Post by Deleted on Jan 25, 2015 22:13:38 GMT
I'm a fan of listing things, so, for lack of anything productive to do, I'm going to list my favorite books. Yay.
10. The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger, By Stephen King
A classic in it's own right, the opening words to this novel which starts an epic quest across one of the most unique, and utterly incredibly worlds in fiction have become almost infamous. "The Man in Black fled across the desert. And The Gunslinger followed." This book is the first step towards the mysterious Dark Tower. It follows The Gunslinger, more accurately, the last gunslinger, Roland Deschain of the line of Eld.
Now, I will say this.... It's not the easiest book to read, but it's worth it. It's... well, it's poetic almost in the way it's written. There's few characters, and they don't interact with each other often. The Gunslinger is very much a story about the world in which it takes places in, and the first step in a much larger journey. Still, this book originally started off as a series of short stories, which was later tied together as a novel, so it's a little choppy at parts, King's style takes a little getting used to, but it is really unique and interesting, and almost all the characters seem to speak in a different dialect of English, which can make it hard to follow at times, especially when it leaks into the narration....
Still, I'd highly recommend this book, and the series as a whole. The first book is a little hard to explain, but it certainly is a very unique experience. I've heard others talk about it like an obstacle to the real masterpieces that lie behind it, and I get that, too. Personally, I loved it, but due to it being, yes, a little hard to read, kind of a struggle to get through, I'm putting it behind the others.
9. The Road, By Cormac McCarthy
This is one of the most incredibly deep and fantastically written books I've ever read. Scratch that, it's #1. It's the best book I've ever read. So why is it at #8?
Because it's fucking miserable. It's totally devoid of hope or any kind of happiness. It is the most miserable fucking story that has ever been conceived by a human being. I'm hesitant to recommend it to anyone.... It's absolutely amazing as a piece of literature, but it's not something I enjoyed.
The Road is about a man and his son heading south after civilization collapses, and the world starts dying. All life is slowly fading away. There's no food, and it's getting colder and darker all the time. Trees are falling and nothing grows, most animals are dead, and almost all of the remaining survivors have resorted to cannibalism. The Man is almost certain that both him and his son will die, but he isn't ready to just give up, and so they head south to the ocean, with no purpose, just waiting to die, without any real hope that anything will get better.
8. The Lord of the Flies, By William Golding
This book is a masterpiece. An incredibly dark and gruesome commentary on human nature, and the inner evil that resides within us all. It's a battle between civilization, and animal instinct. Most of the books strengths are in the deep symbolism and the meaning behind it all.
For those of you who don't know, the book is about a group of school boys whose plan from London crashes on an island. Some of them try to create some sort of plan for getting rescued, while the others pretty much go native. The Savages and the Civilized Children clash more and more often as the book progresses, and things become increasing dark. There's not much I can say about it, but it definitely deserves a spot here.
7. The Stand, By Stephen King
Considered King's masterpiece(despite the fact that he himself considers Lisey's Story and The Dark Tower books to be his master piece) among his fans, The Stand is undoubtedly among some of the best books I've ever read. That being said, I don't think it's as good as many other people say. :/
The Stand, like 11/22/63, has some of the best characters I've read in a book. And it has a lot of them. Among the major POV characters, there's Stu Redman, Frannie Goldsmith, Larry Underwood, Nick Andros, Tom Cullen, Lloyd Henderson, Trashcan Man, Harold Lauder, Abigail Freemantle, Randall Flagg, Glenn Bateman, Nadine Cross, and a few others that I'm probably forgetting. There's also a lot of minor POV characters, one-off POVs, and a massive supporting cast. The characters are the strong point.
Basically, the government develops a plague which the public calls "Captain Trips". It kills 99.3% of the population, and the few people who are immune soon start having dreams of two mysterious figures. The Walkin Dude, Randall Flagg; a Dark Man who embodies the inner evil of humanity, and the chaos of society. He is born in times of chaos and turmoil, and as Captain Trips spreads across the globe, he reincarnates as a powerful force of evil, creating a society allowing for people to act on their darkest desires. Other survivors dream of Abigail Freemantle, the oldest woman on earth. She is a prophet of God, and the people drawn to her begin to form a new society, to try and rebuild civilization as it was. Obviously, the major conflict in this novel are the two opposing forces. Flagg's community in Las Vegas, and the democratic, peaceful community in Boulder.
The book can be a bit slow, but for as slow as it is, King getting lost in the inner thoughts of his characters, events happen far too fast. We're expected to believe that civilization is rebuilt in less than a month, giving about a week for a huge conflict to occur between the two groups. It's a little silly, is all.
Also, the last act is a huge anti-climax.
Aside from that though, it shines with it's characters, especially it's villain, Flagg. Randall Flagg, without a doubt, my favorite villain in any piece of fiction. He's just incredibly well written, and despite what you may think, his POVs are actually some of the most enjoyable, for as few and far between as they are. He comes off as being human at times, a real, understandable villain, but then there a times when he is shown to be completely inhuman, a force of evil based in our own fears, and even our darkest desires.
6. The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, By Stephen King
The Drawing of the Three is the second book in the Dark Tower series, and this is where the series kind of... takes a turn. Whereas the first was set entirely in this fantasy world, with hints to our own, fleeting glimpses of The Gunslinger's world seen here and there, The Drawing of the Three combines Roland's world with our own, focusing a lot more on ours.
Slight spoilers for the first book:
The majority of the second book takes place in our own world, known as Keystone Earth. The Magic of Mid-World takes a backseat in this book for the characters, who are incredible. Among them are Eddie Dean, a jokester drug addict who almost acts as a foil for Roland's own character; Odetta Holmes and Detta Walker, two women trapped within the same body, one, polite, kind, and loving, and the other, a dangerous psychopath; and Jack Mort, a sick monster who preys on the weak, killing people for his own enjoyment and making it look like an accident.
The book is solid, and incredibly well-written. It's memorable, and it really is different form anything else out there.
5. Howl's Moving Castle, By Dianne Wynne Jones
For the record, I liked the movie more. But I've read the book, oh... 19 times now? I pretty much destroyed my first copy of it from reading it too much. I'm not kidding, It's in pieces, held together by tape. This book will always have a special place in my heart. Honestly, this is that awkward place where I think it'd be best if elements of the book and elements of the movie were combined.... The author died recently, and so that means that the fourth book in this series will never see the light of day(according to various interviews, it was the one she could never write, as it was from Howl's perspective... I believe her husband, who was also an author, finished one of the books she was writing, as it was close to completion, but I highly doubt that the fourth book will ever be published......). And if Ghibli were to ever do movies of the other two books, Howl and Sophie... don't really show up, aside from cameo appearances....
But, moving on from my disappointment, what the book is actually about:
The book takes place in a fantasy version of England, and follows a young girl named Sophie. Sophie's father ran a hat store, and wanted the best for his daughters, sending them to a very good, and expensive school. When he died, his wife, Sophie's step mother, found out that he had left them with quite a bit of debt. Sophie's two sisters were sent to be apprentices(I honestly forget their names... One learned magic, one went to a bakery), while Sophie stayed at the hat shop. Around this time, the moving castle of the wizard Howl shows up in the hills surrounding the town. Rumors spread about him, saying that he sold his soul to a demon, and that he eats the hearts of young girls. As a... Shit, I forget the name of the festival. I really need to reread this. Basically, Sophie meets this man while out at a festivale who later ends up being Howl. When she's working at the hat shop, a woman comes in who is insulted by Sophie, and curses her to become an old woman. While in shock, Sophie wanders out into the hills, and finds Howl's castle. She soon learns that he did actually sell his soul to a demon named Califer, but he's not to happy about the deal. Calfier agrees to breaks Sophie's curse, if she can break his deal with Howl.
Really, watch the movie first. Because the book is quite.... Scatter-brained. It's not very well written. But.... I even considered placing it at #1. Couldn't go any lower(higher?) than 3(Scratch that, 5). It really does hold a special place in my heart.
4. The Dark Tower III: The Wastelands, By Stephen King
For me, The Wastelands seems to be when The Dark Tower Series really gets going. The Gunslinger introduced the unique style and world, The Drawing of the Three introduced the characters, but didn't really progress the plot much, and this is when things really started to get going. I love everything about this series, and The Wastelands is no exception. Mid-World is the most intriguing fictional world I've seen in any story, as it is mysteriously tied to our own world(Keystone Earth), and while The Wastelands provides a few answers, it keeps the mystery going. It's suggested that Roland's world was part of some form of nuclear war, that civilization collapsed around them completely, and now the world is moving on, everything is slowly fading away. The characters a vibrant and real, though, Susannah seems to not be that important, while most of the important plot stuff happens to Eddie, Roland, and Jake. This book combined a lot of the insane multiple-dimensions and time-travel stuff from the Drawing of the Three, and brought back the magic and mystery of The Gunslinger. The best of both worlds, really.
Honestly, at times, it feels like several different novels split up into parts, which works well, actually. There are several parts in Keystone Earth, from the view point of a totally different character, while at the same time, Roland, Susannah, and Eddie start on their journey along the beam to the Dark Tower. The interactions between the characters are amazing, definitely a highlight, especially between Eddie and Roland, who are swiftly becoming tow of my favorite characters ever. There's flashes of what civilization is left in Mid-World, some questions are answered, both about Roland's world and what happened to it, and also about this quest that they're on for the Tower. Some incredible characters are brought it, and despite one being dropped pretty swiftly, the whole sequence that they were a part of was incredible. The whole thing felt like an incredible journey, and I can't wait to see where it goes in Wizard and Glass, which has been heralded as the best of the Dark Tower books.
3. Doctor Sleep, By Stephen King
This is probably my favorite book of all time, though, it's really a very close call. If I had to say anything bad about the book, it's that it's a little too short, and that it doesn't make the best use of some of the villains. Aside from that, it's incredible. Doctor Sleep is the sequel to The Shining, taking place many years after the events of the first book. It follows Jack's son, Danny. Dan Torrance is haunted by the physic powers he has that his friend Halloran called the shining.
As Dan becomes an adult, he turns to alcohol to stifle his powers, and he soon becomes the exact kind of person his father was, an abusive, scumbag alcohol, even worse than his father at times. After he has a revelation about this, Dan visits a town in New Hampshire, and gets a job at a local hospice, joining AA to try and deal with his problems. Years later, Dan has become known as "Doctor Sleep", as he uses his powers to comfort the dying patients at the hospice. As the years pass, he finds himself connected to a presence belonging to a young girl named Abra, who has the same powers as him. Around this time, a group of Semi-immortals, the True Knot, who are able to prolong their lives by consuming the "steam" given off by children who shine when they die painfully locate Abra, and begin to hunt her down. Not knowing who else to turn to, Abra contacts Dan, and he is once more thrown into the world of the supernatural and the unknown.
The book gets huge points with me due to Abra and Dan's relationship throughout the novel, and also because it has some amazing villains. Flagg still holds the top spot as far a villains with Stephen King's multiverse connecting his books, but Rose O'Hara, the leader The True Knot is truly terrifying. This book just really clicked with me. I wasn't the biggest fan of The Shining, but Doctor Sleep is just fantastic.
2. 11/22/63, By Stephen King
Read this book. Just read it. It's impossible to describe without it sounding silly, and even if I managed that, I wouldn't be able to accurately describe how goddamn perfect this book is. Just go and read it.
Well, I suppose I should try to describe it anyway, but keep in mind, no matter how this sounds.... Just read it, trust me.
Jake Epping, a high school English teacher who also teaches GED classes for adults has a watershed moment when he reads the final essay of Harry Dunning, a mentally incapacitated Janitor at the school who writes of the time when his father came home and murdered his mother, sister, and two brothers. Reading this essay is one of the only times that Jake, who is "not a crying man" sheds a tear. Years later, Jake is shocked when his friend Al Templeton, the owner of a Diner in town, is suffering of terminal lung cancer when he was fine days before and looks as if he's aged four years. Al explains that in his Diner in a portal to the year 1958, and then after using it for years to buy cheap meat in 1958 and sell it for ridiculous prices in his "fat burgers" in 2011, he decided to go back and try to stop the Kennedy assassination on 11/22/63 after he's diagnosed with lung cancer. Unfortunately, he knows he can't finish the job, and knowing that Jake doesn't have much of a reason to stay in 2011, he asks Jake to do it. After a few short experiments, and one not so short one in which Jake tries to stop Frank Dunning from killing most of his family, Jake agrees, and becomes George Amberson.
This book has some of the most real, just... "human" characters that I've seen in any piece of fiction. I was so completely immersed in the story. King does the time travel element better than any other story I've seen try this(guess he had experience from The Dark Tower), and the story carries a phenomenal amount of emotional weight.
1. The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
Most of this is just copy/pasted from what I posted on the thread for the series right after finishing it:
So, I just finished reading The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass, and can safely say that not only is it my favorite of the series, it is probably my favorite book of all time. It takes that special magic and almost poetic style of the first book, and Part Two and Three are almost entirely written like the first book was. It's a style that is utterly unique, and reading the book makes it feels almost other worldly. It's not just some fictional world, with only whatever was needed for the story being shown, it feels like a living, breathing world, something almost impossible for a book to accomplish. But beyond that, it trumps any other fictional world... well, ever. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say, for me at least, this is #1.
Along with that, the characters are fantastic, both the heroes and villains are portrayed on a level plane. I found myself feeling sad as character died or tragedy struck them, not only for Roland and his ka-tet, but for the villains, even people like Eldred Jonas. King can compeltely switch the tone of the book and narration from each individual POV. In Part Two and Three, the author's voice is barely heard in the narration of the novel, it's the characters 100% of the time.
And, even knowing from the start which characters live and die(Roland talks about it in Part One, before he begins telling his story), it never took away form the experience. I can also safely say that Wizard and Glass is the most emotional story I've ever read, or simply experienced. It beats anything like The Walking Dead or Valiant Hearts, or even 11/22/63.
Things kind of seemed to begin to fall apart in Part Four when entire chunks of the plot were being taken from The Wizard of Oz, and the characters even make note of it, and when a villain I quite liked is killed off with little fanfare for seemingly no reason, but in the end, it's solid, and whatever may have been threatening to crumble a little is, if not fixed, over looked when Randall Flagg appears and brings that portion of the plot up to the level of quality that Part Two and Three were.
Okay, finished with what I posted before, I just want to add something here:
These novels seem to be split between two different styles entirely. The Gunslinger was almost poetic in the way it was written, and it seemed alien. It had an other worldly quality to it that's hard to identify. It feels like Mid-World actually existed the way it was portrayed both in that book, and in Part Two and Three of this one. On the other side of that, is a much more grounded style, which can be described as King's typical style. The author's voice is heard throughout the narration, and it seems very personal almost. It's relatable and understandable. King's usual style is what makes up Part One and Four, and the more poetic other-worldly style makes up Part Two and Three. Neither is better than the other, and I like how the book is very clearly split up like this. But, I'd be lying if I didn't say that yes, I enjoyed Part's Two and Three more. Because it felt epic, something that is rarely manageable in... anything, really, but books in particular. Part Three in particular managed this.
On top of that, it's tragic, and has an extraordinary amount of emotional weight to it, more so than any other book I've read, TV Show or movie that I've watched, or game that I've played, and for that along, it takes my top place.
10. The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger, By Stephen King
A classic in it's own right, the opening words to this novel which starts an epic quest across one of the most unique, and utterly incredibly worlds in fiction have become almost infamous. "The Man in Black fled across the desert. And The Gunslinger followed." This book is the first step towards the mysterious Dark Tower. It follows The Gunslinger, more accurately, the last gunslinger, Roland Deschain of the line of Eld.
Now, I will say this.... It's not the easiest book to read, but it's worth it. It's... well, it's poetic almost in the way it's written. There's few characters, and they don't interact with each other often. The Gunslinger is very much a story about the world in which it takes places in, and the first step in a much larger journey. Still, this book originally started off as a series of short stories, which was later tied together as a novel, so it's a little choppy at parts, King's style takes a little getting used to, but it is really unique and interesting, and almost all the characters seem to speak in a different dialect of English, which can make it hard to follow at times, especially when it leaks into the narration....
Still, I'd highly recommend this book, and the series as a whole. The first book is a little hard to explain, but it certainly is a very unique experience. I've heard others talk about it like an obstacle to the real masterpieces that lie behind it, and I get that, too. Personally, I loved it, but due to it being, yes, a little hard to read, kind of a struggle to get through, I'm putting it behind the others.
9. The Road, By Cormac McCarthy
This is one of the most incredibly deep and fantastically written books I've ever read. Scratch that, it's #1. It's the best book I've ever read. So why is it at #8?
Because it's fucking miserable. It's totally devoid of hope or any kind of happiness. It is the most miserable fucking story that has ever been conceived by a human being. I'm hesitant to recommend it to anyone.... It's absolutely amazing as a piece of literature, but it's not something I enjoyed.
The Road is about a man and his son heading south after civilization collapses, and the world starts dying. All life is slowly fading away. There's no food, and it's getting colder and darker all the time. Trees are falling and nothing grows, most animals are dead, and almost all of the remaining survivors have resorted to cannibalism. The Man is almost certain that both him and his son will die, but he isn't ready to just give up, and so they head south to the ocean, with no purpose, just waiting to die, without any real hope that anything will get better.
8. The Lord of the Flies, By William Golding
This book is a masterpiece. An incredibly dark and gruesome commentary on human nature, and the inner evil that resides within us all. It's a battle between civilization, and animal instinct. Most of the books strengths are in the deep symbolism and the meaning behind it all.
For those of you who don't know, the book is about a group of school boys whose plan from London crashes on an island. Some of them try to create some sort of plan for getting rescued, while the others pretty much go native. The Savages and the Civilized Children clash more and more often as the book progresses, and things become increasing dark. There's not much I can say about it, but it definitely deserves a spot here.
7. The Stand, By Stephen King
Considered King's masterpiece(despite the fact that he himself considers Lisey's Story and The Dark Tower books to be his master piece) among his fans, The Stand is undoubtedly among some of the best books I've ever read. That being said, I don't think it's as good as many other people say. :/
The Stand, like 11/22/63, has some of the best characters I've read in a book. And it has a lot of them. Among the major POV characters, there's Stu Redman, Frannie Goldsmith, Larry Underwood, Nick Andros, Tom Cullen, Lloyd Henderson, Trashcan Man, Harold Lauder, Abigail Freemantle, Randall Flagg, Glenn Bateman, Nadine Cross, and a few others that I'm probably forgetting. There's also a lot of minor POV characters, one-off POVs, and a massive supporting cast. The characters are the strong point.
Basically, the government develops a plague which the public calls "Captain Trips". It kills 99.3% of the population, and the few people who are immune soon start having dreams of two mysterious figures. The Walkin Dude, Randall Flagg; a Dark Man who embodies the inner evil of humanity, and the chaos of society. He is born in times of chaos and turmoil, and as Captain Trips spreads across the globe, he reincarnates as a powerful force of evil, creating a society allowing for people to act on their darkest desires. Other survivors dream of Abigail Freemantle, the oldest woman on earth. She is a prophet of God, and the people drawn to her begin to form a new society, to try and rebuild civilization as it was. Obviously, the major conflict in this novel are the two opposing forces. Flagg's community in Las Vegas, and the democratic, peaceful community in Boulder.
The book can be a bit slow, but for as slow as it is, King getting lost in the inner thoughts of his characters, events happen far too fast. We're expected to believe that civilization is rebuilt in less than a month, giving about a week for a huge conflict to occur between the two groups. It's a little silly, is all.
Also, the last act is a huge anti-climax.
Aside from that though, it shines with it's characters, especially it's villain, Flagg. Randall Flagg, without a doubt, my favorite villain in any piece of fiction. He's just incredibly well written, and despite what you may think, his POVs are actually some of the most enjoyable, for as few and far between as they are. He comes off as being human at times, a real, understandable villain, but then there a times when he is shown to be completely inhuman, a force of evil based in our own fears, and even our darkest desires.
6. The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, By Stephen King
The Drawing of the Three is the second book in the Dark Tower series, and this is where the series kind of... takes a turn. Whereas the first was set entirely in this fantasy world, with hints to our own, fleeting glimpses of The Gunslinger's world seen here and there, The Drawing of the Three combines Roland's world with our own, focusing a lot more on ours.
Slight spoilers for the first book:
At the end of the first book, Roland holds palaver with Walter O'Dim, The Man in Black. Walter tells Roland of a great many things, concerning the Dark tower, and the collapse of reality. Near the end of their talk, Walter gives Roland a warning of the future. He will draw three people from one world into his own to aid him in his quest, and he should beware an Ageless Stranger. These three are, The Prisoner, The Lady of the Shadows, and The Pusher.
The majority of the second book takes place in our own world, known as Keystone Earth. The Magic of Mid-World takes a backseat in this book for the characters, who are incredible. Among them are Eddie Dean, a jokester drug addict who almost acts as a foil for Roland's own character; Odetta Holmes and Detta Walker, two women trapped within the same body, one, polite, kind, and loving, and the other, a dangerous psychopath; and Jack Mort, a sick monster who preys on the weak, killing people for his own enjoyment and making it look like an accident.
The book is solid, and incredibly well-written. It's memorable, and it really is different form anything else out there.
5. Howl's Moving Castle, By Dianne Wynne Jones
For the record, I liked the movie more. But I've read the book, oh... 19 times now? I pretty much destroyed my first copy of it from reading it too much. I'm not kidding, It's in pieces, held together by tape. This book will always have a special place in my heart. Honestly, this is that awkward place where I think it'd be best if elements of the book and elements of the movie were combined.... The author died recently, and so that means that the fourth book in this series will never see the light of day(according to various interviews, it was the one she could never write, as it was from Howl's perspective... I believe her husband, who was also an author, finished one of the books she was writing, as it was close to completion, but I highly doubt that the fourth book will ever be published......). And if Ghibli were to ever do movies of the other two books, Howl and Sophie... don't really show up, aside from cameo appearances....
But, moving on from my disappointment, what the book is actually about:
The book takes place in a fantasy version of England, and follows a young girl named Sophie. Sophie's father ran a hat store, and wanted the best for his daughters, sending them to a very good, and expensive school. When he died, his wife, Sophie's step mother, found out that he had left them with quite a bit of debt. Sophie's two sisters were sent to be apprentices(I honestly forget their names... One learned magic, one went to a bakery), while Sophie stayed at the hat shop. Around this time, the moving castle of the wizard Howl shows up in the hills surrounding the town. Rumors spread about him, saying that he sold his soul to a demon, and that he eats the hearts of young girls. As a... Shit, I forget the name of the festival. I really need to reread this. Basically, Sophie meets this man while out at a festivale who later ends up being Howl. When she's working at the hat shop, a woman comes in who is insulted by Sophie, and curses her to become an old woman. While in shock, Sophie wanders out into the hills, and finds Howl's castle. She soon learns that he did actually sell his soul to a demon named Califer, but he's not to happy about the deal. Calfier agrees to breaks Sophie's curse, if she can break his deal with Howl.
Really, watch the movie first. Because the book is quite.... Scatter-brained. It's not very well written. But.... I even considered placing it at #1. Couldn't go any lower(higher?) than 3(Scratch that, 5). It really does hold a special place in my heart.
4. The Dark Tower III: The Wastelands, By Stephen King
For me, The Wastelands seems to be when The Dark Tower Series really gets going. The Gunslinger introduced the unique style and world, The Drawing of the Three introduced the characters, but didn't really progress the plot much, and this is when things really started to get going. I love everything about this series, and The Wastelands is no exception. Mid-World is the most intriguing fictional world I've seen in any story, as it is mysteriously tied to our own world(Keystone Earth), and while The Wastelands provides a few answers, it keeps the mystery going. It's suggested that Roland's world was part of some form of nuclear war, that civilization collapsed around them completely, and now the world is moving on, everything is slowly fading away. The characters a vibrant and real, though, Susannah seems to not be that important, while most of the important plot stuff happens to Eddie, Roland, and Jake. This book combined a lot of the insane multiple-dimensions and time-travel stuff from the Drawing of the Three, and brought back the magic and mystery of The Gunslinger. The best of both worlds, really.
Honestly, at times, it feels like several different novels split up into parts, which works well, actually. There are several parts in Keystone Earth, from the view point of a totally different character, while at the same time, Roland, Susannah, and Eddie start on their journey along the beam to the Dark Tower. The interactions between the characters are amazing, definitely a highlight, especially between Eddie and Roland, who are swiftly becoming tow of my favorite characters ever. There's flashes of what civilization is left in Mid-World, some questions are answered, both about Roland's world and what happened to it, and also about this quest that they're on for the Tower. Some incredible characters are brought it, and despite one being dropped pretty swiftly, the whole sequence that they were a part of was incredible. The whole thing felt like an incredible journey, and I can't wait to see where it goes in Wizard and Glass, which has been heralded as the best of the Dark Tower books.
3. Doctor Sleep, By Stephen King
This is probably my favorite book of all time, though, it's really a very close call. If I had to say anything bad about the book, it's that it's a little too short, and that it doesn't make the best use of some of the villains. Aside from that, it's incredible. Doctor Sleep is the sequel to The Shining, taking place many years after the events of the first book. It follows Jack's son, Danny. Dan Torrance is haunted by the physic powers he has that his friend Halloran called the shining.
As Dan becomes an adult, he turns to alcohol to stifle his powers, and he soon becomes the exact kind of person his father was, an abusive, scumbag alcohol, even worse than his father at times. After he has a revelation about this, Dan visits a town in New Hampshire, and gets a job at a local hospice, joining AA to try and deal with his problems. Years later, Dan has become known as "Doctor Sleep", as he uses his powers to comfort the dying patients at the hospice. As the years pass, he finds himself connected to a presence belonging to a young girl named Abra, who has the same powers as him. Around this time, a group of Semi-immortals, the True Knot, who are able to prolong their lives by consuming the "steam" given off by children who shine when they die painfully locate Abra, and begin to hunt her down. Not knowing who else to turn to, Abra contacts Dan, and he is once more thrown into the world of the supernatural and the unknown.
The book gets huge points with me due to Abra and Dan's relationship throughout the novel, and also because it has some amazing villains. Flagg still holds the top spot as far a villains with Stephen King's multiverse connecting his books, but Rose O'Hara, the leader The True Knot is truly terrifying. This book just really clicked with me. I wasn't the biggest fan of The Shining, but Doctor Sleep is just fantastic.
2. 11/22/63, By Stephen King
Read this book. Just read it. It's impossible to describe without it sounding silly, and even if I managed that, I wouldn't be able to accurately describe how goddamn perfect this book is. Just go and read it.
Well, I suppose I should try to describe it anyway, but keep in mind, no matter how this sounds.... Just read it, trust me.
Jake Epping, a high school English teacher who also teaches GED classes for adults has a watershed moment when he reads the final essay of Harry Dunning, a mentally incapacitated Janitor at the school who writes of the time when his father came home and murdered his mother, sister, and two brothers. Reading this essay is one of the only times that Jake, who is "not a crying man" sheds a tear. Years later, Jake is shocked when his friend Al Templeton, the owner of a Diner in town, is suffering of terminal lung cancer when he was fine days before and looks as if he's aged four years. Al explains that in his Diner in a portal to the year 1958, and then after using it for years to buy cheap meat in 1958 and sell it for ridiculous prices in his "fat burgers" in 2011, he decided to go back and try to stop the Kennedy assassination on 11/22/63 after he's diagnosed with lung cancer. Unfortunately, he knows he can't finish the job, and knowing that Jake doesn't have much of a reason to stay in 2011, he asks Jake to do it. After a few short experiments, and one not so short one in which Jake tries to stop Frank Dunning from killing most of his family, Jake agrees, and becomes George Amberson.
This book has some of the most real, just... "human" characters that I've seen in any piece of fiction. I was so completely immersed in the story. King does the time travel element better than any other story I've seen try this(guess he had experience from The Dark Tower), and the story carries a phenomenal amount of emotional weight.
1. The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
Most of this is just copy/pasted from what I posted on the thread for the series right after finishing it:
So, I just finished reading The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass, and can safely say that not only is it my favorite of the series, it is probably my favorite book of all time. It takes that special magic and almost poetic style of the first book, and Part Two and Three are almost entirely written like the first book was. It's a style that is utterly unique, and reading the book makes it feels almost other worldly. It's not just some fictional world, with only whatever was needed for the story being shown, it feels like a living, breathing world, something almost impossible for a book to accomplish. But beyond that, it trumps any other fictional world... well, ever. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say, for me at least, this is #1.
Along with that, the characters are fantastic, both the heroes and villains are portrayed on a level plane. I found myself feeling sad as character died or tragedy struck them, not only for Roland and his ka-tet, but for the villains, even people like Eldred Jonas. King can compeltely switch the tone of the book and narration from each individual POV. In Part Two and Three, the author's voice is barely heard in the narration of the novel, it's the characters 100% of the time.
And, even knowing from the start which characters live and die(Roland talks about it in Part One, before he begins telling his story), it never took away form the experience. I can also safely say that Wizard and Glass is the most emotional story I've ever read, or simply experienced. It beats anything like The Walking Dead or Valiant Hearts, or even 11/22/63.
Things kind of seemed to begin to fall apart in Part Four when entire chunks of the plot were being taken from The Wizard of Oz, and the characters even make note of it, and when a villain I quite liked is killed off with little fanfare for seemingly no reason, but in the end, it's solid, and whatever may have been threatening to crumble a little is, if not fixed, over looked when Randall Flagg appears and brings that portion of the plot up to the level of quality that Part Two and Three were.
Okay, finished with what I posted before, I just want to add something here:
These novels seem to be split between two different styles entirely. The Gunslinger was almost poetic in the way it was written, and it seemed alien. It had an other worldly quality to it that's hard to identify. It feels like Mid-World actually existed the way it was portrayed both in that book, and in Part Two and Three of this one. On the other side of that, is a much more grounded style, which can be described as King's typical style. The author's voice is heard throughout the narration, and it seems very personal almost. It's relatable and understandable. King's usual style is what makes up Part One and Four, and the more poetic other-worldly style makes up Part Two and Three. Neither is better than the other, and I like how the book is very clearly split up like this. But, I'd be lying if I didn't say that yes, I enjoyed Part's Two and Three more. Because it felt epic, something that is rarely manageable in... anything, really, but books in particular. Part Three in particular managed this.
On top of that, it's tragic, and has an extraordinary amount of emotional weight to it, more so than any other book I've read, TV Show or movie that I've watched, or game that I've played, and for that along, it takes my top place.