Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“When creative people do their best work, they’re hardly ever in charge, they’re just sort of rolling along with their eyes shut yelling wheee.”

Everything's Eventual by Stephen King

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I have had this beaten-up paperback copy of Everything’s Eventual in my backpack for at least a year, reading a few pages here, a short story there. I was enjoying it, but kept forgetting it was there, usually opting to listen to Audible or read on my kindle when I had some free time. And finally, I went for a walk at lunch today, found a cute table outside a sandwich shop, and sat down to finish it. I’m pretty sure that this was only […]

Scary Cat

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

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I’ve been working my way through Stephen King’s bibliography lately and the release of a new film adaptation made Pet Sematary a natural enough choice for my latest foray. Louis Creed is a doctor who moves his family from Chicago to Maine in order to take a job at a university hospital. He becomes fast friends with his 83-year-old neighbor, Jud, who shows the Creed family the unusual feature of their property. The children of the town have a tradition of burying their dead pets […]

The triumphant return of the Constant Reader

The Outsider by Stephen King

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I am a die-hard ‘constant reader’ of Stephen King, who has ridden the rollercoaster of almost all of his novels (particularly his classics). He is such prolific author, reliably churning out page-turners each year, so it is incredibly easy to just stick with his stable. In recent years, however, I’ve made a conscious effort to avoid his allure. I’ve tried my best to branch out, read new things. … But for my 6th Cannonball Read selection, I fell back into old habits. The Outsider is […]

The Continuing Adventures of Danny Torrance

Doctor Sleep by Stephen King

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I thought about waiting 30 years to read Stephen King’s sequel to The Shining, in order to reflect the gap in time between both the release of the two books and their setting. In the end I decided I didn’t have the patience. Yes, Danny (now Dan) Torrance is all grown up and still grappling with his special talent, the one Dick Hallorann called “shining.” Dick is out of adult Danny’s life, as is his mother Wendy, both dead, and the beginning of the novel […]

Go Crazy? Don’t Mind if I Do

The Shining by Stephen King

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I haven’t actually seen Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation of The Shining, but it’s a testament to that film’s iconic status that even I couldn’t help but notice how different the original novel is from the movie. Without trying to spoil anything, there’s no cascade of blood coming out of an elevator and no creepy set of ghost twins either. There is, however, one hell of a dynamite premise, for either a book or a movie. For the few of you who might need an introduction: […]

The Continuing Saga of Castle Rock

Elevation by Stephen King

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I was honestly surprised to see that King keeps returning to Castle Rock. I thought he was done with his fictional town, but he keeps coming back. There’s some nice callbacks to former novels and to his latest “Gwendy’s Button Box” too. The main character in this one, Scott Carey bugs me a bit though (one of the reasons why I gave this just four stars). He decides he is going to force his friendship on a woman that doesn’t want it (for good reasons) […]



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