 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another book review. We're in front of the Stephen King shelves, so you know what time it is. It's time for another Stephen King book review. I am going back through all of Stephen King's work, his back catalog, pretty much in chronological order. The only ones I'm reading out of chronological order is the Dark Tower series. I always keep those together. And the Shining, which we're doing today. The Shining and Dr. Sleep, I'm reading those back to back. I'm currently about 70 pages into Dr. Sleep. It's going very slowly. But we're here today to talk about a non-spoiler, so no spoilers. Spoiler-free review of the Shining. I do not have one up on the channel. I do have a Thursday theorist for it where I talk about how much I like the book, that kind of thing, and how it ties into the Dark Tower, so on and so forth. But I just got through rereading this and I wanted to do a review just for it. Next Thursday you can look for a spoiler review of the book. But this one is Stephen King's third published novel coming right after Salem's Lot. It's a book that he felt like he needed to go a bit farther on. In the forward of the book he mentions, or the introduction of the book, he mentions that there comes a time in every author's career when he has to choose whether or not he's just going to keep on doing the same old thing, or if he's going to dive deeper and he's going to dig deeper into the story, well into theme is what he's talking about. His writing didn't really change much from, I would say from actually Salem's Lot all the way to it. Everything after it was a little more, I don't know, a stripped down, a little more streamlined, it's like he got it out of his system. But this is one of those books that is very, very heavy on character development. A lot of stuff happens before any of the creepy stuff even hits the scene. And this is one of those books where I will fight tooth and nail to say Stephen King is not a horror author. Stephen King is a literary author, he writes literary fiction that just happens to have horror elements. One of the things he talks about in the forward to this book, and one of the things that Kubrick got so wrong with his film is the point of the book is how much Danny loves his father despite the fact that his father has these terrible, horrible issues. It is loving a monster is the point of this book. And I find that utterly fascinating. I love that as someone who loves to read about terrible people. I love reading about bad people doing good things. I love reading about people who, good people who love bad people, that kind of thing. That's my jam. That's what I'm here for. And this book is full of that. If you go into this book expecting the scares and the fright, you're going to get all that. But what terrifies me the most in this book is what's implied and what's not shown. If you've watched the Kubrick movie and haven't read the book, the famous room number is different. And one of the reasons why it's different is because the hotel didn't want him to use a room number that actually existed. So Kubrick changed the room number. The room number is important in the Stephen King universe, sort of, as far as the number 19 is concerned. Trying to stay away from spoilers here. But with this book, if you're going into this, are you deciding you want to read this? Do not go in expecting the horror of the movie. Do not go in expecting the themes of the movie. Do not expect really anything having to do with the movie. I get that quite a lot. I got a friend named Steph who loves, he loves the, his hairy face Steph on Instagram. He loves the movie, hates the book. And there's a lot of that out there. There's a lot of people who love the book and hate the movie. I'm one of those people. I can't stand the movie, but I don't like any Kubrick stuff. I know. Raging me down there in the doobly-doo. But the book is more about the characters. And as long as you sign up for the characters and you're there for the characters to watch how these characters evolve over time, you're going to have a good time with this book. But if you go into this, you know, 600 page novel expecting nothing but nonstop scares, you're going to have a bad time. What King does in this book is he makes things, excuse me, he makes things scary that, that don't exist. Makes things scary that do not exist. Or things that shouldn't be scary. He makes scary. There's a lot of that going on in here. And I find that fascinating. I've always been a big fan of Dread. If you watch my top five Stephen King novels of all time, those books are more along the line of either literary merit or Dread. They are books that they're not dreadful, but they're full of dread. They give you that sense that something terrible is about to happen. And that's the entirety of this book. You go through, I would say probably the first 400 pages is just a deep feeling that something is going to go terribly horribly wrong and you're on the edge of your seat and you're waiting for those things to happen. That's what this book does so well, I feel. It's not in my top five, but it is in my top 10. One of the, Jack Torrance as a character is fascinating to me. He's one of those characters that you absolutely need to have a feeling that you need to hate, but you can't fully hate. And anytime those types of characters pop up in fiction, I'm happy, I'm thrilled. On the flip side, Danny, Danny's arc is one of the more tragic in all of fiction, having to watch what happens with his father. I think that's a, I had a terrible father also, but my dad was terrible from the jump. And I can't imagine watching someone you love, watching someone you care about that you have feelings for turn into a monster. And I think that's exactly where Kubrick's film went wrong. And I think King has the same feelings about it, but I felt this way even before I heard that King didn't like the movie, because I didn't like the movie when I first saw it, when I was much, much younger, before I had even read Stephen King. The noises, if nothing else, the noises, the sound effects and everything, that annoys me. I can't watch it. It's like chewing on tinfoil kind of deal. But the main thing I want to get with the spoiler free review is that I do not suggest that anybody goes into any Stephen King book expecting horror. If you want a great story well told, that's where you're going to get your Stephen King, that's where you need to go for Stephen King. Because if you go to Stephen King expecting that all the time, you were going to be like the vast majority, I can't talk today, majority. The vast majority of Stephen King fans who are no longer Stephen King fans, or who have given up on Stephen King, those are usually the people who think that he was just a horror writer. And it's funny because those same people, they enjoy things like Shawshank Redemption or The Body or, you know, Rita Hayworth in The Shawshank Redemption or The Body, they enjoy those things or The Green Mile, yet they still get mad when Stephen King doesn't write horror, which is funny to me. So the question today, not have you read it, not will you read it, none of those things, my question is what keeps you coming back to Stephen King? What keeps you as a constant, what makes you a constant reader? If you don't know, that's what Stephen King calls his fans, constant readers, because we've been reading throughout the years with his good stuff, his bad stuff, it doesn't matter, we're there for it. So what keeps you reading Stephen King? I'd love to hear that down there in the doobly-doo. If you want to post spoilers for this book, please wait until the spoiler review. But if you have to, if you feel like it's part of the conversation for this video, please put spoiler alert for the shining or whatever book you're going to be talking about at the top of your comment. But until next time, I have been you and you. This has been another Stephen King book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!