Carrie

This was my first Stephen King book. I asked some folks who'd reads his stuff for recommendations, but the ones they gave me were all 500+ pages (like The Stand), and I'm not a good enough reader for that. I get frustrated if I go so many pages and haven't finished yet, and I get distracted and forget to read at all sometimes. So I picked out this one because it's shorter, and it was on display at the store a few months ago.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about it. I think I should like it more than I do - it has a lot of themes I enjoy. I loved the writing style - I really like that, when you know X thing is going to happen later, intermixing bits of what's going on afterward (the book exerpts of The Incident, etc) while you wait to get to the thing.

There were a number of little things that bothered me; The gym teacher says a really strange line at one point, insinuating that women go "feral" when they see another woman on her period?? The only thing I can think of was that, the girls' actions were brought on by Carrie's powers as an unconscious side effect, but this statement by the gym teacher is so bizaare. This is also the first author I've read who actually does the thing where they over-describe womens' breasts, so I guess I'm lucky in that regard - but it's extra strange in that they're teens.

The big problem for me, though, was that Carrie herself was probably too relatable for me. So her whole story is a bummer.

Anyway, I get that this is an older work, so I'm not going to judge certain things too harshly. But it's awkward - it's a story I feel like I should enjoy more, but overall, it kind of just made me sad.