 October is coming up next week which means it's time for horror month. I'm starting a week early because I've got a lot to cover. And this is an obvious one it's Stephen King's Carrie. It was his first novel which I did not know. The 32nd description of this book is, well, if you're not familiar with the story of Carrie, I don't know where you've been for the last 40 years, it's as familiar as the plot of Halloween or Friday the 13th. It's about a sad, homely, unpopular high school girl who is ostracized by the other students and raised in terrifying isolation by a crazy religious mother. The school bullies play some really horrible tricks on her and it turns out Carrie has psychic powers and she takes revenge. It's the Stephen King story. I listened to the audiobook while I was driving earlier this month and when I first started listening to it I tweeted that it was surprisingly good and as usual that's always a mistake. I mean for me to broadcast that a book is good before I finished it. But I'll get to that in a minute. I was surprised at the way the story was told. It was journalistic. It was presented as a collection of newspaper clippings and transcripts from government inquiries and excerpts from books written about the horrible high school massacre after the fact and between all of that was the typical third person prose. And like I said when it started out it was it was good. It was really engaging and I really wish that I didn't know what was going to happen that I wasn't familiar with the movie. But what can you do? I mean and King's description of Carrie was so different from Sissy Spacic in the movie that I wasn't picturing Sissy Spacic as I was listening to the book. Sissy Spacic was the reader of this audiobook by the way which I thought was a great idea. Another thing that I really liked was Stephen King himself recorded a lengthy introduction to the book. Man that guy has an unfortunate voice but it's certainly distinctive anyway. He explained that the character of Carrie was basically a combination of two girls that he actually knew when he was in school and it was a really sad story that he told. But back to the audiobook. This was a collection of CDs and the climactic massacre scene started near the middle of disc four and I was thinking okay the books almost over already but then I remembered that there are seven discs and I'm thinking is this going to be stretched out for three more discs after this? How is he going to do that? Sure enough the book went on for three more hours. Three solid hours and that's where the book turned bad which was really unfortunate because it had such a strong beginning. Anyway that's my first book for Horror Month 2016. Before you move on go on over to my 50th Street account and take a look at the interview I did with the Atlanta Radio Theatre Company. They specialize in classic science fiction adaptations. I think you'll enjoy it. Please remember to press that like button. It helps my videos get seen and then subscribe so you can come back next time. I do science fiction book TV and movie reviews all the time and please consider becoming a patron. There's a link in the description below. When you pledge at the $20 level I will send you a random science fiction book in the mail every month.