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AWESOME-tober-fest 2019: Fangoria Movie Friday: Christine

Posted in AWESOME-tober-fest, Blog Series, books, Fangoria, Genres, Halloween, holiday, horror, magazine, movies, pop culture, Stephen King with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2019, books, Fangoria, Fangoria Movie Friday, Halloween, magazine, movies, pop culture on October 18, 2019 by Paxton

Every year around Halloween I try to fill in the gaps in my Stephen King reading. I’d read a bunch of his books back in high school and in college, but then I lapsed for a while. So a few years ago I decided around Halloween each year I’d pick up a book I hadn’t read of his and read it for the spooky season. Over the last 10 years or so I’ve read the uncut The Stand, The Talisman, Salem’s Lot, The Shining and Needful Things. This year, I decided to finally read Christine. And since I’m reading the book, I thought I’d watch the movie as well, seeing as how I’d never seen it.

book movie

I was always fascinated by the idea of the story and was eager to dig in. I read the book first. And the book is actually a lot longer than I was expecting. The copy I read had over 500 pages. It’s typical early King, long on setup. But once you get past the halfway mark, things amp up considerably. But don’t take that as a disparaging remark to the first half. The fact that King takes the time to set up the concept and we get to live with the characters a little while, it makes the events in the end really affect the reader. You know and care about the characters, so the horrific events at the end hit you hard. Since King is playing the long game we really get to know Arnie and when the changes start coming you can really see it. Little events build up to bigger events until it all snowballs in the end to, honestly, catastrophic results. And I like the motivations and explanations of Christine here in the novel.

I really enjoyed Christine as a horror novel and a King novel. Is it my favorite? No, but I’m glad I read it. The next King book I’m going to tackle will probably be The Dark Half.

So after reading the book, I watched the movie. Directed by John Carpenter, who was originally supposed to direct an adaptation of King’s Firestarter a few years earlier but it fell through. After reading the book, I was a bit disappointed with the slightness of the movie. I get it, it only has like 2 hours to do what King did in 500+ pages, I totally acknowledge that. Carpenter’s directing is pretty great. The movie is shot fantastically. The car looks awesome. I love the burning car sequence. It’s just so relentless and horrific looking. Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed with how the movie answers the motivations of Christine. It’s different than the book and it just feels so…bleh. It was evil from the day it was made? Really? Huh. I didn’t love that, but I really liked the kids in the movie and overall I’m happy with how it turned out, but not surprisingly, I prefer the book.

Fangoria did cover Christine a few times. With several articles. The movie got a cover story in Fangoria #32 in 1984.

Fango 32 cover Fango 32 article

King’s novel would get a review in Fango’s Nightmare library a few issues earlier, Fangoria #30, in 1983.

It’s a positive review, for the most part, but the author uses so many metaphors it’s tough to really say for sure.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

Review of The Talisman for the #Talismanalong

Posted in books, pop culture, Stephen King with tags Book Report, books, Peter Straub, pop culture, reviews, Stephen King, Talismanalong on September 4, 2013 by Paxton

Talismanalong 2

Well, the Talismanalong I started with Trish at the beginning of August has ended. We’ve all read the book. We had some good discussion on Twitter under #Talismanalong about the book. It was a lot of fun, I enjoyed reading and talking about the book with the participants. It’s always fun to do these things especially with Trish, she’s just so much fun. And, she’s due for a tiny human to come out of her at any moment, so let’s all hope that goes well.

Now, though, I guess it’s time to talk about what I thought about the actual book.

Going in, I was not overly excited to read this book. I honestly had no idea what type of story to expect as I knew very little about the book other than the fact that it existed. I think I was also colored by my “meh-ness” about King’s The Stand. And the beginning of this book did NOT allay my fears. The first 80 pages or so are rough (ie boring as ballz). I was concerned that I may have made a huge mistake. Then we are introduced to Speedy and The Territories. And the story takes off.

This book reminds me a lot of The Stand. The long, epic journey. I said before that The Talisman is The Stand as written by Neil Gaiman. Speaking of Neil Gaiman, another book that this reminds me of is American Gods. One, central “evil” character that must be defeated. Long, epic journeys, climatic final battles. Many fantastical elements. Another book this reminds me of? Odysseus by Homer. A hero must fight trial after trial on a long journey to find his way home. So, yes, this is classic storytelling by two masters of genre storytelling.

Things I liked? I said this book reminds me of The Stand a little bit, but unlike The Stand, this book has a manageable cast of characters and a much more focused story line. I didn’t feel like I was drowning in characters and plot throughout reading the book. I also love the idea and execution of The Territories. I liked the hero Jack. I liked his companion Wolf. For the most part, I think Morgan Sloat is a good villain, but he’s surprisingly not that fully developed considering the length of the story. I also actually like the final confrontations and wrap ups in this book (unlike, oh, I don’t know, THE STAND).

What didn’t I like? Again, I hate to harp on this with King, but, the story is just too damn long. This book could have edited out at least 100 pages and not really lost anything. There is A LOT of naval gazing throughout the different parts of this book. Especially towards the end. While it’s more focused than The Stand, it still needed some judicious trimming. I found “story fatigue” setting in around page 550-600 (there were 770 pages in this book). Even though I liked the book, I was sort of ready for the final act and wrap up. It really felt like it took a week to read the last 150 pages or so. But to be fair, part of that is my inability to find time to read outside of work and on weekends. With a 2 year old and an 8 month old, reading at home is a rare occurrence.

So, overall, yes, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. And that is a surprise to me. Will I read the sequel, Black House? A week ago, I was gung-ho to read it, yes. But now, I think I’ll eventually read it, but not anytime soon. Plus, the stuff I hear from people about the sequel is not exactly glowing. And I hear it has a thin connection to the Dark Tower series of which I am not a fan. So, we’ll see. But I can definitely recommend The Talisman as a good and interesting story, with good characters and a lot of imagination.

And now that I know I like this book, I definitely be reading Straub’s Shadowland sooner rather than later.

Thanks, Trish and everyone else for joining me on this Talismanalong. I had a lot of fun.

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Vintage Stephen King/Peter Straub interview from Fangoria magazine (1986)

Posted in books, Fangoria, magazine, nostalgia, Stephen King with tags books, Fangoria, Peter Straub, Stephen King, Talismanalong on August 21, 2013 by Paxton

So here I am, just past the half way point in my reading of the King/Straub fantasy epic, The Talisman. I’m going to be perfectly honest, I wasn’t totally looking forward to reading this book. I love King, but the book is kinda long and I kept flashing back to my reading of The Stand. And after the first 80 pages I just kept thinking, “I’ve made a horrible mistake.” But the book quickly started getting better and I’m much more comfortable now. I’m very much enjoying the book at the halfway point. It’s also getting me excited to read the sequel, Black House, as well as that Shadowland book I bought on a whim several months ago.

While trolling through my old Fangoria magazines, I found an article from The Bloody Best of Fangoria Vol 5. The Bloody Best was a compilation of previously published articles that Fangoria released at the end of each year. Essentially, it’s a reprint magazine. This particular volume was from 1986. The interview I’m sharing is with both King and Straub around the time of the release of the book. Like I said, the article was reprinted in 1986 for the compilation, but the article itself is from sometime in 1984.

You can click each of the images to see them BIGGER on Flickr.

For those that don’t want to read the article, there are a few interesting tidbits.

* King and Straub can no longer remember who wrote what. And the parts you think are King probably aren’t because they each tried to put tricks in the story and use each other’s style to fool their readers.
* Universal bought the movie rights to the book in 1984 and Spielberg was attached to direct. Even going as far as having a script commissioned. Obviously, nothing came of that.
* At this point in time, George Romero was set to direct a film adaptation of The Stand right after he finished filming Day of the Dead. King had written the script and whittled it down to a 2.5 hour movie and says in the article that “everything is in there”. But I’m not sure how that’s even possible.
* After The Talisman, Straub is mostly done with supernatural horror. He wants to focus on more crime and mystery. Which is what he does. His next three books are his famed Blue Rose Trilogy (Koko, Mystery, The Throat).

I mentioned Straub’s next few books after The Talisman above. Conversely, the next published book for Stephen King after The Talisman was Thinner, but that was originally under the Richard Bachman alias. The next KING book was the short story collection, Skeleton Crew. Which is one of my very favorite King books. But Thinner is rather good as well.

It seems like this article just ends. I guess the interview is concluded in the next issue. A bit disappointing as I wanted them to discuss any ideas for the sequel we wouldn’t see for like 20 years.

Another thing I thought before reading up on The Talisman was that King and Straub hated each other. That they started off as friends but the writing of the book drove a wedge into that friendship. That’s why it took so long to get a sequel. However, that’s clearly not the case at all. These guys were friends for years before The Talisman and they’ve been friends ever since. Interesting the ideas you overhear other people say that have no basis in reality.

So yes, I’m enjoying the book and I’d recommend it to anyone that is curious and already a fan of either author. However, since this is just the halfway point, there is still plenty of time for this book to go completely “off the rails”.

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Talisman Readalong Kickoff!!

Posted in books, Stephen King with tags books, Stephen King, Talismanalong on August 1, 2013 by Paxton

I was looking at the calendar the other day and I noticed that I posted my review of Stephen King’s The Stand almost 1 year ago today. August 7, 2013. I had actually finished the book about a month before on July 9, 2013. It was nice to finally fill that hole in my King bibliography. I have several other holes I hope to fill before long (I encourage you to run with every joke that comes to mind in connection with that last sentence. I would.).

Anyway, I’m a big fan of Stephen King and I’ve read much of the man’s bibliography. However, there are still several King books I’d like to get off my internal “King reading list”; ‘Salem’s Lot, Needful Things, On Writing, The Running Man, The Talisman.

I was talking to my good friend Trish (who I did the Stand readalong with) and she’s been really digging King lately as well. She just finished readalongs for It, Under the Dome and The Shining. I told her about the outstanding King books I feel I still need to read and she said she’d do The Talisman with me. How awesome is that? Even after all her goings on (she actually gives birth to a tiny human sometime around Labor Day) she still agrees to read this book with me. That’s why I love Trish.

So anyway, the result of all this is that Trish and I are doing a readalong for The Talisman. I’m pretty excited about it. I hope this book is good. I know I like Stephen King, but I’ve never read any of Peter Straub’s books. However, in anticipation, I bought a Peter Straub novel I’ve had my eye on for a while called Shadowland.

Even if The Talisman is terrible, I’ll probably read Shadowland anyway. Then I’ll know for sure if it was King or Straub that killed the book.

The Talisman readalong officially starts today, August 1, but I finished my previous book early so I started reading it on Tuesday. I’m not very far in but I definitely have some thoughts forming. I’ll be tweeting those thoughts under #Talismanalong. So join me, won’t you?

I have a few articles planned during the readalong including an old ass magazine interview with King and Straub as well as some half way point check ins and the like. It should be fun. So grab your copy and get started. And jump over to Trish’s site and tell her you’ll be joining us.

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I stand up to Stephen King’s The Stand: Uncut Edition

Posted in books, Stephen King with tags Book Report, books, pop culture, reviews, Stephen King on August 7, 2012 by Paxton

I’m a big Stephen King fan. I’ve read a lot of his work. My favorites are probably his short story collections; Skeleton Crew, Night Shift, Four Past Midnight, etc.

As for his regular novels, I’ve read several, but my favorites would probably be Eyes of the Dragon and Misery. However, I had never conquered what is considered King’s magnum opus. I had never read The Stand. I can’t tell you why I never read it. There is probably a bit of intimidation in there, but nonetheless, it remained a hole in my King reading. I think it was my reading of The Gunslinger that kept me from reading The Stand. I hated The Gunslinger, but that’s a tale for another time.

Then Trish from Love, Laughter and Insanity decided to start up The Standalong. It was a group read-a-long of King’s The Stand. I thought, if I’m ever going to read this book, then it needs to be NOW. So I signed up and started reading the book on June 3. Here are my thoughts.

First the good, because I don’t want to just bitch. The book was well written with well written characters. There are many parts I found fascinating like the spread of Captain Trips, the devolution of society as it realizes everyone is dying. The rebuilding of society in the Boulder Free Zone. Flagg’s Las Vegas community. Those all were interesting and I enjoyed reading about them. However, the main fault of the book is that it’s too damn long.

I read the uncut version. I thought if I’m going to read this book, then I’ll read the original “author’s vision”. The uncut edition paperback I have is 1138 pages long. 1138 pages. I was reading it for the entire month of June. I had to stop around page 700 to read two other books as an intermission because, like I said, this book is just too damn long. It’s exhausting to read, especially considering the type of story.

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