Kevin's Watch

welp, here we are again at a new SK book.

i popped this into my kindle on the 9th and finished it last night.

for me it was a kind of...meh read. very predictable king. not an unforseen conclusion. nothing really stand out in the novel. typical king characters but none that really hook you and pull you in. and in true king style there are long long descriptive passages in which you feel like a little editing might have moved the pace along a bit! lol!!

it's a story that once again explores king's nostalgic fascination with the time period of his early adolecence (1958-1963) but doesn't do as good a job with that as some of his other works.
certainly his descriptions of that period are good but they just don't have the emotional hook that he achieved in stories like The Body or It even.

i might add that he doesn't pretend to solve the mystery of the infamous crime committed on that auspicious date but rather explores the emotions of the protagonist who is attempting to change the outcome of the act.

of his work published since the end of DT i'd say Lisey's Story and Duma Key were the best of the lot. this was not as boring to me as the likes of Cell or Under the Dome but no where near as good as Duma Key or Lisey's Story.

I liked Cell, but not Lisey's Story. Still haven't read Duma Key.

Suspect I'll not read much by him anymore unless it's a new DT story. And that's just because Roland rocks.

--A

still will read it as i love sk's voice..

I couldn't get 20 pages into Lisey's Story, really enjoyed Cell even though it's awfully derivative, loved Duma Key.

the only one i haven't been able to finish was Black House. i tried for months before I gave up. and I really wanted to try Straub's Ghost Story - now I am not so sure...

i had put down Gerald's Game when i first tried, came back to it much later and read it all the way through...

oh...one little teeny spoiler for those of you who are gonna read this,

guess which godawful damned town our hero drives through on his way to dallas? and if you guessed

Spoiler

Derry, Maine

you'd be right! now think about the time period and calculate who our hero might run into while he's there!

that's all the clues you get. heh.

sgt.null wrote:the only one i haven't been able to finish was Black House. i tried for months before I gave up. and I really wanted to try Straub's Ghost Story - now I am not so sure...

i had put down Gerald's Game when i first tried, came back to it much later and read it all the way through...

Gerald's Game sucked, and did most of his work around that time (Rose Madder was another awful one).

cail this is hilarious! all the ones i like you don't and all the ones you like i don't!

lucimay wrote: cail this is hilarious! all the ones i like you don't and all the ones you like i don't!

You didn't like Duma Key, The Stand, It, Salem's Lot, Firestarter, or The Shining?

I'm with Cail on Rose Madder. At the time I thought it was the worst King book I'd read. Cell was....ok, but after reading it I haven't bothered to read any more of his post DT stuff. Sounds like Duma Key might be worth a look, though, as most people seem to like it?

Cail wrote:

lucimay wrote: cail this is hilarious! all the ones i like you don't and all the ones you like i don't!

You didn't like Duma Key, The Stand, It, Salem's Lot, Firestarter, or The Shining?

no no...i like all of those. i just thought cell and under the dome sucked and you thought gerald's game and rose madder sucked. i thought it was funny.
he's written too many books for us NOT to have any ones in common that we both like.

actually, i just finished reading firestarter again. i found a mint condition, and i do mean mint, first edition at the goodwill a couple weeks ago. it was even vac packed in cello!! i hadn't actually reread it since it first came out!

oddly, both The Shinning and Salem's Lot i've only read twice each (compared to the millions of times i've read It and The Stand) because those are the two that creep me out the most.

Yeah, I think I only read Rose Madder once. And GG has never been one of my favourites, although the tie-in to Dolores Claibourne was odd.

--A

I loved Dolores Clairbourne, but I always forget about it for some reason. It's like the least played album by my favourite band or something, the one that gets pulled out an appreciated all the more cause I haven't heard it in ages.

Cambo wrote:I loved Dolores Clairbourne, but I always forget about it for some reason. It's like the least played album by my favourite band or something, the one that gets pulled out an appreciated all the more cause I haven't heard it in ages.

yea i loved Dolores Claiborn as a book and i really liked the movie too. one of the better SK adaptations to film. great cast.

Judy Parfitt was particularly good as Vera Donovan

Seem to remember not liking the movie much. But I did like the way he wrote it. The style I mean. Unusual.

--A

Avatar wrote:Seem to remember not liking the movie much. But I did like the way he wrote it. The style I mean. Unusual.

--A

wellllllll...it was woman stuff, Av. the relationship betwix and between all the wimmens. dolores and vera, dolores and selena...and that's why the connection with dolores and jesse burlingame, the sexual abuse at the hands of the fathers (jesse and selena)...so yeah...they're not really "guy" stories.
thats not to say that guys wouldn't like em, but i can see why some guys might not...relate to them in the same way women would.

The Contrarian is back....

I'm halfway through this, and completely enjoying it.

Haha, I thought you were talking about LuciMay for a second, and that she was the one who'd revived the thread.

I like the book. As I may have said earlier, I love how, in the present, you only "hear" her, and not what anybody says to her.

It was how the movie preserved that, (as I recall) that I did like about it.

--A

Well I liked it. There were a couple of those magical moments (which King excels at) in which you're completely "in" the story and experiencing what the characters experience.

But it's also a fascinating period piece and historical narrative. The amount of research that went into this book must have been staggering.

The ending wasn't what I expected....It wasn't the cruel twist that marked a lot of his earlier work, nor was it horribly saccharine. King's got an iffy track record with endings, and this one is satisfactory, if not brilliant.

But it was a good read. Not the knockout that Duma Key was, and not the rote exercise that Cell or Under the Dome were.

I liked Cell more than Duma Key, I must say. Not that I didn't enjoy it, (and the GF loved it), but it didn't blow me away.

What it did do though was hearken back to an earlier King. It felt like he wrote it back around Tommyknockers, although it was a lot better than that travesty.

--A