In Which We Discuss Roadwork

See, I said I'd get through them a bit faster.

Roadwork was Stephen King's 10th published novel, in 1981.  It covers a man slowly backing himself into a corner while trying not to think about what he's doing.

I think I must have read this before, since I'm sure I read the entire volume of Bachman Books when I first got it.  And certain parts of it - Olivia mostly - rang a bell.  Other than that, it didn't particularly stand out to me.  It's short, I'll give it that - around 320 pages.  The last hundred went fastest.

Again, James Smythe offers far more insight than I can.  Apparently, the novel was King's response to watching his mother die of cancer.  He hated it at first, but has since come to consider it one of his favourite early novels.

There are also links to other novels; the Blue Ribbon Laundry, which Barton runs, shares a name with the one Carrie's mother works in, as well as the one where the Mangler came to life in Night Shift.

Next up is Cujo, the novel King doesn't remember writing because he drank his way through it.  King was drinking and doing drugs heavily in this period of his life, and an intervention was staged after the publication of Cujo.  King didn't become fully sober and straight until the late 1980s, before writing Needful Things.  We should bear this in mind through the next few novels.

While researching that, I learned that King's daughter, Naomi, is living with her same-sex partner.  Good for her!

In Which We Discuss Night Shift and the Stand

Appparently, I never wrote a post about Night Shift.  I'm sure I read it, and checking GoodReads confirms that.  I read it in August of last year.  So, my apologies for never posting.

Edit: Oh hey, I did post, I just didn't finish all the tags.  It's here.

Night Shift is a collection of short stories, some written by King in high school or college.  The collection itself was first published in 1978.  Stephen and Tabitha King had three children by now, Naomi, Joe and Owen.  The two boys grew up to be writers as I mentioned here.

Night Shift is a collection of twenty stories, including two related to 'salem's Lot, Jerusalem's Lot and Graveyard Shift. One that stands out to me is Quitters, Inc, which illustrates a rather extreme anti-smoking viewpoint.

I do like Stephen King's short stories.  This isn't one of my favourite collections, but it's worth a read, as they all are.

At the moment, I'm reading The Stand.  I'm 520 pages through, and that's not even halfway.

The Stand was originally published in 1978.  At the time, about 300 pages were cut.  Later, in 1990, it was republished with those cut sections put back in, and the setting updated to 1990.  This lead to quite a few anachronisms; the one that's stood out to me so far is mention of what I think is a record player.  I was born in 1988, but they did have CDs by then, didn't they?

I actually quite like the stand, more than I did The Shining, and a lot more than I did 'salem's Lot.  It feels like the right length for the story.  There are quite a few books of Stephen King's that feel too long - Christine, for one, and 'salem's Lot - but this isn't one of them, despite being one of the longest single books I've ever read.  The story jumps between quite a few characters, not all of whom connect, and it's sometimes difficult to remember who's who right away.  I think the length works because they're all interesting.

At this point, there are a few references to King's other novels.  There's a government agency which also appears in Firestarter, and Randell Flagg who shows up again in The Dark Tower series amongst others.  More when I've read a bit further through.

In Which We Discuss Night Shift

So, it took me a while (from August 2nd to August 26th, according to GoodReads) but I finished Stephen King's Night Shift.

It didn't take so long because I wasn't enjoying it.  It's more because it's short stories, which you can dip in and out of at will.  I read a few other things during this time purely because I could, without breaking the flow of a longer novel.

Anyway, Night Shift.  Published in 1978, it consists of short stories from early in King's career, the majority of which were published in various magazines in the years before Carrie came out.  In various introductions and interviews (don't ask me which ones) Stephen King has discussed the way in which the pressure to raise money for his family - a wife and a baby during the majority of those years, if I recall correctly.  I believe both he and Pratchett have talked about what a huge motivator it is to really need to earn money from writing.

...I started that post back in August.  Dear god, it's already January.  How did that happen?

Oh, I know.  It involved full time work, rather than being unemployed, and a couple of twelve hour shifts.  They were overtime and I got time and a half, my workplace isn't that cruel.

Stephen King's next book is The Stand, which I have on kindle.  I'll get to it at some point.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read Last Week VI

I started lots of books this week. I didn't finish many.

 A lot of the books I've been reading are short stories - Night Shift, Binocular Vision, and The Best Russian Short Stories, those first two by Stephen King and Edith Pearlman respectively.  Because they're short stories, I've not been reading them in one go; instead I've been dipping in and out at random.

I've also been reading Mansfield Park; I've never gotten along with Austen but I listened to a Freakonomics podcast a while back that theorised about her novels being an exploration of game theory in a social setting, which made me a little more interested.  Plus, Project Gutenberg is one site that's unblocked at work and that no one says a thing about me looking at during quiet times.  So I've been dipping into Flatland when Mansfield Park becomes a bit too much.

I also started reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks for a bookclub I'll be attending on Tuesday evening.  I like it so far.  It's about HeLa cells, the first immortal strain of human cells, which is still propagating in petri dishes all over the world, and the woman they came from in the first place.

Going back to what I actually did finish reading this week.  I've read The Devil Wears Prada before.  I remember Brit-picking it, and you can read that rant here.  You can also read my longer review of the book here.

I reread The Devil Wears Prada this week because I got my hands on a copy of Revenge Wears Prada and figured I should reread the original so it was fresh in my mind.  It worked pretty well.  Both were 99p on the Kindle store.

Revenge Wears Prada is in third person, which is a bit of a jump from the first person viewpoint of Devil.  Weisberger has also dropped that religion theme-naming thing she was doing.  All of the old characters pop back up, and the work is thematically similar, in that Andy is treated unfairly until she snaps and fixes her life.  I quite enjoyed it, though it wasn't anything too special.  If you liked the original book, it's probably worth a look if you have the time and 99p to spare.  There isn't really any revenge though.

I think I gave them both 3/5 stars.

In Which We Discuss The Shining and Rage

It took me quite a long time to finish The Shining. According to Goodreads, I started it on the 4th and finished it on the 28th. That's unusual for me, and not just compared to Rage, which I started on the 30th and finished earlier today, the 31st.

The Shining was Stephen King's third published novel, following Carrie and 'salem's Lot.  Rage was his fourth, though he actually started playing with the idea while still in high school.  In contrast, he began Carrie after college (uni).

I've never even seen the movie of The Shining - which, apparently, is not a very faithful adaptation anyway - so I came to it completely fresh.  I don't know why I found it so hard to get through.  It's not like I abandoned it and then came back and read it in chunks; I just read a chapter or two a night every other day.  That's very unusual for me.  During that same time period I read quite a few other books, but if I'd left one this long without finishing, I normally would have just given up.

Rage, on the other hand, I'd read before.  As I said, it was started when Stephen King was in high school, and published in 1977, three years after Carrie and the same year as The Shining.  It was published under the name Richard Bachman, and my edition of The Bachman Books has an essay on "Why I was Bachman".  Essentially, it has to do with wondering if his success was pure luck or talent, and with wanting to publish more than his publishers deemed necessary.  In the essay, Stephen King describes how The Beatles dreamt of just going for an anonymous tour as Randy and the Rockets.

"They would wear hokey capes and masks a la Count Five, he said, so no one would recognise them, and they would just have a rave-up, like in the old days.

When the interviewer suggested they would be recognised by their voices, Paul seemed at first startled...and then a bit appalled."

Later in the essay, King points out that the Beatles would have been recognised before they even opened their mouths, by George's guitar licks.  Since day one, he's been getting letters asking if he was Richard Bachman.

Since Bachman died of cancer-of-the-pseudonym in 1985, three years before I was born, I have never not known that Bachman and King were the same person.  So I can't comment on whether I would have guessed or not.

The next book on the list is Night Shift, a collection of short stories King published in a variety of magazines - including playboy - throughout the previous years. 

Some edits, while I remember;

King's goal, with The Shining was to write more than simple horror.  To have a character driven by inner demons as well as outer ones.  The film is a very unfaithful adaptation, but this does come across in the book.

Rage was withdrawn from publication following several real school shootings which made King uncomfortable with continuing to publish.  I have it in an old edition of The Bachman Books, and it seems like it's also available in the Kindle edition of that book.