The Shining

I am glad I picked this up. The Shining is one of those stories that still holds up because it builds tension slowly and keeps you pulled in the whole time. I liked having a copy I could come back to instead of just watching or reading it once and moving on. The atmosphere is the big thing for me: quiet, unsettling, and memorable without feeling cheap. It is a classic for a reason, and it was exactly the kind of creepy, absorbing story I was in the mood for. The copy arrived fine, the cover looked good, and I had no issues with the order. If you already like Stephen King or want something that feels intense without being forgettable, this is an easy one to recommend.

I downloaded the sample of Dr. Sleep, having only watched the movie version of The Shining, and on the very first page I new I would have to go back to where the story of Danny Torrence started if I was going to read Dr. Sleep. Many people say "the book was so much better" and that line can be no truer for The Shining. Immediately, the characters elicit strong emotions from the reader. Jack Torrence, both protagonist and antagonist, compells the reader to feel sympathetic for his plight. As a "dry drunk" who has fallen on hard times after a short bit of success as a writer, he is desperate to straighten out his life for his family and feels that his last chance to do so is to take the caretaker job at the Overlook Hotel during the winter season. The reader can relate to this desire to provide for one's family. Jack's indecision - to stay at the Hotel and guarantee financial support or to leave the Hotel for the safety of his son - is very palpable. Jack's desire to be a good father plucks at the reader's heartstrings. Wendy, Jack's wife, was not as likeable as her husband, in my opinion. She is very timid, having suffered her mother's psychological and mental abuse for years. It's obvious that she has traded her mother's abuse for Jack's quick temper and (at times) violent outbursts. She is only strong enough to stand up to Jack when their son's safety is concerned. Any other time, she dances around the issues that have plagued her marriage and is outright skittish whenever Jack's mood sours. I felt that her inability to stand up for herself made her unlikeable. Danny, the five-year-old boy of the Torrence clan, was by far the most interesting character. He is very gifted with psychic abilities such as telepathy, empathy, precognition, and mediumship. As a child, he has very little understanding of these abilities and of the adult subject matter that he is inadvertently subjected to due to his abilities. This struggle is captured very well as it is described through his young and innocent point of view. The reader feels afraid for him as his abilities draw the attention of the malevolent spirits dwelling in the Overlook Hotel. King does an amazing job bringing his characters to life. The reader is captivated by the Torrence family chemistry via an in-depth look into their histories, their lifes' experiences, and their struggles. These elements become crucial to the events that transpire inside the Overlook Hotel and they become fuel for the spirits that are preying upon the Torrence family, thus entwining events of the past with those of the present. As always, Kind does an excellent job with description. Not only can the reader visualize the Hotel's various locations (the lobby, kitchen, different floors, the basement, the outdoors) but he also does an amazing job capturing the emotions and thoughts of the main characters. The reader knows what the characters are experiencing, knows what they are feeling, knows what they are hoping to accomplish. The story moves along at a very steady pace. Told through a limited third person point of view, the present is interspersed with tidbits from each characters' pasts that bring relevancy to the current situation. As tension between family members rise and as the danger of the hotel becomes more evident, the pace steadily grows faster and faster, making it very difficult to put the book down. The Shining was a very enjoyable book, full of human emotion and supernatural phenomena. With characters that are compelling and well-rounded and a story that captivates, this is a book that I highly recommend.

The Shining is the second book by Stephen King I’ve read, the first being IT, which gave quite a lot to live up to. I quickly realized that IT was a beast of its own, and not to judge the Shining too closely to IT. The Shining gives me the vibes of a cozy horror, something to curl up with in front of a fire, in a warm blanket, reading wide eyed as your home melts away and you find yourself standing in front of the Overlook hotel. As always, Stephen King is a master of description, sometimes in eye-rolling ways but often in profound, wonderful ways. When I started this novel, I turned to my best friend and said, “Do you know that feeling when you’ve been reading subpar novels for awhile, and then you open a book by a master and it just feels like you’re sinking into the professional quality?” That was how this felt. I’ve reviewed a number of less than great books lately, and I knew that if I read The Shining, it would live up to Mr. King’s standard. I knew very early on that I was in for a good read- and I wasn’t disappointed. That said, it had enough flaws to bump down its score. Let me start with those. This novel is a descent into madness, and I realize that it has to be written a certain way to portray that. Yet… There were many points in this book where the way the characters acted was confusing and out of place. Mostly outbursts that didn’t make sense to me as a reader, despite Jack’s temper. The personalities of the characters, however, read clearly and with a ton of charm- which is why I struggled a lot, particularly with earlier scenes, with them having sudden moments out of character beyond belief. I also need to note Stephen King’s usual anti-charm of using sexual description as an element of horror, something that was memorable, but often unnecessary. I found that pieces of the story felt a little bit muddled, or maybe just too obscure for my tastes. At times, it felt like something more was missing, and just didn’t quite touch a 5 star review for me, as IT had. However, this book was a more than average read for me- enjoyable to the end, fast paced enough for my standards. I loved the personalities of Dick Halloran and Jack Torrance, the friendship between Dick and Danny, the way King showcased that Danny loved his dad dearly, the brief hints of jealousy from his mother. I loved the little details of the family dynamics, and the history of the Overlook hotel. This book is well worth reading- and I would say that even people who don’t typically read horror might end up enjoying this. It actually didn’t give me a strong horror vibe. Is cozy horror a thing? And as a final note: The movie did this book dirty. Watch the movie first, or as a totally separate entity- do not connect it to this book, you will end up disappointed in the movie like I did. It’s truly not in line with the tone of the book.

I loved this book when it first came out, and am delighted to say that it is even better after many decades of personal experience lend a different kind of filter to the process. This story is not the Stanley Kubrick movie script. In many respects, I think it is far better (though who could forget the iconic moments in the movie?). Still, read it. If you've read it before, read it again. It took me 2 months to read it this time, but it was worth every moment. Stephen King is simply the best! A+++ BRAVISSIMO!!!

Strong character development and arch’s. Vivid descriptions. Delightfully creepy premise. Classically, much better than the movie (although the movie will always be a classic in its own right). Perfect ending.

Reading the original novel is an entirely different experience. King's version focuses heavily on love, tragedy, and inner turmoil rather than just madness. Highly recommended for anyone looking for a masterfully paced horror novel!

Sometimes you'll read a book by a popular author and wonder what all the fuss is about, but occasionally you'll come across a work that proves that this writer is - or at least can be - the real deal. I do like this book better than the movie, and while the movie is praised for all the subtle subliminal touches kubrick supposedly added, I think the book is more subtle than the movie. For example, rather than the famous river of blood from the elevator seen in the movie, the book has the elevator filled with something less stereotypically horror but more effective due to the build-up. Even the mantra "Redrum" feels like less of a gimmick in the book because of the stronger focus on Jack Torrance's alcoholism. On the website "cinemassacre" the review of kubrick's "the shining" makes fun of the way it "tries to scare you over nothing" with a loud noise occurring when the word "tuesday" is shown. "Oh no, not tuesday!" jokes the reviewer James Rolfe. However in the book simple chapter titles like "snow" or "tony" do have a big emotional impact because of the places they appear and all the implication king has carefully laden those simple words with by that point in the story. The story is not without flaw, and King doesn't always know when to be subtle and when to be brutally explicit, a problem reminiscent of the roque mallet that features so prominently in the story with one end rubber and the other end hard. King's trademark habit of rambling in brackets to remind us of something else that is scary and related to the currently scary thing happening sometimes feels like the prose equivalent of pounding music in a movie to remind us that a certain scene is supposed to inspire terror when the absence of such cues would probably make it more scary as they would make me feel I'm facing the terrifying thing on my own without the narrator to hold my hand and tell me what I should feel about it. Another slightly distracting feature of King's prose in "The Shining" is that while his writing is frequently beautiful you can tell that he had the thesaurus handy, and it even invades the dialog with Jack Torrance using the word "dray" when being playful with his wife and son. Even with a character who is supposed to be a writer this somehow strained credibility for me. And one of the strongest aspects of the novel for me in the middle weakened the conclusion in my opinion - the scariness of not knowing how much of Jack's transformation to evil murderous maniac is because of the hotel and how much is caused by his own inner demons seems completely obliterated by the way his behavior is handled towards the end of the book. King says in "On Writing" that the scariest villains are those with believable motivations that you can almost relate to and it's quite creepy the way Jack's inner rationalisations which eventually lead him to violence almost seem reasonable, and how the same character we might have seen as sympathetic at the start doesn't seem to have had to change all that much to become the bad guy. But by the end he's painted as a decent guy possessed by a demonic hotel and you almost get the sense that the ending was written before the earlier sections detailing Jack's thoughts as he loses his way. But while flawed this is still a horror novel you need to read, and also a painful mediation on how some of the very things that make a man needed by his family - focus on career, discipline, determination and single-mindedness - can backfire and tear a family apart.

I finally tackled this book! And it was really good. I have never seen the movie but I still thought that I knew what to expect when I started this one but it was a bit different. There is a ton of hype surrounding this book and I fully expected this book to become an all-time favorite. It didn’t quite make that list for me but it was still a great read. After losing his teaching job, Jack accepts a position as the winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. Jack, his wife, Wendy, and their son, Danny will spend the winter alone at the hotel. Jack thinks that this will be the perfect opportunity for his family and hopes to finally finish the manuscript he has been working on. Jack’s 5-year-old son, Danny, seems to know things because of his special gift. He can sense that some bad things have happened in this historic hotel. This story felt ominous from the start. The more I learned about the hotel the more certain that I was that I would not want to visit. Whatever you do – stay out of room 217! Jack had his share of problems before taking on the job at the hotel and after a short period of time, he spirals into periods of madness and violence. Danny was really the star of this novel though. Being at the hotel was hard on this gifted boy who could see things others couldn’t but he proved to be incredibly brave. I really appreciated his connection with the former cook at the hotel, Mr. Halloran, quite a bit. I thought that Campbell Scott did a great job with the narration. I believe that this was the first time that I have listened to his work and I was rather impressed. I thought that he did a great job with the cast of characters in this story which included not only an adult male and female but also a child. I thought that he brought a lot of excitement to his reading and found myself wanting to listen for hours at a time. I would recommend this book to others. I thought that it was a very enjoyable story and I am thrilled that I am finally able to say that I have read it. My only complaint is that the story did feel overly long at times and bogged down a bit in some sections but overall it was a great reading experience.

Excellent book, I recommend it even more than the movie itself, which I love!

Powerful story

* This review is of the edition, not the story of the novel It is a relatively nice paperback, I really like the cover and the pages are really white. The book is weirdly narrow for its height, it's almost as if it had been chopped to small by in production but the text looks fine inside. It does however make it slightly uncomfortable to read, especially since the font size is rather small. The pages are a really nice, bright white and the font easy to read. The spine is somewhat durable, it not break or crease when I read it.

I HIGHY RECOMMEND YOU THIS BOOK. I ALSO PERFER IT THAN THE MOVIE OF IT. BUT I CANT DEFINE WHICH IS BETTER. I THINK IT IS UP TO YOU THAT DECIDE WHICH IS BETTER AFTER YOU READ IT

A psychological thriller like no other, King manages to really elaborate such a well developed story in which every character adds something of value that everyone should read this book at least once. The premise is quite simple, a 5 year old with the "shining" goes with his parents to an hotel during the winter because his father is going to work there as a janitor. The simplicity, however, ends there, and the evolution and development the characters go through reflect the quality and power of King's writing skills. Please, read this book already, you will not regret it.