Book Review: "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King

I've fallen behind on my Stephen King reading, so am attempting to catch up. I'm not sure why I fell behind at all (perhaps my own writing got in the way). For the most part, I love his books. On the whole, they are well written, entertaining, and I get drawn into the characters and the story. But there have been a few misses.

This is not one of them. Lisey's Story is about, well, Lisey, the wife of a famous writer. Said writer has recently died and Lisey has finally gotten up enough nerve to tackle her husband's literary "alcove" containing all of his books, papers, old manuscripts, etc. This of course awakens old memories, both good and bad . . . and some that Lisey herself has buried deep so that she doesn't have to deal with them. She shies away from them at first, but when a crazed man demands that Lisey hand over her husband's literary effects "for the greater good," she's forced to pull those memories out from behind their dark purple curtain in order to survive.

I really liked this book, since it's the type of supernatural novel that I've preferred from Stephen King. (Some of his are more psychological thrillers rather than supernatural thrillers, and those I don't enjoy as much.) It probably doesn't sound to supernatural from the summary above, but trust me, it is. I can't say much about those aspects without destroying some of the "discovery" that the reader (and Lisey) goes through during the course of the book. In fact, the book ends up being much more supernatural in the long run, even though the trigger to the events is a psychotic man. Honestly, he becomes secondary to all of the memories and the relationship Lisey shared with her husband.

While I did enjoy the book and recommend it to anyone, especially Stephen King fans, I do have to say that the first 50 pages of the book or so are VERY roughly written. It took me a while to get into the book because of this. I didn't feel like I was solidly placed in what was happening right off the bat (Lisery searching through her husband's stuff); there were too many special phrases and sayings and interrupting memories nudging forward too early on. However, after those first 50 pages or so, things started to become clearer and the writing smoothed out tremendously. It's worth the effort to get through that rough spot. And that rough spot is most of the reason that this book gets a 4 out of 5 stars, rather than the full 5.

So, a great book (after that beginning) and it really makes me wonder how I could have put off reading it for so long. I better get to the next few books before the new one hits the shelves this fall.

Movie Review: Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows, Part 2

Patricia Bray (pbray) and I went to see HP7, Part 2 this afternoon. My general impression of the movies up to this one has been . . . meh. They are fun, they are entertaining and good way to spend a few hours (especially if the theater is ACed and your apartment is NOT and it's 90-something out). I've read the books, so there isn't going to be much in the way of a surprise, and honestly, it's the surprises that make the book/movie for me. If someone can surprise me, then they've done something special.

There were no real surprises in HP7, Part 2, except that I thought the way the screenwriters altered the ending made MUCH more sense than some of the stuff that happened at the end of the book. It was just . . . cleaner. Some of what was in the book just couldn't happen onscreen, and that was probably a good thing. Once again, I thought it was a good movie . . . not great, but again . . . no real surprises.

One of the things that I've complained about regarding ALL of the movies is that the directors, especially of these last few, haven't edited the movie so that the battles and drama escalated and put me on the edge of my seat. I WANT to be on the edge of my seat. There was huge POTENTIAL for me to be on the edge of my seat. And the directors would start to GET me to the edge of my seat . . . and then they'd back down and the intensity would die for me. So the movies were never as intense for me as I wanted them to be, and there was plenty of opportunity to make them intense.

Patricia pointed out after the movie today that she thinks this is because they could never decide who exactly their audience was. I want the intensity, but making the movie that intense starts pushing it out of the young crowd and into the adult crowd exclusively. The kids just can't take the emotional intensity that I want. So the directors start pushing the action toward the adult intensity, but then have to tone it down before the really BIG moments because they want to include the kids in the movie as well. After some thought, I think this is correct.

They should have made 2 version of the movies--one for the adults and one for the kids. I'd really like to see the adult, high-intensity version.

But this version was good. In fact, as most have been saying, it's nearly the best out of all of them (Prisoner of Azkaban is still my favorite). There were some really good scenes and sections in this one. There were some better emotional scenes in previous movies, but this one had the best action/drama.

But I still think they should have had a major battle at Hogwarts at the end of the sixth movie, like in the book. Saying they were "saving" everything for this last battle was a cop out.