King Arthur Movie Tristan

title: Pet Sematary

author: Stephen King

genre: horror

pages: 559

published: 1983

rated: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

"Sometimes dead is better...."



When the Creeds move into a beautiful old house in rural Maine, it all seems too good to be true: physician father, beautiful wife, charming little daughter, adorable infant son -- and now an idyllic home. As a family, they've got it all...right down to the friendly cat.


But the nearby woods hide a blood-chilling truth -- more terrifying than death itself...and hideously more powerful.

While reading the introduction of this edition of Pet Sematary I learned two frightening facts. One being that author Stephen King thinks that this is the scariest book he has ever written. And secondly, this book was inspired by true events. So just reading the introduction creeped me out a bit even before I read the story. Apparently when King first moved with his family to a rented house in Maine, they lived right off a busy road where his daughters cat was hit and killed by a truck. And she did cry out 'Let God have his own cat!', which is a line that made it into the book. The cat was buried in a pet cemetery not too far from the house. He also says that after writing Pet Sematary, he put the manuscript away in a drawer because he felt he'd finally crossed the line. He was scared by what he had written.





The Creed family makes a move from Chicago to Ludlow, Maine. Louis, his wife Rachel, their 5 year old daughter Ellie and 2 year old son Gage, along with the family cat, Winston Churchill, move into a nice house, right along a dangerous road where trucks tend to fly by at high speed. Just up the road, conveniently, is a pet cemetery. Louis is a doctor and his new position running the University of Maine's infirmary is the reason for his family's recent move.




Louis and his elderly neighbor Jud Crandall become instant friends.
Jud takes the Creed family on a little outing one day, to the woods behind their home. He shows the family the pet cemetery which was created over the years by children who wanted to bury pets that had been killed on the busy road.






Just beyond the cemetery is something else, further into the woods, an ancient Indian burial ground. There are large tree limbs, thorny vines and poison ivy blocking the entrance way.



There's all kinds of unsavory rumors, mostly known by the older residents of the small town, about the old Micmac Indian burial ground. Rumor has it, whatever you bury up there, returns.








Disaster strikes the Creed family and Gage is hit and killed by one of these huge tanker trucks on the road. A grief stricken and half mad Louis does the unkthinkable, he buries his toddler in the Indian burial ground, wanting to bring his son back from the dead.





I wanted to get into a really good old fashioned King read, and this book was it. I was scared silly while reading. As usual when I'm reading a scary S.K. novel, he has me so drawn into the story that I don't realize how creeped out I am until later on when I won't want to go into my basement to do laundry alone. Without a doubt, I can say that this is the scariest book I have ever read.



Pet Sematary is definitely a disturbing read, not for the faint of heart. I had a hard time getting through the description of Gage's death as well as Louis' grave robbing.



The one part of the story that was really creepy was Rachel's deceased sister Zelda. After suffering a long time with Spinal Meningitis, Zelda died while a horrified 8 year old Rachel watched on. The description of Zelda and her long time suffering was nightmarish. I couldn't get the image out of my head.




Another aspect of the story that was really scary was how the burial ground itself kind of took hold of events. There was a supernatural force that made Jud tell Louis about it's power, it made the truck driver drive at unsafe speed as soon as it got on the road where the Creed family lived. Later, this unseen force made Louis bury Gage up there. There's an evil presence surrounding the Indian cemetery that partly orchestrated what was going to happen the entire time.



With a horrifying plot and well written characters Pet Sematary had me hooked from the start. S.K. makes this story almost believable, I think that's what makes it so terrifying. Turning the pages felt scary to me, I feared what was next while reading this book, but I just couldn't stop reading.



This is not just a story about blood, ghosts and reanimated corpses, there's a family within the story that you can't help but like. It's about what this father and husband does at his most desperate hour.

As sick as Louis' actions were, as mad as he slowly became, I pitied him. In his mind he kept rationalizing what he was doing. When his mind finally snaps and he loses his sanity, he realizes that as well.

His screams echoed and racketed shrilly through the house where now only dead lived and walked. Eyes bulging, face livid, hair standing on end, he screamed; the sounds came from his swollen throat like the bells of hell, terrible shrieks that signaled the end not of love but of sanity; in his mind all the hideous images were suddenly unloosed at once.

The film version of Pet Sematary scared me badly when I was young. After reading the book, I do think they adapted it as well as they could for the big screen. However, the cutesy Gage in the film is nothing like what comes back from the dead in the book. Of course, the book is better. You get to see why these characters did these things, why Jud told Louis about the Micmac burial ground in the first place, because he simply had to.

title: Autopsy Room Four

author: Stephen King

published: 2002

genre: horror/short story

first line: It's so dark that for awhile-just how long I don't know-I think I'm still unconscious.




This week I re-read Autopsy Room Four which is
one of the stories in Stephen King's short story collection, Everything's Eventual. This short tale has always been a favorite of mine, King taps into one of our deepest fears, being buried alive.



Howard Cottrell finds himself laying on a cold steel table with two doctors ready to perform an autopsy on him. However, Howard isn't dead, but is paralyzed and unable to move or speak, yet fully capable of feeling, seeing and hearing. The doctors don't know this since Howard was presumed dead after being found unconscious by fellow golfers. It looks like he suffered a heart attack. Little do they know that Howard is alive and was bitten by a snake when he went looking for his golf ball. The snake bite rendered him paralyzed for a few hours with all the classic symptoms of being dead.



A fully conscious Howard tries to figure out what has happened to him and is horrified as he comes to the conclusion that he is going to be opened up alive on the autopsy table.

What's going on here? I yell, but the yell is only in my head. My lips don't move. I can feel them-and my tongue, lying on the floor of my mouth like a stunned mole-but I can't move them.

If you're looking to read something deliciously creepy, something that will make you squirm in your seat, pick this one up. The suspense keeps building as the doctors, one of whom is in training, examine the body and discuss which instruments to use.
I always enjoy King's short stories, and this is no exception.




Autopsy Room Four was adapted into a short film along with a few other of King's stories in the summer of 2006. I remember watching this one on tv and thinking they did a good job. Reading the story is of course better.











R.eaders I.mbibing P.eril Challenge

Happy Sunday everyone. I hope you are all enjoying your weekend.

I thought this past WG's topic was another fun one: Reading from the Decades

So today's Weekly Geeks is about examining a book (or books) which were published in your birth decade. Tell us about a book that came out in the decade you were born which you either loved or hated. Is is relevant to today? Is it a classic, or could it be? Give us a mini-review, or start a discussion about the book or books.

I was born in the 70's, 1976 to be exact. It seems this was a great decade for one of my favorite authors, Stephen King.



I prefer his older work, and below are a few of my favorite Stephen King novels, all published by the master of horror during the 70's.



I do think these books are ageless, they can scare the crap out of you no matter what decade we are in. These are more than just scary stories, there's heart and soul to the characters he creates and I think that is one of the reasons so many people love his work. He also has a way of delving deep into our innermost fears, and making them come to life within his books. A story that stays with me long after I've read it is one of the reasons I enjoy his novels so much.



I think these books can be considered classics. Nobody can tell a good scary story like he does, and I think King really set the standard for writers in the horror genre.








The Dead Zone, 1979 This one is both scary and sad, with a bittersweet love story in the midst of all of it.








Salem's Lot, 1975 This book gave me nightmares, and that's just what I expect when reading a good King novel. If you want a good vampire story, look no further.








The Shining, 1977 This is one of my favorite King novels. The way he made the Overlook Hotel into a menacing, living, entity in this novel had me hooked on every page, and had me sleeping with the lights on.






The Stand, 1978 One of his most famous novels. I haven't read this one yet, but I have it sitting on my shelf. I'll get to it one day.

I believe these stories exist because we sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives: the parent who punches instead of kissing, the auto accident that takes a loved one, the cancer we one day discover living in our own bodies. If such terrible occurences were acts of darkness, they might actually be easier to cope with. But instead of being dark, they have thier own terrible brilliance it seems to me, and none shine so bright as the acts of cruelty we sometimes perpetrate in our own families. To look directly at such brilliance is to be blinded, and so we create any number of filters. The ghost story, the horror story, the uncanny tale-all of these are such filters. The man or woman who insists there are no ghosts is only ignoring the whispers of his or her own heart, and how cruel that seems to me.

-Stephen King

What about you? Have you read Stephen King?

title: Cujo

author: Stephen King

genre: horror

published: 1981

first line: Once upon a time, not so long ago, a monster came to the small town of Castle Rock, Maine.

pages: 304

rated: 4 out of 5




Cujo is one of those random books I just picked up one day at the supermarket. And being a big Stephen King fan, I usually cannot resist grabbing his books to add to my collection. Nobody can tell a good, scary story like Stephen King.


Donna and Vic Trenton are a couple who move from New York to the sleepy town of CastleRock, Maine with their young son. Tad, who is now 4 years old, often has vivid nightmares about the monster in his closet. Donna and Vic's marriage is on the rocks, Vic found out about Donna recently having an affair.

The local mechanic, Joe Cambers owns Cujo, a nearly two hundred pound, loveable, St. Bernard. Cujo contracts rabies after being bitten by bats and no one notices the dogs condition, until it's too late.




Vic is away on business for a few days. Before he leaves, he forgets to take Donna's Pinto to the Cambers house for repair. Donna decides to take the trip out to the garage with little Tad. Her pinto has been acting up and at times will stall, then completely stop. She debates going to Joe's garage with Tad, and wants to make the trip out alone, but Tad insists on going with her because he is terrified of staying home due to the nightmares he has of the monster in his closet.




So, Donna packs up Tad's Snoopy lunchbox and they head off deep into the woods where the Cambers live. Donna is hesitant to go, she can't shake off an odd feeling she has and she's been trying to call Joe Chambers house, but no one answers the phone.
The Chambers house is 5 miles outside of town, and deep inside the woods, but she figures if the Pinto breaks down, she and Tad can walk to his house and call a cab to get home.


Now, this was the part in the book where I kept thinking 'nooooooooooooo, don't go!'. Being a mom, common sense tells you to wait to get your car fixed instead of dragging your 4 year old into the sweltering heat, in a car that is breaking down and has no air conditioning, through the deep woods, to a mechanics house you barely now. Plus, set in the 80's, there's no cell phones in this story!


Donna's car officially stalls and breaks down within view of the Cambers house. She figures she and Tad will trek up the road and get Cambers to help her.
But as she gets out and starts to walk around the car to get Tad out of his carseat, she hears a deep growling.

She reached the front of the hood and started to cross in front of the Pinto, and that was when she heard a new sound. A low, thick growling.

She stopped, her head coming up at once, trying to pinpoint the source of that sound. For a moment she couldn't, and she was suddenly terrified, not by the sound itself, but by its seeming directionless. It was nowhere. It was everywhere.

Cujo is not my favorite King book, but it was a good read. There's a good dose of horror and suspense here and I enjoyed reading this one.


Cujo was made into a film in 1983, I remember seeing this when I was little and being terrified. Now the trailer just looks corny...lol.








About the author:

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author, screenwriter, musician, columnist, actor, film producer and director. Having sold over 350 million copies of his books, King is best known for his work in horror fiction, in which he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the genre's history. He has also written science fiction, fantasy, short-fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, teleplays and stageplays. Many of his stories have been adapted for other media, including movies, television series and comic books. King has written a number of books using the pen name Richard Bachman and one short story where he was credited as John Swithen. In 2003 he received The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

quoted from wikipedia

title: Just After Sunset

author: Stephen King
genre: horror/short stories

pages: 367

published: 2008

first line: You don't see what's right in front of your eyes, she'd said, but sometimes he did.






My son gave me Just After Sunset for this past Christmas and I just now finally got some time to read it. Being a big King fan, I have been eager to sit down with this one.

The 13 stories in this collection are:


Willa: A group of travelers are stranded at a railroad station waiting for the next train to come. A man named David is trying to find his fiancee, Willa. He finds her in the local honky-tonk, but things aren't what they seem.



The Gingerbread Girl: **my favorite** A woman named Em suffers a horrible loss and starts running. It's her way to get away from her problems. Soon enough Em runs away from her husband and hops on a plane to Florida. While there, on one of her daily runs, she winds up running into a psychopath.



Harvey's Dream: Harvey is sitting one morning in the kitchen while his wife is preparing deviled eggs. He tells her about a nightmare he had the night before and spooks her a bit. The nightmare began with a phonecall. When Harvey is done telling his tale, the phone rings.



Rest Stop: Author John Dykstra is traveling home from a writers group meeting. He pulls over to a rest stop to use the bathroom when he hears two people arguing in the ladies room. He soon finds out a man is beating a woman. He wonders what he should do.




Stationary Bike: Artist Richard Sefkitz begins to ride a stationary bike at his home after his doctor tells him his cholesterol reading is too high.
He paints a scene on the blank wall in front of his bike to imagine himself in the scene. The more he rides, the more lifelike his 'bike trips' become.



The Things They Left Behind: A man who worked in the Twin Towers calls out of work on 9/11 and is saved. Everyone in his office perishes on that horrific day. He does feel survivors guilt, and little by little his co-workers personal office items and gadgets begin to appear in his apartment. He wonders if he is going insane or if the items are really appearing there on thier own.



Graduation Afternoon: An atomic bomb lands in the city one afternoon while highschool graduates look on.



N.: A psychiatrist treats a patient who suffers from OCD. The doctor soon wonders if his patients OCD has passed on to himself.







The Cat from Hell: An old man hires a hitman named Haltson to kill a cat that he believes is a demon. The hitman thinks it will be an easy task to get rid of the cat, turns out he is sadly mistaken.




The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates: A widow's telephone rings and when she answers the call, she hears her dead husband on the other line. It turns out he'd been trying to call her seconds before he died in a plane crash so now, even in death, his cell phone still works from the other side.





Mute: A man gives what he thinks to be a deaf and mute hitchiker a ride. During the car ride, he tells the hitchiker all about his problems with his cheating wife.



Ayana: A child named Ayana can heal the sick. She passes this gift on to a man whose father is dying of colon cancer.



A Very Tight Place: Curtis Johnson and his neighbor Grunwald used to be friends, but now are worst enemies. Grunwald devises a very nasty plan to kill Johnson off.





I've heard that some of these stories were previously published, I myself haven't read any before. I do remember The Cat from Hell being part of Tales from the Darkside the movie.



Among my favorites was The Gingerbread Girl. I could not put the book down while reading this one. It's classic King, suspenseful, creepy, with a touch of sarcastic humor when you least expect it. I love that about him. When you're heart is pounding, just at that scary moment, King will add humor that will make you burst out with nervous laughter. Maybe some who have read his books will know what I mean. I can see this short story being made into a tv movie.


For the most part, I did enjoy most of the stories in this collection. However, there were a few I didn't like. Rest Stop for example is one I didn't enjoy. It wasn't boring, but I wanted creepy and scary; this wasn't.





I don't know what it is about Kings work lately, I didn't enjoy his past two books, Lisey's Story and Duma Key. For me, his older stuff is better. And his short stories are usually great. My favorite short story collection of his is Everything's Eventual.

No, she thinks from her place by the sink. I don't want to hear the scary part. But at the same time she does want to hear the scary part, everyone wants to hear the scary part, we're all mad here, and her mother really did say that if you told your dreams they wouldn't come true, which meant you were supposed to tell the nightmares and save the good ones for yourself, hide them like a tooth under the pillow.

I just thought i'd post this for the S.K. fans:

The Odyssey Bookshop and
The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts
present


A Conversation with

Stephen King

and

Richard Russo




when: November 6 · Thursday · 7 pm


where: Chapin Auditorium, Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA


Tickets go on sale Wednesday, October 1

go here for details




I wish I could go, but driving 7 hours to Massachusetts in the middle of a workweek when I have two kids at home, is just not possible for me.

title: The Shining

author: Stephen King

pages: 683

genre: horror

published: 1977

first line: 'Jack Torrence thought: Officious little prick.'



rated: 5 out of 5








Recovering alcoholic Jack Torrence, takes the job of caretaker of the 'Overlook Hotel' for a few months in the winter. The family will be in complete isolation in the hotel with no quick way to leave and barely any contact with the outside world. Once the snow falls they will be stranded. This hotel is located in Colorado and is famous for housing some famous people. It's also known for a triple murder/suicide that occured there from the previous caretaker who suffered from 'cabin fever'.



Jack's wife Wendy, and thier 5 year old son Danny, are hoping to spend a nice time at the hotel while Jack works on writing his screenplay. Danny has 'the sight', he has premonitions. These premonitions sometimes scare Danny, since they are so strong. Danny has an 'imaginary friend' named Tony who shows him things, like what is going to happen in the future. Danny's parents do not know he has visions, but they know something is different about their son.



Jack has been abusive before, and broke Danny's arm when he was only 3 years old.
He still craves alcohol and has anger issues. He came from an abusive home himself and battles many demons. Wendy is trying to keep her family together and hopes that Jack can change, since he has stopped drinking and has been sober for over a year. She has wanted to divorce him, but has stood with Jack hoping things will get better. She doesn't want to break her family up, especially since Danny & Jack are very close.



The Overlook's cook, a man named Halloran, also has the 'sight'. He can see right away that Danny has it and the two become friends when the Torrence's arrive at the hotel. He tells Danny he can mentally call to him anytime, and he will come to help if need be. Halloran knows that there are strange things going on at the Overlook, but he thinks Danny will be just fine and advises him to look away if he sees anything scary. He himself has seen the woman in the bathtub of room 217.




The family is alone in the hotel for about 3 weeks before odd things start to happen. Wendy notices that Jack is showing signs of drinking, like nervousness, irritability and his headaches, yet she knows he hasn't touched liquor. Deep down inside she knows the Overlook Hotel is having a bad effect on her husband. And once Jack finds a scrapbook in the basement of the hotel he slowly becomes obssessed with the hotel and its history. He then begins to crave drinking more and more.

'Now, kneeling in the sun and watching his son playing in the shadow of the hotel, he knew it was all true. The hotel wanted Danny, maybe all of them, but Danny for sure. The hedges had really walked. There was a dead woman in 217...'

Danny also has disturbing premonitions and nightmares about the hotel and his father.

'He wished he liked it as well as she did, but he kept telling himself over and over that the things Tony showed him didn't always come true. He would be careful. He would watch for something called Redrum. But he would not say anything unless he absolutely had to. Because they were happy, they had been laughing, and there were no bad thoughts.'

----------------------



Stephen King my favorite author when it comes to horror. Nobody does it like he does. He taps into our deepest fears.

He is one of the few authors whose books I buy no matter what. So I've had The Shining in my book collection for quite a while, but never got around to reading it. Partly because I was afraid to. Whenever I read a S.K. novel, I do get nightmares, and I know how scary the film The Shining is, so I shied away from reading the book.
But finally, I went for it. I told my hubby I'm reading The Shining, to which he told me the thought I was nuts...lol. He doesn't like anything scary.

And this book did give me nightmares.




I'm glad I read it. From page one, I was hooked on this novel. It's just the kind of book that you cannot put down. I liked Danny and Wendy and I wanted them to be ok. Having seen the film so many times, I know what happens but the book was excellent. It scared me. The thought alone of being stranded in a large hotel for months in the dead of winter scares me. And poor Wendy and Danny, they are supposed to be able to trust Jack to take care of them.


The way King describes the hotel, it's corridors and sordid past, the hotel becomes a living thing, a main character in the story. Then Jacks anger issues and Danny's premonitions, the way Wendy slowly comes to realize her husband has gone insane...all of that makes for an amazing and terrifying story. This book is on my top five favs read this year, and one of my favorite books now.









About the author:

Stephen Edwin King (born September 21, 1947) is an American author, screenwriter, musician, columnist, actor, film producer and director. Having sold over 350 million copies of his books, King is best known for his work in horror fiction, in which he demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the genre's history. He has also written science fiction, fantasy, short-fiction, non-fiction, screenplays, teleplays and stageplays. Many of his stories have been adapted for other media, including movies, television series and comic books. King has written a number of books using the pen name Richard Bachman and one short story where he was credited as John Swithen. In 2003 he received The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

quoted from wikipedia


visit the author's website: StephenKing.com







The Shining was made into a film in 1980. This is one of my favorite horror films.






this clip scares me!

'The decision I made to try and make Jack's father a real person, one who was loved as well as hated by his flawed son, took me a long way down the road to my current beliefs concerning what is so blithely dismissed as the "horror novel" . I believe these stories exist because we sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives: the parent who punches instead of kissing, the auto accident that takes a loved one, the cancer we one day discover living in our own bodies.
If such terrible occurences were acts of darkness, they might actually be easier to cope with. But instead of being dark, they have thier own terrible brilliance it seems to me, and none shine so bright as the acts of cruelty we sometimes perpetrate in our own families. To look directly at such brilliance is to be blinded, and so we create any number of filters. The ghost story, the horror story, the uncanny tale-all of these are such filters. The man or woman who insists there are no ghosts is only ignoring the whispers of his or her own heart, and how cruel that seems to me.'

-S.K.

Master storyteller Stephen King presents a revolutionary new form of entertainment: his short story “N.” brought to vibrant life through a series of 25 graphic video episodes. The original series tells the story of a psychiatrist who falls victim to the same deadly obsession as his patient—an obsession that just might save the world!



Drawn by award-wining comic book artist Alex Maleev, and colored by famed comic book colorist José Villarrubia, the episodes were adapted by Marc Guggenheim, co-creator of the ABC-TV series “Eli Stone” with creative oversight from Stephen King.

A friend emailed me this, sounds interesting! I'll be watching.

Well, I'm very happy to have joined The Sunday Salon. This is my first post.

This week I read:



It's a short, good old fashioned mystery set in Maine of course.

title: The Colorado Kid

author: Stephen King

pages: 178

genre: mystery

rated: 3 out of 5






On an island off the coast of Maine, a man is found dead. There’s no identification on the body. Only the dogged work of a pair of local newspapermen and a graduate student in forensics turns up any clues, and it’s more than a year before the man is identified.


And that’s just the beginning of the mystery. Because the more they learn about the man and the baffling circumstances of his death, the less they understand. Was it an impossible crime? Or something stranger still...?


Stephanie McCann arrives at 'Moose-Lookit Island' to do an internship on the island's paper 'The Weekly Islander'. She works for Dave and Vince, they write for the paper and are good friends. They tell Stephanie about 'The Colorado Kid', one of the islands old unsolved mysteries.



'For a woman a man will do many things that he'd turn his back on in an instant when alone; things he'd back away from nine times out of ten, even when drunk and with a bunch of his friends egging him on. Johnny said the closer he got to that many lying in the sand-only lying there with his knees up, like he was sitting in an invisible chair-the more sure he was that those closed eyes were going to open and the man was going to make a snatch at him.'



This was a quick read, it was ok. Kind of reminds me of Agatha Christie stories. A 'who done it?' type of story.



I like the afterword S.K. writes:

'...before I leave you, I ask you to consider the fact that we live in a web of mystery, and have simply gotten so used to the fact that we have crossed out the word and replaced it with one we like better, that one being reality. Where do we come from? Where were we before we were here? Don't know. Where are we going? Don't know."

What are your favorite mystery books? Authors? Do share...

I like visiting other bloggers and chatting books! Leave me a message, and I'll return the visit :)


----------------------------------

Another thing I did this week was take the kiddies to the zoo.
It was lots of fun, great weather and we got to see some cool stuff.

*yuck* these are giant cockroaches...a.k.a. my worst nightmare... from someplace in Central America.






this nasty...I mean 'cute' lizard took a liking to my kids and was 'high-fiving' them from the glass.







somebody doesn't look so happy:






enjoy the rest of your weekend :)