Mr. King, You Never Cease to Amaze

Recently I have read three Stephen King books: Cell, Lisey's Story, and Gerald's Game (in that order.)

Cell (2006)- Sucked. Seriously. Stephen, Stephen, Stephen, what were you thinking?? Any shmuck could have written this. The basis is that someone hacked into the cell phone signals and turned everyone into killer zombies (or whatever.) How many times do we have to hear the same story about new technologies killing us? Wow. Hacked into the cell phones, huh? Wow, so original. Guess who survives? The people without cell phones. Maybe our writer is fearful and maybe a bit jaded about technology passing him by in his advanced age?

Okay, enough of that. I love Stephen King. I didn't hurt your feelings, did I Mr. King? Whatever. Write me into one of your books.

(I'm not sure where this hostility is coming from. I was just really disappointed with this book.)

Lisey's Story (2006)- This book is signed. Yup, it's okay to be jealous. My sis lives in Bangor where apparently Stephen King went into the mall and signed a bunch of books randomly in Waldenbooks. She snagged one for me. Hooray for randomness.

Anyways, the book. Half of it was really good and half of it was shit. The main story line is about a writer's widow (why do writers always write about writers? Painters do not paint painters and singers do not sing about singing) who has not gone through his things and some academics think there might be a great unpublished book somewhere. This psycho tells her that if she does not give the stuff over then he will do terrible things to her. She tells the cops initially, but then when it comes down to it, she doesn't get them involved, she takes care of business herself.

What?? For God's sake, woman, tell the nice police officer who is carrying a gun. Seriously, they are trained for this shit. I really couldn't get past this.

But the other half of the book is about the writer's crazy other world that he can go to and heal himself. There is this cool lake that people stare at and end up catatonic. There is this scary beast in the woods. The fruit is poisonous. His father and brother end up going crazy and he has to kill them. Awesome! This is classic King lit. Weird, supernatural, and freaking cool. We could have done without the psycho harassing the widow.

Gerald's Game (1992)- Proof that his earlier stuff is way better. Basically, Gerald is bored so he experiments with some bondage with his wife. Jessie is handcuffed to the bed when Gerald has a heart attack and dies. (Did anyone see the title character dying in the first 50 pages?? I didn't.) She has to find a way out of the handcuffs before she dies of thirst. She's got all these issues (doesn't everyone?) and thinks she sees someone/thing in the room.

Normally King books are not scary. Weird, yes, scary, no. I finished this book late last night and was scared shitless. I couldn't sleep. I kept freaking myself out. I slept with the light on all night. So awesome! This book was great. The whole thing. One of my favorites, I think. It is no It, but it ranks right up there.