Tag: Steven King

October 31, 2023 – Reigning Horror King

October 31, 2023 /

Before there was binge watching TV shows, there was binge reading of authors. I guess that was always something that I have done. My earliest reading accomplishment was finishing the Hardy Boys series. In middle school, the author Dean Koontz came into fashion.

At one point, I had read every book that he had published. That count was fifty some odd books. When you read these serial authors, I find that the books are pretty easy, quick reads. Another author I have read a lot is James Patterson. An average is 300 – 400 pages and these are things that can be read in hours. I could often finish a book in an out and back plane ride (hence why I read so many).

I wouldn’t say that the books are formulaic exactly, it is just that the story line is simple. There isn’t a lot of thinking that is required to follow along. Reading those kind of stories is pleasurable but it starts to lose it zeal if that is all you ever do. Then you start to look around for what can last longer, has more pages or is more complicated. This leads to other authors.

Authors like Koontz and Patterson I would say write in the thriller genre. Thrillers involve action like murder and then all of a sudden murder kind of borders on horror. So what is the difference? In a lot of ways, not much. I would say the primary difference involves supernatural or urban legend aspects aside from just a lot of crime (and blood).

In my opinion, the king (sic) of horror today is Steven King. King’s career started in horror that lead into a more diverse body of work. I started to read King as a supplement to the quick reads of Koontz. One of the first books that I read was “It” and I did so because it was over 1000 pages.

The first published work from King was Carrie. But the 1970s and 1980s was a solid string of novels that really hit the bestsellers list: “Salem’s Lot, Pet Cemetery, Cujo, The Dead Zone, Christine” and probably his biggest hit “The Shining”. He also wrote and directed his own movie called “Maximum Overdrive” featuring a soundtrack exclusively from AC/DC, now that is cool.

I realize that King has ventured out of the horror genre exclusively and into his seventies now, his work is evolving. Yes, he is still putting out fiction but the burning drive has quelled somewhat. That being said, he is still active and has created a number persistent pop culture classics. I think that you would be hard pressed to meet someone older than 30 that doesn’t know “The Shining”.

I think that King has mastered creepy. Most of what he does is not gore like slasher films. This makes his movies a good choice to watch as a family for Halloween. We watched the movie “Misery” a couple months back and this is another good choice. There have been so many books adapted to movies, including non-horror movies like “Stand By Me” and “Shawshank Redemption”. For his classy and proliferation of content as well as versatility I have nominated him Today’s Horror King.

End Your Programming Routine: My favorite book from Steven King is actually “The Stand”. If you haven’t read it, this is a dystopian story more along the lines of “The Walking Dead”. Admittedly while that book makes my recommended reading list, horror is not really my favorite genre and by proxy, I do not really relish most of King’s work. I simply respect the quality and the uniqueness.

June 20, 2022 – The Rain In Spain

June 20, 2022 /

The first time I ever heard this phrase was in Steven King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger. If I remember correctly, the main character Roland recites these words as a poem.

“The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
There is joy and also pain
but the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
Pretty-plain, loony-sane
The ways of the world all will change and all the ways remain the same
but if you’re mad or only sane
the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
We walk in love but fly in chains
And the planes in Spain fall mainly in the rain.”

I didn’t know the origins of the lyrics, I think I read the book in middle school or high school. I thought it was unique to the book when one day I heard my grandfather utter the phrase. We were working on a rental house and it started raining and then he said, “The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain”.

I never asked him, but I am pretty sure he was not a reader of Steven King. He read a lot of other things like National Geographic, the newspaper, the Bible, the Catechisms, Reader’s Digest, etc. It made me think that there was another source. But, this was the time that was pre-internet so research was not so easy to do. I kind of forgot about it until I was think about our trip to Spain.

It turns out, it was referenced in the 1938 film Pygmalian and subsequently published in 1956 for My Fair Lady. I am no old movie/musical/theater buff. So, I haven’t seen either but I am sure that is where he picked it up. This would have been in the early 1990s.

From my research, it appears that King changed the words so I guess if you get past the first stanza, you wouldn’t recognize it. To me, it sounded kind of like gibberish in the first place. It’s probably a book that I could re-read and get more out of it. I don’t remember a lot of it anyway. But reading the plot summary again, it said that King re-wrote it in 2003 because he thought it was difficult to understand and follow. I kind of agree and I think that is why I don’t remember much of it.

There was a movie made in 2017. From that plot summary, it was a combination of two books (in the five book series). So, the phrase was not in the original play, but in the subsequent movie, then changed by King in his books which have movies combining books together. No wonder I don’t know what is going on.

End Your Programming Routine: Coming from very temperate Oregon, we have not had any rain in Spain. It got up to near 90 at the end of April but we have been seeing highs in the low sixties lately. It is nice to get a taste of summer on our vacation.