Tag: Stephen King

October Book Bucket List: The Shining by Stephen King

Posted on by kaitsbookshelf in Fiction

Kait's Bookshelf The Shining

“Does the phrase ‘the shining’ mean anything to you?” – Stephen King’s The Shining

In the spirit of October, Halloween, and all things scary, I decided it was a good time to read my second Stephen King novel, The Shining. This might surprise some of you, but I’ve never seen the movie version. I have seen clips of it over the years and can easily recognize Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance. I’ve been curious about the story for a long time but just recently added it to my TBR pile when I made it part of my 2018 book bucket list lineup. I read my first Stephen King book last year and decided October would be a good time to pick up another one.

I wanted something scary for Halloween…boy did I get my wish!

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Friday Firsts: My First Scary Read

Posted on by kaitsbookshelf in Books and Life, Friday Firsts

scary-reads.jpgWith the nights turning cool and the stores busting out the fall decorations, I thought it was a good time for a post about scary stories. Not only am I way overdue for a Friday Firsts post, but the scary season is almost upon us!

I have loved books from a young age. There were always books in our home growing up. We had story books and early readers, chapter books, teen books, and young adult books. I remember Frog and Toad, Nancy Drew, and The Babysitter’s Club. My mother loved to read and passed this trait down to me. She was always reading when I was growing up. Of course, her books were much thicker and much scarier looking. My mom is a huge fan of Stephen King. For a while there she had read everything he’d ever written, and perhaps that’s true today, though I think she has a little catching up to do. 😉

I wasn’t a fan of being scared when I was younger. Some kids love monster stories and creepy movies and look forward to Halloween because it’s a time to get scared. Not me. I didn’t like monsters or ghosts or creepy things. I remember a couple of creepy movies we watched as kids, but they were Disney movies, not Stephen King. I remember hearing titles like Misery and Thinner and wondering why in the world my mom would want to read something so scary. They must be good, I reasoned, if she kept reading them. I started thinking that maybe I wanted to try to read a scary book. Enter Mr. R.L. Stine.

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Book Review: Revival by Stephen King

Posted on by kaitsbookshelf in Fiction

RevivalI recently took to social media to ask my fellow book lovers which of Stephen King’s many novels they would recommend for my very first Stephen King read. I got a lot of responses and many of them were similar. Many people suggested I go with his earlier works, and titles like The Shining, Carrie, and Christine came up multiple times. Some suggested I just close my eyes and grab one off the shelf because I couldn’t go wrong that way.

It is interesting to me that it has taken me thirty-five years to read Stephen King, one of the best-selling authors in the world. To be honest, I think the movie versions of his films are what kept me at bay for so long. I don’t like scary movies and I remember films like It and Carrie scaring me as a child and I thought, “No way would I ever read this book!” So I guess you could say that up until now, I’ve been too chicken to read his work.

For my introductory novel, I chose one of his recent releases, Revival. It was recommended to me by a few people and many were describing it as similar to his earlier work. I was assured by a friend that it wasn’t scary – creepy for sure and disturbing at times – but not scary. I decided it was a good place to start and started Revival on what turned out to be a very dark and stormy week in the northeast…how appropriate!
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