The Shining

This is not so much a review, but reminiscing about how this was the absolute first novel I ever read that wasn't for school back in grade 8 in the early nineties. A friend lent it to me, a book that belonged to her mother who was a teacher and thus began a lifetime of reading all of his works. On the cusp of becoming a teenager, I clearly remember reading it in my closet inside my sleeping bag with a little lamp and munching on sunflower seeds, scared of leaving the security of the closet. I would end up sleeping in it until the morning. My bedroom was in a windowless basement of an old house. It got suffocatingly dark in that basement and I liked it in my closet!

My friend lent me more of her mother's Stephen King novels and that became a ritual, reading Stephen King in my closet with a lamp and sunflower seeds. It annoyed my mother, for some reason, that I wasn't sleeping in my bed.

This is a must-read classic ghost story, the best of its kind. I reread it a few years ago because I had planned to read the sequel, Doctor Sleep, and it was just as good outside of the closet! ;)

This is my first horror book (Completely horror) and I loved it.
This book gave me chills.

Stephen King is freaking fantastic.

The movie scared me more than the book.

This book is the reason why King is considered one of the best horror/thriller writers out there. Unfortunately since I had seen the movie, the finale of the book wasn't so thrilling as I'd like it to be. Even despite the fact that the movie changed quite a few things.
However, the first half of the book was amazing. I've never read something so good and at the same time feared it as much. I suppose that's a very personal thing, though. Danny and I had similar parents... As a whole it's a damn good book and it was hard to stop reading it. It's a modern classic and every fan of horrors should read it.

absolutely phenomenal. My favourite Stephen King book yet!
I can't wait to re-read this in the future!

Most people have heard of The Shining. If you haven't heard of the book, you've heard of (or seen) the film with Jack Nicholson and Shelly Long.

For years I've shied away from Stephen King. Some people would call his work twisted, or insane. Others would call him brilliant. I figured it was time to decide for myself.

First off, Stephen King's writing is not for everyone. I had previously read Under the Dome and parts of A Bizarre of Bad Dreams, so I had a general idea of his style. It is generally blunt and bold. For example: instead of quickly saying there is a dead body in the tub, Mr. King goes into detail about the bloated body. I will admit, it was disturbing, but the novel itself is meant to be disturbing! A great horror novel walks the line between the real and the uncomfortable. The success or failure depending on timing within the novel.

The Shining walks that line perfectly. It plays on the familiarity of a hotel and hope for something better, while playing on the fears of ghosts, isolation and possession. It is an uncomfortable read that I couldn't put down. I don't often re-read novels, but this is one I would certainly revisit when I'm in need of a good fright.

I finally sat down and took the time to read this and I thoroughly enjoyed it from beginning to end. This book is a classic for a reason. The Shining keeps you on your toes every page and I found it really hard to put down (even at 2 AM)

FALSE

Meh. 66% of this book is really good, but the last 33% is awful. Throw in 1% of the usual and random Stephen King shenanigans and you end up with a book that's entire passable, largely enjoyable, occasionally a lot of fun, and dreadful to experience.

Overall, I had a good time, but probably won't read it again.

Whenever I read a Stephen King book I am almost already enthralled by it, and I try to look at what makes it so compelling. Is it the prose? It's usually solid enough, but there aren't any specific passages or turns of phrase that jump to mind. Is it the characters? Again, solid. Serviceable. They are sympathetic or despicable or whatever else they need to be and often pretty archetypical, they serve the story well. Is it the plot/ideas? This is probably a bit stronger than the other areas as his books generally have pretty interesting premises, but I'd argue that is mostly his later books that have the more clear elevator pitch high concept plots.

So then I think what really works for me is the pacing and execution. The tension builds and the story unfolds with nary a wasted scene. Information is doled out to the reader and held back in equal measure to keep the pages turning. It's just really fun to read (or in my case, listen to, as I think his style is perfect for audiobooks).

It's hard not to think about this book outside the context of the movie. Reading it, I pictured the hotel from the movie, but I didn't really picture the characters the same way. I remember reading that King was upset with Kubrick's take on The Shining, and one of the reasons is that from frame one Jack Nicholson looks mentally unhinged. I thought that was fine in the movie, but having read the book I totally understand. Jack Torrance in the book is sympathetic, he's had some struggles and is trying to piece his life back together and be a better person. As we spend more time with him we realize that maybe he is an unreliable narrator and maybe his motives aren't as clear as he would like us to think they are, but perhaps he's still a redeemable hero? Anyways, the character is much more complex in the book than in the movie certainly, so the book feels familiar but fresh at the same time. I'm glad I read it!

A final note: King's weird adolescent obsession with sex so strangely stands out to me in this book and others of his. He'll just describe things in a suggestive way or have explicit sexual references as kind of window dressing that feels so out of place. I'll give him a little bit of credit and say it does add to the unsettling feeling of a lot of his stories, but I think that's a bit of a stretch in a lot of cases.

I almost fell asleep

This is the first Stephen King novel that I've read and I found a little hard to adapt to his writing style but none the less I loved this book.

It sent shivers down my spine - so much so that I couldn't find the courage to read it at night. I really felt the pain and fear that these characters were going through. I would definitely recommend it to anyone, especially anyone who has seen the movie because the movie has nothing on this novel.

There is absolutely no way that this is Joey's favourite book.

Great read, and drastically different tone and ending than the movie. Might read the sequel one day, but i don't mind leaving the story where it is for now.

This is the second time I've read it. I wanted to get it fresh in my head before reading the sequel, Doctor Sleep. Still Love it. So much better than either of the movie attempts.

More traditional than the movie, but very good in its own right.

Could not put it down. The most engaging, terrifying novel I've read so far.

I looked at that old 3-star rating and wondered how I could have given this such a low one, especially after Pet Sematary (another 3-starrer) blew me away after a reread (review on my blog). Some great characterization, backstory and atmospheric thrills, but it kind of wore me down in the end, when I just didn't care anymore. More thoughts on my blog.

To be honest this book didn't produce the effect in me it could have if I had read it a decade or two earlier.
Also I don't understand horror in written form. The only horrifying thing I read here was, the lead's fingers scraping the wallpaper peeling off tiny bits of it. (That and stubbing little toe will be always horrifying depicted in any form - picture or prose)
I loved Jack Torrance. I loved how messed up he was. On edge. Ready to explode any time. I'm tired of perfect characters who act appropriately all the time. Unreasonable flawed idiots give stories many dimensions, making the reader jump sides throughout the novel.

I love established fantasy and realism, but I hate everything in between. So naturally, I hated the villain in the Shining for not setting down the rules. It's not fun when anything can happen.

As always, King is indeed a masterful storyteller. This is only my second book by him but I was really impressed by how intimately he could go into the psyche of a particular human topic. In this book, it's really all about the vicious cycle of intergenerational abuse and trauma. Yes, there're all the supernatural elements of this book that makes it creepy, but I think the ghosts are almost a sort of extension of the metaphor here, a way for King to explore how easily people can lose control.

I love how King drops crumbs but they all tie together into a motif that then feeds into the larger theme that he wants to explore. In this one, perhaps the most prominent one is the phrase: “Come and get your medicine.” Danny hears this as part of his visions from early in the book, but we don't know what that even means. Later, it's dropped casually and almost nonchalantly when we finally hear about the incident behind Jack's dismissal from his teaching position, where he assaults a student. He says, “If that's how you want it, just come here and take your medicine” to him before going into a trance-like rage. Even further still, we see in one of Jack's own flashbacks into his childhood, where we hear his abusive dad say the same phrase before he physically assaults his mom. So in all of this, we don't know what Danny is hearing - is he hearing his father say it in the memory about his student? Is he hearing his grandfather say it in his father's childhood memories? Or is he hearing a vision from the future where his own father would say the same to him? It all feeds into this feeling of tension and suspense that just builds and builds until the climax of the book.

Then there's also the theme mentioned about the cycle of intergenerational abuse. Jack's father was an abusive alcoholic, so Jack is now an abusive alcoholic. Jack is haunted, but more so than the ghosts of Overlook, it's this sinking feeling of being pursued by the metaphorical ghost of his father - he wants to exorcise it, but he feels himself uncontrollably falling under its influence, which i think King illustrates by having Jack also literally be falling under some kind of evil influence at the Overlook itself that makes him inexplicably act out against his wife and son. it was particularly sad when Wendy immediately attributes Danny's bruises to Jack. on one hand, we "know" that Danny apparently got attacked by the drowned ghost in Room 217 and Wendy was jumping to the wrong conclusion, but on the other hand - do we really know that though? Wouldn't it make perfect sense that Jack had lost himself again in another trance of rage and had harmed Danny, and Danny's supernatural experiences had been a child's reimagining of abuse at the hands of a beloved parent? Everything was just all so complex and multi-layered and I loved it. It's not just a simple story of humans being scared and pursued by ghosts, but that the ghosts are really manifestations (“real” or otherwise) of the spiraling traumas that haunt the humans.

I thoroughly enjoyed Jack as a character, in particular. He wasn't likeable by any means and I was annoyed and repulsed by him for most of the book, but he was incredibly complex and gray. It definitely kept me thinking about the question of culpability. We could blame Jack's childhood, his dad, his alcoholism, or an active malicious influence like the Overlook, but idk how far is a person not responsible for their actions? it's an uphill battle for sure to break free of the vicious cycle of generational abuse (physical and substance) and trauma, but does that remove or lessen culpability from Jack and the actions he has taken/will choose to take? I have a hard time saying an absolute yes to that. compassion for someone in Jack's position does not mean I should condone their actions or say they shouldn't face the consequences of them.

But ultimately, the ending still made me feel things. The bit where Danny stands up so bravely to the thing possessing Jack was just so weirdly uplifting, and then when Jack came back to his senses even just for a few moments and told Danny to run away, I almost cried. It was indescribably moving.

Overall 4.5/5. Really enjoyed this one.

Classic for a reason. Fast paced, and genius.

Wasn't a huge fan of Stephen's writing at first (as with every new author you read), but as the book progressed, plot became way too intense, with cliffhangers on every chapter ends.

Could not keep the book down for the last few chapters.
Since there's a movie based on this book of the same name, it helped in visualizing the hotel, its halls, Danny, Jack and Wendy.

I don't recommend reading this book at night, unless you like nightmares, of course.

Totally understand why King hated the film now. Honestly, half agree with him? Most of the book, I like better narratively, but I think the film ending is much better.

The Shining is not a scary book but more of a psychological horror, which really got under my skin in a way no other book has. Having watched the film I was expecting pretty much that but what I got was a lot more depth about the Father/Son relationship and the devastating inner battle between the Fathers light and dark side. I now understand why King wasn't a fan of the movie as it barely scratches the surface of what King pinned the whole book on and what seemed to be a deeply personal journey.

P.s: I will never trust topiary again!

Me: I don't like scary things.
Also me: I should read The Shining.

Was so different from the movie, but I think I prefer the movie better. This book and the changing dialogue/imagined Jack situations confused me. I liked the different additions of the topiaries and the wasp nest.