I enjoyed Duma Key a whole bunch also, it’s probably my favorite book of his in twenty years.
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon was 1999.
Right - I had to look it up on wikipedia and the pop-up book(!!) rerelease confused me.
and now a possible sequel to The Shining
How Danny deals with both his nightmarish experiences and the clairvoyance, or “shining”, which saved him, might make “a damn fine sequel”, King said, according to local Toronto news website the Torontoist. His vision of the book – tentatively called Doctor Sleep - sees Danny now aged 40, working at a hospice for the terminally ill in upstate New York. He is apparently an orderly at the hospice, but his real work is to help make death a little easier for the dying patients with his psychic powers – while making a little money on the side by betting on the horses.
Didn’t he already do this with Black House?
I’ve only read the first 20 pages today but it seemed very good.
It’s actually written with a big font and it starts with very brief sections jumping from a POV to another. It has a really good structure, shaping things up in an handful of page and triggering curiosity about the characters and what it is going to happen.
I can’t ask anything more from the first pages than being well written and make me want to read more.
Duma Keys had a great premise, but in the end I hated it. It didn’t really deliver for me. I’ll be reading some (mini-) reviews before I spend money on this book.
Consider I haven’t read anything of King since IT. So I have no idea how it could compare to his other works.
I’m at page 230 and overall is still great.
There are a coupe of unsurprising situations and characters, but the structure is still awesome and the book is compulsively readable. Short chapters, tension when needed, humor when you less expect it. There’s always one mystery or three behind the corner that keeps you turning the pages.
The fact that the book is so focused in one place helps a lot.
Stephen King just sent me a personal email about the new Dark Tower 4.5 book (qt3 discussed it somewhere earlier in this thread) due out in the future:
Blegh. Huzzah. I guess this means The Shining sequel lost the online poll.
On the other hand, the book that’s actually written sounds a little bit different for a change. Something about the Kennedy assassination. I’m a little bit afraid to read it - if King goes all Oliver Stone with a straight face I may lose all respect for the man.
Just got a shipping notification from Amazon. Looks like my harcover for Stephen King’s new book, 11/22/63 (JFK assassination alternate reality tale) will arrive in a couple days on the 8th, the day of release. I pre-ordered it six or seven months ago, and pretty much forgot about it until I received this email. This should give me a break from video games for a few days and make for a good read just before Skyrim hits.
I’m hoping it turns out better than Under the Dome, and I’d be thrilled if I have even close to as much fun with it as I did reading Duma Key.
Anybody else picking this up? The hardcover is currently $18ish on amazon (compared to the suggested retail of $35). The Kindle version is $17. I’m not paying that for a Kindle book, so hardcover it is.
The Amazon synopsis gives a little more away than I cared to read, so I won’t paste it here. As far as I can tell this should be a mix of classic King, and probably some heavy doses of politico King. Hopefully he doesn’t go full on hippy.
I’m looking forward too it, though I’m not getting it right away myself either. It should really be a good read, he’s been on more than off these last few years, in my opinion.
You’re right about that. In the years immediately following his accident, most of his work (aside from a few key short stories and a couple novellas) just weren’t working for me. Cell was probably the best among his novels during this period, for what it was. It seemed to me to be a more action oriented version of The Stand, with zombies, and without all religious pretense, as far as I could tell. All it needed was an ending, but I wouldn’t call it one of his greats. Cell felt like the first half of what should have been a longer novel.
Duma Key was the huge turning point for my tastes, and it’s my favorite full on novel of his since the early 90s – and I do consider it as close to one of his greats as he could get, without teleporting thirty years back in time in order to publish it back then, so it could achieve classic status.
I couldn’t stand Cell, but enjoyed Duma Key a lot. Under the Dome was ok, but needed an editor and a lighter weight paper (that was the book that made me decide to get a kindle, after traveling with the hardcover).
Duma Key was pretty good in terms of getting back to the older King feel. Under the Dome was almost a full return, minus, as said, the need for an editor. But that is nothing new with him, really. But it seemed like his voice came back with that one. I really feel that Full Dark, No Stars has been his best work in years. It wasn’t all 100% (I am not sure he ever will be again) but it was pretty close for me.
This is coming from a Mainer who has spent most of his life reading King’s stuff, and I suppose it means more to me because of that.
I hated Buick 8, and thought Cell was meh. It’s almost seemed to me, that after his accident for a bit, someone else was writing his books. His unique voice just seemed to disappear. Here’s hoping for good stuff with the new JFK book.
I’ve purged Buick 8 from my memory banks. Having a thinny in the trunk of a car sounds cool and all, but SK forgot to include the cool.
The Cell started with some cool apocalyptic tension and then just moved to a boring road book that was anticlimactic. I read nearly all pre-wreck King, but then a couple of post and disappointment with Song of Susannah has left me with a hole in my soul where King once resided.
My backlog of books grows by the week and I am hesitant to add Under the Dome or Duma Key, but I think I should.
I haven’t read anything since Cell, and I read Cell something like five years after it came out, and I didn’t finish it, because I skipped to the end, read the last three pages, and knew everything that happened between where I was and where it ended up. I’ve bought everything, and it’s on the shelf, but I just ain’t have the time to read no more ya’ll. I can barely squeeze in weekly comics and a Dresden Files every year at this point.
That said, the new book actually sounds interesting to me, and it’s been a while since I was legitimately interested in the premise of a King book. I mean, I still won’t read it when it shows up because I’ve got Batman and Dark Souls and Skyrim coming and television is in semi-swing and come February it’ll be all the way up to speed…
Under the Dome was truly execrable. It takes a lot for me to not finish a book, but King’s true horror was writing that piece of shit. So for even $9, the new book better get some damn good reviews before I pick it up.