Stephen King returns to the characters and territory of one of his most popular novels ever, The Shining, in this instantly riveting novel about the now middle-aged Dan Torrance (the boy protagonist of The Shining) and the very special 12-year-old girl he must save from a tribe of murderous paranormals.

On highways across America, a tribe of people called The True Knot travel in search of sustenance. They look harmless - mostly old, lots of polyester, and married to their RVs. But as Dan Torrance knows, and spunky 12-year-old Abra Stone learns, The True Knot are quasi-immortal, living off the "steam" that children with the "shining" produce when they are slowly tortured to death.

Haunted by the inhabitants of the Overlook Hotel where he spent one horrific childhood year, Dan has been drifting for decades, desperate to shed his father's legacy of despair, alcoholism, and violence. Finally, he settles in a New Hampshire town, an AA community that sustains him, and a job at a nursing home where his remnant "shining" power provides the crucial final comfort to the dying. Aided by a prescient cat, he becomes "Doctor Sleep."

Then Dan meets the evanescent Abra Stone, and it is her spectacular gift, the brightest shining ever seen, that reignites Dan's own demons and summons him to a battle for Abra's soul and survival. This is an epic war between good and evil, a gory, glorious story that will thrill the millions of hyper-devoted fans of The Shining and wildly satisfy anyone new to the territory of this icon in the King canon.

It has been way to long since I read a Stephen King book, so I was way overdue.  I loved the Shining and figured I dive back into the world of King with this sequel to The Shining. To read this book, you don’t need to read The shining but some basic knowledge doesn’t hurt of the previous book.

In this book we meet Danny again but he now is grown –up and of course goes by Dan.

Early on it is clear that the Overlook Hotel left some scars with him and he still has the shining as well. But he has not dealt with it very well and fallen down the path of an alcoholic.  He arrives in a small town (King and small towns…..lol ) and life is starting to look better once he meets people and he gets a job and makes friends.  He also is been told that life will come to a full circle and so it really all begins………

We meet Abra as soon as she is born and it is very clear that she is a very special little girl, but in the beginning we have no clue how truly special she is and how it will all tie together.  

It took me a couple chapters to get into it but once there and was  a nice flow and the writing was great. It was very fast paced but and followed multiple characters but yet was easy to follow.

It was not really as scary as The Shining, it was more creepy and gave me goosebumps more than once but not really scary. The main bad guy or guys in this case was also a bit of a letdown I thought. Not scary and overall I was kind of bored with The True Knot thing after a while. In the beginning I was confused over them, then we knew more and it was sort of interesting but after a while it just got too long for me with the True Knot group.

I really enjoyed Dan and Abra, both were great , even funny at times. I loved the bond they shared. Abra had spunk and I wouldn’t have minded fast forward to when she is an adult but I have a feeling that in one way or another it just comes back to a full circle.

The end was pretty good and almost peaceful, which I enjoyed.

Overall I thought it was a great book and I'm glad that I read it, while not as scary as some of his books, this is still an awesome book and I recommend it to any Stephen King fan.

 

I rate it 4 ★

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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This will be a combination "Notes on Adaptation" column and review of Hemingway's novel "To Have and Have Not." 

 

Generally, I prefer a book to its movie adaptation. The reading experience is richer, deeper, and more personal than the viewing. Many films have credible adaptations; a smaller percentage are outstanding. The film version of Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not" is that rarest of things - the adaptation that is much, much better than its book. 

 

The film is good. It's become part of film history and lore for being the place where Bogart met Bacall. She utters the famous line asking if "Steve" knows how to whistle. She smolders; he burns. It's all very delicious. The plot is "Casablanca" - lite. Just enough plausible intrigue to hold together an hour and a half of work by a good cast.

 

In addition to Bogart and Bacall, Walter Brennan plays a comic turn as a drunkard deckhand, and Hoagy Carmichael basically plays himself - a working musician. William Faulkner - yes THE William Faulkner - is one of the credited screenwriters. 

 

But aside from the opening sequence when the American fisherman, Johnson, has his last day of bad luck on the boat captained by Bogart's "Harry Morgan" character, the film resembles the book in almost no other way. And that's its saving grace. 

 

The book is set in the waters and taverns between Key West and Cuba in the 1930s at the height of the Great Depression. Its Harry Morgan is a fisherman turned rum-runner turned human smuggler on a bad luck streak. The film is set in the French Caribbean in 1940 and involves a reluctant Morgan smuggling Free French resistance fighters under the nose of the Vichy authorities (basically French Nazis). 

 

The book, I'm sure, attracts most of its readers on Hemingway's reputation. And maybe I give it an extra star or half-star for that, too. But it's utter garbage, Hemingway or not. It's a racist, misogynist text. Badly edited, for a Scribner's book, full of misspellings and bad capitalizations and other errors. Cheap comedy is played at the wrong time. The book undergoes jarring point-of-view shifts, and in the final third of the novel, a whole bunch of confusing characters who have pretty much nothing to do with anything are introduced and carry what little story there is to the end. 

 

What could have been a story of pathos of men living on the edge during the Depression is just an ugly mess. If you must read it, imagine all of Morgan's sections in Bogart's accent. It helps. A little. 

 

If you want to tell me what you think, just whistle. "You know how to whistle, don't you?" (That's not in the book at all.)

 

-cg

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To Have and Have Not has a reputation as Hemingway's worst book, and it is the worst of his books that I have read.  The book is experimental.  At first it is influenced by noir writing such as Hammett and Chandler.  Later it moves out of telling a narrative and starts telling the stories of multiple people whose lives intersect more or less.  There are occasional moments of the Hemingway magic, but bits of it fall flat and it doesn't work together that well as a whole.

That being said, the fact that Hemingway was still willing to experiment is admirable and Hemingway at his worst is still well worth reading and better than most stuff.  It's not the place to start with Hemingway, but if you like really like Hemingway, its worth your time, but don't get your expectations too high.

Not bad but disappointing considering the reputation that Hemingway commands. The characters all seemed excessively one dimensional. While I understand the desire to avoid detours into internal thought, these characters appeared to have no internal thoughts at all. The protagonist felt like nothing more than a spoiled, self-centered brat. He does almost nothing for others and lives off of the debt his family agrees to accept on his behalf. The main love interest would be considered mentally ill by most people as she makes an almost instantaneous connection to the protagonist and has no volition or thoughts of her own. The clipped and repetitive conversations grew dull and irritating quickly. All of that said, books 3 and 4 were worth the read gave a an interesting, though exceptionally vague and cursory, view of a normal soldier in World War I. All in all, this book could have been substantially better than it was, but it was far from the worst book I've read.