Listen up all you literary snobs out there...

Here is where I confess something. This is something I have been rather bashful about in the past. Something the "smart reader" in me would never want to admit. Something no one who reads a lot would probably admit. Something that someone who wants you to know they are "a reader" wouldn't admit. I just decided I don't care...I'm coming out there...I'm gonna say it...are you ready?

I LIKE STEPHEN KING BOOKS

It seems silly right that I would be wary to admit that? I think a lot of people who would be considered "readers" would say that they are not big Stephen King fans. I would say that almost all of those same people would be people that have only seen made for TV movies based on Stephen King books. That most of these people have never read a Stephen King book. I would wager to bet that a lot of these people also would rave about movies like "The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Hearts in Atlantis, Stand By Me" and don't realize they are based on Stephen King books. He doesn't just write horror and science fiction...although he does do that really well.

The other day we were at the thrift store thumbing through children's books for Olivia (*sidenote I only buy childrens books these days from the thrift store, they have so many and they are usually in good shape and they are sooooooo cheap!). Anyways I don't really ever check out the other books because they tend to be a bunch of crap. But I saw a big hardbound Stephen King book, Nightmares and Dreamscapes. Huh for $2.00 I'll buy it. It's Halloween time and since my love of horror movies tended to be thrown out the window because Mitchell hates them and it's no fun to watch them alone, I can still read horror, right? I open up the book and start reading the prologue. And once again I am hit by how clever and funny Stephen King really is, how much he seems so relatable. This is what the first page of the prologue says;

"When I was a kid I believed everything I was told, everything I read and every dispatch sent out by my own overheated imagination. This made for more than a few sleepless nights, but it also filled the world I lived in with colors and textures I would not have traded for a lifetime of restful nights. I knew even then, you see, that there were people in the world-too many of them, actually-whose imaginative senses were either numb or completely deadened, and who lived in a mental state akin to colorblindness. I always felt sorry for them, never dreaming (at least then) that many of these unimaginative types either pitied me or held me in contempt, not just because I suffered from any number of irrational fears but because I was deeply and unreservedly credulous on almost every subject. "There's a boy," some of them must have thought (I know my mother did), "who will buy the Brooklyn Bridge not just once but over and over again all his life." There was some truth to that then, I suppose, and if I am to be honest, I suppose there's some truth to it now. My wife still delights in telling people that her husband cast his first presidential ballot, at the tender age of 21, for Richard Nixon. "Nixon said he had a plan to get us out of Vietnam," she says, usually with a gleeful gleam in her eye, "and Steve believed him!". That's right; Steve believed him. Nor is that all Steve has believed during the often -eccentric course of his forty-five years."

He writes scary stories because he is like a big kid and I like that! Sure he shows up now and then in his miniseries movies and he looks like a total whackjob...like who would be suprised this guy write horror so well, look at him! But he is really such a good writer and he can make fun of himself. Now I am not saying all his books are good because I have not read them all and I have also read some real crap (Bag of Bones was terrible!!!!). But there is a reason he is so terribly successful and there is a reason they are always making his books into movies or miniseries...even though the miniseries that follow the book almost exactly tend to not be very good and ooze cheese. You will never be able to be frightened as much by images in a movie as you can be by words on the page. Your imagination and interpretation of what's happening in your minds eye as you read along will win hands down every time! Case in point... Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining", was basically the same idea as the book and it says that it's based on the book in the opening credits. While the idea is the same, Kubrick changed things, added things, took out things and the movie was really good and really scary. Stephen King, bless his heart, made his own movie out of "The Shining" and it was...well...cheesy and not that great and much too long. Or did you see Dreamcatchers? The Mist? Those movies were not great...but the books, I read them both...were very scary.

Anyways I was first introduced to Stephen King as a small child. There was a miniseries on TV based on one of his books...IT.
My older brother and older cousins all watched it one Thanksgiving up in our playroom, while us younger kids were banned from the room. I remember my Mom saying it was too scary for me to watch...which if you know me at all, forbidding me from doing something or watching something is just going to make me all the more curious about it. The playroom at my parents house is upstairs and while the older kids watched the movie us younger kids kept sneaking up the stairs and peering through the cracked door to catch glimpses here and there of this "too scary movie". That movie was scary!!!!!! I don't think I even saw that much of it at the time but those images of that killer clown are burned forever in my memory! I remember my brother and cousinst talking about it the next day..."Oh of course it's scary it's a Stephen King"...whatever that meant to me at the time. This Stephen King must be scary, was the name of the clown Stephen King I remember wondering. I did end up seeing the whole movie sometime much later and it still scared the crap out of me. And I somewhere along the road figured out that Stephen King wrote books, scary books...but I didn't really enjoy reading until after High School...when I would be met with Stephen King yet again.

I was working at Sam's Club and I had been lucky enough to land the ideal cashier spot...the Tobacco Cage. Which is exactly how it sounds...it's like a big cage full of cigarettes and chewing tobacco. This was an ideal spot because it wasn't all that busy and you got to know the vendors really well and it was out of the way so no one really was keeping tabs on you. Anyways one day someone checked out at "the cage" and they decided against buying a book. Thus leaving the book with me as a go-back. Now what book could that be? It was Stephen King's "The Shining". I was so bored down there that I flipped the book over and read the back. I had not ever seen the Kubrick movie but knew it played often on AMC during the month of October. It seemed like something to pass the time so I started to read the book. Stephen King is really good at the hook. I mean even in the books that I have read that were not very good he is ALWAYS good at drawing you in at the start. This is something rather important in a book...otherwise why keep reading? Anyways I had read something like 80 pages by the time I went to my lunch break and I was hooked. I took the book home that night, do I admit that I didn't pay for it, whoops! Well I brought it back and didn't keep it, so it was more like borrowing than stealing...right? Whatever! That book is so damn scary you wouldn't believe me without reading it yourself. That book is what sparked in me a love of reading as an adult. That book, ohhhhh I can't even tell you is horrifying! I had never been drawn into reading the way I was when I read that book. Reading was always homework, always something to suffer through for a good grade's sake.

After reading "The Shining" I began to read and read and read. I love reading as an adult and it's thanks to good ole' Stephen. Anyone reading this blog who likes to be scared, who likes a good horror movie or story....you need to read "The Shining". There is an episode of Friends about this book. Where Rachel finds a copy of "The Shining" in Joey's freezer and he tells her that's where he puts the book when it gets too scary. It really is awesome and way better than the Kubrick movie.

Anyways I have read a number of his books and for some reason I like to keep most of the books I have read...but I feel somewhat embarassed to have the King books out in public in my house. Like someone would see Stephen King on my book shelf and completely write me off as a "real reader". Oh she just reads for the pure entertainment quality...she doesn't read things that make her think, or ponder or inspire. "Stephen King is only in it for the money...he wants to make money", they might think. "Here is Emily part of the sheep buying his books". This is stupid I realize...but I don't think anyone out there would doubt that this is a reality of judgement when it comes to what kinds of books you want people to know you read or have read. Stephen King isn't Faulkner or Bukowski or Capote or Steinbeck. But that is what I like about him...he never claimed to be. If being successful in life has anything to do with being really good at what you do...Stephen King is good at what he does. He is known to be a science fiction and horror writer. And his books will scare the bejeezus out of you. The man can tell a good ghost story.

So since it's Halloween time and I know I like a good scare; here are some good book by King to read if you can get part the book snob in yourself

The Shining

Salem's Lot

IT

Needful Things

Pet Sematary

The Stand

The Mist

Dreamcatcher


Happy Halloween!!!!!