stephen king c/d?

I'm still aghast that that stupid committe would try to remove the book from the LIBRARY. Assholes.

Kinda surprised it's in a HS library at all, tbh.

Really? All the Stephen Kings were in my high school library.

I guess I really can't generalize HS library standards based on my own HS library. I had to smuggle all of my King in.

Although I guess I did the bulk of my King reading in late elementary through jr. high. Pretty sure administrators would frown on a 7th-grader reading Rage in the back of the classroom in this day and age.

my first SK was Skeleton Crew, I think I was 11 when I read it, so 7th grade. The library teacher was like, 'make sure your parents know you're reading this' and tried to convince me to read something else, bless his heart.

Eventually he stopped raising his eyebrow at me, lol

wait 12 not 11

P.S. I am now two weeks and change into (re-)reading King's stuff from the beginning. I'm about 20% of the way through The Stand (complete and uncut) now. And my interest isn't flagging at all. Yet. Brief notes:

Carrie was pretty faithfully adapted until the end of the book, when things went a little more bugshit. 'Salem's Lot might be my new go-to recommendation for newbies. Nicely creepy and interestingly-paced (the 'v' word isn't mentioned until halfway through). I'd never read The Shining before and was kinda surprised at how different it is from the film. I mean, they're the same basic story in broad strokes, but the novel is more about the trauma of externalized psychological damage. It's probably okay that King has let Rage go out of print. It's actually not all that good. Night Shift, still as great as ever. Surprising to realize what a debt King owes to Lovecraft (now that I've read Lovecraft). I appreciated some of the more subdued stories much more than I did as a kid (and realize now just how much of King's stuff went completely over my head at the time).

Night Shift is the bomb. That has the one with the guy's dad who's the beer-slug-thing in the basement, right? Grey Matter?

I love Salem's Lot. Also Dead Zone was another favorite upon rereading later in life.

Yeah, "Grey Matter"! I really think I must've re-read Night Shift ten times or more over the years because most of those stories seem permanently lodged in my memory. This is at least the 3rd time I've read The Stand.

I'm looking forward to The Dead Zone. It was the first one I read (in fifth grade) and I haven't read it since.

Just recently found this (from when I was prolly in like 6th grade and drawing comics of pretty much everything):

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8326/8095308885_93139cd1d1_c.jpg

awesome

that is sssssoooooooooo great!

I love it!

The Mangler! Yes!

Omg

omg my 12-year-old self is so feeling that drawing right now

At least six of those doodles made into movies.

Also featured in the same notebook: a much less faithful It illustration, a poem entitled 'What Is Peace?', a comic adaptation of the first five minutes of UHF, several drawings of In Living Color sketches, and the lyrics to half of the songs on the Sir Mix-A-Lot album Swass.

oh man, if you have a "men on film" comic, plz share

I'm actually 99% sure that I do (I drew a lot of one-panel gags based on In Living Color and SNL and Kids In The Hall sketches, for some reason)! I just have no idea where it would be, unfortch.

But if I ever find it, I'll try to remember to post it in the 'stephen king c/d?' thread.

I just finished Night Shift; my favorites by a long shot were "Quitters Inc" and "The Last Rung of the Ladder". I am not surprised that a 6th grader would not find them interesting enough to draw.

Yeah, "Last Rung" and "Woman In The Room" resonated much more strongly this time 'round than they did when I was all "wtf this boring crap isn't horror" and hadn't had any first-hand experience with death & decline in the family. I also found "I Know What You Need" much creepier (like PUA taken to its logical and mildly supernatural extreme).

Starting to encounter the pointless ca. 1990 references in the uncut Stand (e.g. Freddy Krueger and Spuds MacKenzie). It's mildly irksome now that it was pointed out itt.

Well, then.

Stephen King is coming back to broadcast TV. CBS is giving the author’s Under the Dome a 13-episode series order.
Based on King’s bestselling novel, Under the Dome is the story of a small New England town that’s suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome. The town’s residents need to survive the deteriorating post-apocalyptic conditions while searching for answers to what this barrier is, where it came from, and how to make it go away.

“This is a great novel coming to the television screen with outstanding auspices and in-season production values to create a summer programming event,” said Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment. “We’re excited to transport audiences Under the Dome and into the extraordinary world that Stephen King has imagined.”

The series version was originally developed at Showtime. But in an unusual move, the ambitious project jumped from a cable network’s slate to the major broadcaster (more on that below). It’s also a rather unique title for CBS, since the network has been traditionally more wary about betting on serialized dramas than its rivals. But with AMC’s The Walking Dead and NBC’s Revolution, apocalyptic serialized dramas have been delivering large numbers lately.

Fans of the novel shouldn’t expect an exact retelling of the same story. Last we heard, writer Brian K. Vaughan’s (Lost) script for Dome was wisely using the novel’s setup as a launch pad for its own TV-format-friendly version of the story and might even lay the groundwork for a different outcome than the novel’s ending. Also, the CBS version is definitely a series, not a mini-series, with a season finale episode that will leave the story open for more seasons.

Dome‘s development is an example of synergy at work. The project was developed at Showtime, owned by CBS Corp., but the network’s president David Nevins decided it wasn’t really right for the cable channel. He recommended it to Tassler, who was looking for summer programming and loved the concept. Also, Dome is based on the novel published by Simon & Schuster, which is a CBS company too. The development swap is a reverse of what happened with The Tudors, which was shepherded at CBS before moving to Showtime.

Under the Dome will air this summer. CBS Television Studios will produce the series in association with Amblin Television. There’s no cast in place yet, but Neal Baer, Stephen King, Justin Falvey, Darryl Frank, Stacey Snider will serve as executive producers along with Vaughan.

bryan k. vaughan! that makes a lot of sense, actually

well, cool! for now. I'll be interested to see how this develops.

My only off-the-bat concern is that, in the book, the eventual lack of air due to the dome was a real concern for the town and the characters. If they're making this more open-ended, it'll have to be addressed. I don't want it to be dumb like "Revolution" is.

i hope they write a better ending

http://friday87central.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/tommy_westphall.jpg

already 100% better

A+

http://i2.listal.com/image/2382413/500full.jpg

100 kowtows to phil D

“This is an existing human novel coming to the television screen with outstanding auspices and in-season production values to create a summer programming event, bleep blorp,” said Nina Tassler, Robot President of CBS Entertainment. “We are programmed to figuratively transport audiences 'Under the Dome' and into the illogical but potentially lucrative world that human author Stephen King has 'imagined' in a way that is similar to the way my kind approximates colloquial human language, bloop bloop.”

wait there's another dark tower novel now?

Based in part on praise found in this thread, I've been reading 11/22/63. I mentioned it to my dad, because I had enjoyed what I'd read so far, but he sort of shrugged and dismissed Stephen King as an anti Semite. It seemed unlikely, so I didn't really think anything of it, but lo and behold, in the book I kept coming across characters who said racist or anti Semitic things. Never the protagonist, but plenty of other characters, usually just dropped in for local color, so to speak. I did some googling, and apparently this is a thing, lots of explicitly racist or anti Semitic characters in Stephen King's books. Not sure what to make of it, and I'm sure Stephen King's unenlightened New England upbringing may have something to do with it, but as someone who has never so much as written or said the N word once, it's odd that it crops up again and again in several of Kings novels. Anyone else notice this?

I know reading King in junior high expanded my knowledge of curses and slurs about a thousandfold. Pretty sure this sort of dialog is something he's well-known for. Bear in mind that most of his racist or bigoted characters are usually also stupid and evil.

I've noticed that too, josh. I think he thinks that's how salt of the earth types talk. Maybe the salt of his earth does, who knows. But it's bothered me.

Long time King-reading Jew here, more sensitive to anti-Semitism than most, have never for one second in the course of reading dozens of books entertained the thought that SK has a problem with Jews

the girl who hated kevin youkilis

Go read a few James Ellroy novels for comparison's sake.

yeah ellroy's racial politics are, as nabisco might have said, "very very interesting indeed"

otm

lol @ al re youklis :)

But racial politics, of the time or otherwise, is actually an aspect of a lot of Ellroy books, no? In King's books it's always just the creepy guy at the gas station or the dude at the bar who casually busts out with the anti Semitic slur or racist joke. Which is not unimaginable, but it happens a lot in his books. I don't think Stephen King is a racist or anti Semitic,but he is quite fond of capturing the vernacular of those who are, typically to serve no larger point.

Long time King-reading Jew here, more sensitive to anti-Semitism than most, have never for one second in the course of reading dozens of books entertained the thought that SK has a problem with Jews

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Sunday, January 20, 2013 10:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

In King's books it's always just the creepy guy at the gas station or the dude at the bar who casually busts out with the anti Semitic slur or racist joke. Which is not unimaginable, but it happens a lot in his books. I don't think Stephen King is a racist or anti Semitic,but he is quite fond of capturing the vernacular of those who are, typically to serve no larger point.

I think with respect to casual racism in previous eras, it isn't King that's adding it in, it's most other writers leaving it out.

I just read IT, the main non-supernatural antagonists were all belligerent racists/sexists/homophobes/anti-semites and encounters with them forced the protagonists together.

Then again of those protagonists the white men who were fat, stuttered, and wore glasses as kids - all ostensibly changeable qualities - were ultimately the most heroic ones.

goddamn him for vilifying racists and glorifying fat stutterers