by Stephen King

After watching and enjoying the movie made from this book many times, I had to read the source material. The story wasn't actually changed much for the film version apart from details about character's thoughts always being easier to convey in books.

I enjoyed the read a lot, but have one complaint. He kept giving spoilers for the upcoming chapters! It's something I haven't seen King do in any of his other books that I've read. He would finish a chapter with "and then X happened." All suspense was deflated, even though I knew what was coming because of seeing the movie.

Still, this is one of those not-Horror stories with supernatural overtones that King does so well. The story of John Coffey and his special ability to 'help' people is a King classic with good reason and translated to film well.

The last few chapters diverged a little more from the movie and went into more detail about what happened to various characters and that was interesting, although one issue was left unresolved unless I missed a detail.

As King books go, I think it's one of his best despite the spoilers along the way. I'm kind of glad I saw the movie first on this occasion though. I don't think the eerie supernatural scenes were depicted as intensely as I know King can do, or maybe I'm just spoiled because the movie did it so well.

Hmmm, are we talking "series" as in "including trilogies and quartets" here, or does it have to be more than that number?  Also, what about works that were intended as one (very long) book but are traditionally broken up into several parts that are published separately (like Tolkien's Lord of the Rings) and books originally published in several self-contained parts but now frequently combined into one omnibus volume (like Stephen King's Green Mile)?

Anyway, starting with the beasts that nobody can legitimately dispute are series and moving on from there, based on the assumption that it's "yes" to all of the above:

MULTI-BOOK SERIES ( >5 INDIVIDUAL ENTRIES)
Terry Pratchett: Discworld
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter
C.S. Lewis: The Chronicles of Narnia
Sheri S. Tepper: The True Game (all nine books, including the Mavin Manyshaped trilogy and the Jinian / End of the Game trilogy)

TRILOGIES / QUARTETS / MULTI-PART OMNIBUS VOLUMES
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings
T.H. White: The Once and Future King
Tad Williams: Memory, Sorrow and Thorn
Mary Stewart: Merlin Trilogy
Stephen King: The Green Mile

JUMPED THE SHARK
Anne Rice: The Vampire Chronicles

Unsurprisingly, almost all of my favorite supernaturally-tinged series are fantasy -- and I read both Green Mile and the Vampire Chronicles for pretty much everything but their horror contents.  That said, Rice jumped the shark for me when she insisted on using Lestat (of all characters) as a vehicle for exploring her rapidly altering expressions of faith ... shortly before going BBA and thus earning herself a place on my no-go list once and for all.  I still like the first books in the series, though, especially the first two.