 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another Stephen King review. If you're feeling confused and wondering, didn't he already review these books? No, I have not. You're probably thinking of my Thursday Theorist series where I go back and connect all of Stephen King's books to the Dark Tower and the Stephen King universe all in one go. I've done all of his books so far, except for the Dark Tower books and a couple collections. I will be restarting that series to get to finish up those last few books as soon as I am done with this series catching up on all the reviews that I have not done because I haven't reviewed the majority of them. But today we are talking about Misery. This one is a classic. One of the best books he has ever written. It is about an author named Paul Sheldon who gets in a car accident in the snow and is saved by his number one fan, Annie Wilkes, who is a disgraced nurse turned recluse and everything goes downhill very very quickly once Paul realizes that he is not only being taken care of and nursed back to health but he is also the hostage to this woman. There are some iconic scenes in here that differ greatly from the book in the movie version with Kathy Bates and I can never remember the actor's name but Kathy Bates and the guy who plays Paul in that movie she uses a sledgehammer with a piece of wood to hobble him. Hobbling is just you know breaking or removing the legs so that people cannot walk. So Paul once he is healed he isn't going to run away of his own steam he's gonna need his wheelchair or whatever. Hopefully he won't try at all that's Annie's hope but in the book it's actually an axe which I find the sledgehammer to be far more disturbing than him having his feet chopped off. That's just me though. I would love to hear what you guys think which one is more disturbing down there in the doobly-doo. I know it's you know it's more possible that you know he could he could walk again with just the breaking but I don't know why that one disturbed me so much more than the scene in the book. Now oddly enough my favorite parts of this book are the parts where he's writing the final misery novel or another misery novel that Annie's making him write because in the last book he killed off the main character Misery Chastain. I really liked reading those sections as Paul was writing. I loved all the tension and dread when he's trying to escape. This book is phenomenal. It is one of his shortest books but it has the biggest punch for the page count I feel. The only one that I would say is better than this one that is shorter is Dolores Claiborne. Maybe revival to and Pet Cemetery. But this one and Dolores Claiborne about the same length while as revival in you know Pet Cemetery are just a bit bigger. It's definitely his best short book I feel. Something under I think it's only like 300 pages. It's something under 400. Yeah it's only 309 pages in hardcover and I know revival is like 400 and Pet Cemetery is like 400 also. So I would say right around 300 it's his best book for that. Absolutely iconic. Annie Wilkes is one of the greatest villains ever. She is up there with Nurse Ratchet from One Fluid with a Cuckoo's Nest. Her backstory is great. Her and Kathy Bates in the movie I don't know if she won an Oscar. I don't even know if she was up for an Oscar but she damn well should have been you know. It is a fantastic performance and it's funny because there's one that there's a video. There's a viral video that goes around where this lady comes in screaming about how she wants Paul Sheldon's books because she's his number one fan and so many people don't know they think it's just another Karen outing you know another Karen spotting. But it's one of the funnier viral videos because nobody ever lets on that I think one or two people in the video are laughing in the background but nobody ever really lets on that is it's all a it's all a play you know it's all and I think the the woman who did it was actually doing a stage play of misery playing Annie Wilkes. I don't know but I've heard so many rumors about it I just love that video. But that just speaks to the iconic nature of this book and I say iconic a lot when I talk about Stephen King because he has changed the landscape for literature and pop culture numerous numerous times when people talk about number one fan usually they bring up Annie Wilkes and that number one fan connotation went from being a something that might have been a term of endearment to something stalkery and you know insidious and something reviled or it is just a person that is not in their right mind. So I you know you never see Stephen King fans say you know I'm his number one fan unless they're they're joking but I have had people tell me I'm your number one fan but don't worry I'm not gonna you know chop your legs off keep you locked in a locked in a basement you know things like that that's why I call so much of Stephen King's work iconic because it is like I said it's changed the landscape of pop culture numerous times but have you read Misery I would love to hear from you down there in the doobly-doo whether or not you loved it you hated it you felt mad about it but if you felt any of those things please tell me in detail why you felt that way so that we can have a discussion but until next time I have Annie you've been you this has been another Stephen King review I'll talk to you guys later bye bye