40 years …
If It Bleeds by Stephen King, copyright 2020 Scribner, An Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Every decade or so, Stephen King likes to put out a collection, usually novellas, sometimes short stories, or a mix of both. So to cap the second decade of the third millennium (Also known as “Mankind’s next-to-last decade”), he …
The Secret Commonwealth Phillip Pullman 2019 Borzoi Book, published by Alfred A. Knopf In his introduction to his second book in the Book of Dust series (and fifth in the His Dark Materials set), Pullman gleefully admits he swiped the title from a book called, “The Secret Commonwealth, or an Essay on the Nature and …
The Death of Bunny Munro Nick Cave Canongate Books (UK) Faber & Faber (US) 2009 Bunny Munro has been out there for over 10 years, and was always high on my ‘to read’ list. After all, I like Nick Cave’s music (The Bad Seeds) and I like his movies (The Proposition). He’s got 17 albums, …
Wanderers Chuck Wendig 782 Pages, July 2019 | Del Rey Books “It’s got a ‘The Stand’ thing going on,” my friend explained. So I downloaded a copy. King’s The Stand is one of my favourite apocalyptic novels, and holds up well after 40 years. Wanderers by Chuck Wendig starts out as a variant ‘zombie apocalypse’ …
The Institute by Stephen King Scribner, an imprint of Simon and Schuster (c) 2019 In the wordcloud that surrounds the career of Stephen Edwin King, one of the biggest has to be “supernatural.” Most of his works have at least some supernatural in them, and they tend to be both his most popular and most …
Cyberhell: a review of Fall; or, Dodge in Hell Author Neal Stephenson Illustrator Nick Springer / Springer Cartographics LLC Cover artist Fritz Metsch Publisher William Morrow an imprint of HarperCollins Publication June 4, 2019 Pages 883 All fiction involves, to one degree or another, ‘world building.’ No matter how hyper-realistic the story wants to be, …
Cari Mora Thomas Harris Copyright © Thomas Harris 2019 William Heinemann & Grand Central Publishing You read quickly through the first three chapters of Thomas Harris’ Cari Mora with a slight sense that, gripping and strange as the story begins, it’s a bit pedestrian, not quite on the level of Silence of the Lambs. Then …
When I got my copy of La Belle Sauvage, I misread it as “La Belle Sausage.” The sad thing is the French word for sausage is saucisse. The words “La Belle” should have tipped me off that the title wasn’t in English. I’m from Canada. I’ve studied these things. I even lived right next door …
The Squirrel Seller Khalid rubbed the dusty and sunburned bridge of his nose and tried not to glare in disgust. The man before him was aged, and perhaps not quite right in the head. The Prophet taught the virtue of compassion for the aged and the infirm, even if they were assholes. This particular asshole …