Basement X

You know you want it

IT by Stephen King
Halo: Contact Harvest
Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Halo: Cole Protocol
The Prometheus Deception by Robert Ludlum
Right as Rain by George P. Pelecanos
Shoedog by George P. Pelecanos
Hard Revolution by George P. Pelecanos
Scavenger by David Morrel
The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells
Friend of the Devil
Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill
The Matlock Paper by Robert Ludlum
The Stand by Stephen King
Shattered by Jay Bonansinga
Twisted by Jay Bonansinga
The Deluge by Mark Morris
The Missing by Sarah Langan
Dead Sea by Brian Keene
Hide and Seek by Ian Rankin
The Vanishing by Bentley Little
Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist
Dark Hollow by Brian Keene
The Everlasting by Tim Lebbon
Fleshmarket Alley by Ian Rankin
Urban Gothic by Brian Keene
Stephen King Goes to the Movies 5 Short stories by Stephen King containing:
The Shawshank Redemption
The Mangler
1408
Hearts of Atlantis
and Children of the Corn
The Devil's Labyrinth by John Saul
The Hollower By Mary SanGiovanni
Darkness at the Edge of Town By Brian Keene
City of the Dead By Brian Keene
If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor By Bruce Campbell
King Suckerman: By George P. Pelecanos
Magician: Master: By Raymond E. Feist
Moby Dick: By Herman Mellville
A Gathering of Crows: By Brian Keene

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YES! I've been waiting for this one.

So exactly when will you start on The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón? I'm dying to find out what you think of it.

Also, Feist's Magician?

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Er... exactly what are those placeholders for?

MGM wrote:YES! I've been waiting for this one.

So exactly when will you start on The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón? I'm dying to find out what you think of it.

Also, Feist's Magician?

<Appreciated>

Great that you jumped in; I was going to ask you about the names of the books you reccomended before the boards died. IT by King has taken me nearly 2 months to finish and was a damn big undertaking.

I'm going to take a break from serious books for a bit. The next two books I'm going to read are short novelizations of video games (HALO: Contact Harvest & The Cole Protocal). After I'm done with those, (it shouldn't be more than a month), I'm going to read Shadow of the Wind and Magician.

Sound good?

MGM wrote:Er... exactly what are those placeholders for?

A running list of books I have finished reading. I anticipate this list will vastly outstrip my previous lists.

Sounds good.

BTW, Magician is fantasy (you might've guessed ), I have no idea if you like that genre.

I don't usually read fantasy/magic but I'm willing to give it a try. I've been trying to sample new genres lately and find that they're not all that bad. Many are definately an acquired taste but still pretty damn good.

IT By Stephen King.

I’ve been reading this over the course of 6 weeks or so. The reason it’s taking me so long is because it’s a monster (no pun intended) of a novel to begin with and I’m only reading it on my train rides to and from work.

IT takes place in the 1950s in a small town in Maine called Derry. A series of grisly murders –murders that center around child killings- has been plaguing the small town for several months and authorities are no closer to finding the culprit. Children between the ages of 5 and 17 have been disappearing and turn up murdered and mutilated or not at all. The culprit is a malevolent entity that calls itself Pennywise the Clown. Pennywise is not a man nor is it from this world. Pennywise is an ancient evil whose origins are briefly explored as the story progresses but no definitive explanation is given as to what Pennywise really is. Nor is it definitively explained what Pennywise exactly does with the children once he captures them (though several possible theories are posed). All that is known of Pennywise is that it is immortal and it sleeps for 27 years. On the 27th year, Pennywise wakes up and kills children for a period 18 months to 2 years before stopping abruptly and going to sleep again for another 27 years.

Enter our band of unlikely heroes, The Losers club:

Bill Denbrough, a natural born leader plagued by a stutter. Bill’s younger brother George was killed by Pennywise

Ben Hanscom, a keenly intelligent boy who is grossly overweight

Beverly Marsh, a pretty young girl with an abusive father

Eddie Kasprak, a young boy with asthma and a mother so overprotective it borders on child abuse

Michael Hanlon, the only son of the seemingly only African American family in the entire town

Richie Tozer, the joker of the group who can’t seem keep his mouth shut.

Stanely Uris, a quiet boy who comes from a Jewish family and is somewhat ostracized because of it.

All these children are damaged goods in some form another and initially they don’t all know each other, they slowly come to know and befriend each other as the story progresses.

This is also a big reason why the novel is so long. The timeline is non-linear. Rather than reading it as they are children growing up, the story jumps from the present day (when they are adults) to when they were children; where King must introduce us to seven people, have seven points of view, set up seven first time meetings, the first battle with Pennywise, the result - then jump between past to present and show us the lives of seven adults who drifted away and the actions of seven adults as they come together again.
In addition to Pennywise as the main antagonist, there are other “villainsâ€￾ in this book.

Henry Bowers, the local bully who, as the story progresses, becomes increasingly unhinged and eventually graduates to full fledged murderer

Belch Huggins and Victor Criss, Henry’s cronies who do his bidding, albeit hesitantly at first –without question later.

This was a fantastic (if a little long) story. King introduces a monster to the world; an ancient monster that kills tortures and presumably eats little children. Then King dresses the monster up as a perversion of something children should find harmless and funny. And in the final twist of irony, in the few instances when Pennywise makes public appearances, it is the younger children who can truly see Pennywise for what he really is whereas the adults are ignorant of his true self.

In a great move by King, when the origins of Pennywise were being discovered King gave us a brief view of how Pennywise arrived in Derry but cut it off at that point. The reader is never told where Pennywise came from or what it had done since then. Because Pennywise is a shape shifter his true form is never revealed; but he generally models himself as a clown but when hunting specific children he takes the form of their worst fear. King offers a brief glimpse of what Pennywise really is, and the glimpse is so brief and so strange that no one knows what to make of it.

The characterization of the protagonists is also well done. We see what their ticks and fears are; what makes them happy and just how deeply their friendship runs and the different places they come from and what their aspirations are. We also see what becomes of them.

Despite all the horror goodness in this book there are several things I could do without: The various in-jokes got very tiresome halfway through the book as did some of the seemingly unnecessary scenes where they were just playing and hanging around at home thinking. Some of the scenes when they were adults seemed to drag the hell on as well.

Overall, I give this book 3 ½ Jelly Donuts out of 5.

Well, Magician is one of the better books I've read, so you could like it.

Just placed a request for Shadow of the Wind at my local library. I should have it within a week or so. I figured Wth, I'll start it next.

If it's a good read, I'll probably read Magician after that.

And thanks for making my thread a sticky

Any nonfiction?

Not yet but if you have some reccomendtations I'd be happy to check em out.

EDIT:

Please refrain from listing communist literature on my thread.

Mr Wallstreet wrote:
Please refrain from listing communist literature on my thread.

....

Speaking of communist and inflammatory literature...

When we hit the Hairy Tarantula comic book store in Toronto we met the bizarre store owner, Leon. A group of us got talking to him and he found out Adam and I would be crossing the border back into the USA in a few days. Leon got excited and gave us a free copy of "Manifesto of REAL Democracy (the guide to Liberty, Equality - and Survival)" by Democrates. Apparently, he's never had anyone try to bring it over the border before, lol. He joked that it was contraband. ^_^

Junkogen wrote:....

Looking like I do, I have enough problems with Homeland Security. Last thing I need is for them to find communist reading material on my person or in my thread

ChimeraCreative wrote:Speaking of communist and inflammatory literature...

When we hit the Hairy Tarantula comic book store in Toronto we met the bizarre store owner, Leon. A group of us got talking to him and he found out Adam and I would be crossing the border back into the USA in a few days. Leon got excited and gave us a free copy of "Manifesto of REAL Democracy (the guide to Liberty, Equality - and Survival)" by Democrates. Apparently, he's never had anyone try to bring it over the border before, lol. He joked that it was contraband. ^_^

There's actually a communist bookstore near my office. They've been selling bottles of "Obama-Aid" ever since Nov 4.

I loved IT. I first read it during college after I finished the Dark Tower series where the Turtle from IT makes an apperance. Derry is a very very evil town. or atleast a town where evil things happen. other stories that take place there are Dreamcatcher and Insomnia. Dream Catcher was not too good but there was one part near the old stand pipe that was cool.
In Dreamcatcher, Mr. Gray drives to Derry in search of this standpipe and finds only a memorial featuring a cast-bronze statue of two children, a boy and girl, and a plaque reading:
"TO THOSE LOST IN THE STORM
MAY 31, 1985
AND TO THE CHILDREN
ALL THE CHILDREN
LOVE FROM BILL, BEN, BEV, EDDIE, RICHIE, STAN, MIKE
THE LOSER'S CLUB"
and, further, spraypainted below:
"PENNYWISE LIVES".

I actually got chills when I read that!

Insomnia was far better than Dream catcher and it was directly linked to the Dark Tower.

IT was a fantastic coming of age story and it had a 5 out of 5 from me.

You might also want to try The Stand. it is another "monster" book huge but well worth the read