No comments about Chattery Teeth: And Other Stories.

5 comments about Under The Dome: A Novel.

1. This is 1000 pages of pure drivel. Also, this is an old SF plot the King "borrowed".



2. I've seen all the knocks against Stephen King, and they're all true. It's been a long time since a new King book was a must-read. More recently I could name a few of his books that made me want to launch them across the room. But Under the Dome seems to have taken Elmore Leonard's advice to leave out the parts that people tend to skip over.
   
   Good points: The story remains in steady motion throughout. Many of the characters are deftly drawn and credible. Best of all, the book HAS AN ENDING, even though it seems to be setting you up all along not to expect one. Goodness knows too many recent King books lacked one. This was a big fear of mine going in.
   
   Bad points: Some characters felt too cartoony to me. (Never mind that cartoony people are showing up more and more in real life these days.) Many images and descriptions are repeated over the 1,000+ pages -- this may not be as annoying if you're short-attention-spanned like me and can appreciate the occasional reminder. Worst of all for me (and I know this is an issue industry-wide), the copy editing is pretty poor. Several times I was knocked out of my story trance by spelling or wording that could only have been mistakes.
   
   One last note. If the prospect of hoisting this big heavy book for the time it will take you to finish it is an issue for you, by all means wait for the paperback. This thing isn't just a brick, it's a cinderblock.



3. Completely predictable nearly every sentence as well as King's fascination with people urinating and defecating themselves. This has got to be the worst book I've ever read.....Stephen King's writing has gone way down hill.



4. I suspected what I was in for. King is a talented writer who has developed his craft to the place where an over 1,000-page novel is bankable. His characters are well thought-out and he knows rural Maine. When I see a story this big about a small town, I wonder what I'm going to have to wade through to get to the point of the story outlined on the jacket. But doggone it, the fascinating premise nagged at me for days until I had to go find out what and why.
   
   I found two things necessary from the outset. The first was to fight my gag reflex at the raw sewage splashed liberally across the pages. I'm sorry but I don't believe that ninety percent of the filthy, profane elements ladled into the story did anything to support the themes of humans, ants, and aliens upon which the basic idea was predicated.
   
   The second was to fight my schedule to find the time to wade through it. I spent days wandering around Subplotville trying to sort out what had something to do with the dome and what did not.
   
   Both of these contributed to the primary flaw in the fabric from which this tale was woven. King is good at constructing the characters initially. When the town is thrown into its initial panic mode, the actions and reactions are believable. But after that they just don't behave the way real people (and seriously, real New Englanders) would. Played through to the conclusion, none of the comparisons hold water - which is disappointing when the abrupt and anticlimactic ending doesn't justify the investment required to reach it.
   
   Sorry Steve, but this story crashes and burns like a seriously overloaded pulp truck traveling too fast and slamming into an invisible barrier.



5. I admit, King's writing has suffered as of late. His short stories continue to delight, but his novels have started to suffer from something I can't quite put my finger on. They tend to be longer than they need to be (Bag of Bones) or extremely violent towards women {Lisey's Story}. Still, I found myself picking up this book day after day to finish and get to the end. He says in the afterword that he wanted to write a book that 'kept the pedal to the medal', and did he ever. I found myself wanting to know if the Dome would ever be destroyed, if Big Jim Rennie would keep getting away with murder (literally and figuratively) and I found his portrayal of corruption in a small town to be fairly on the nose. I liked Dale Barbara, and his cohorts. I liked the tension. I liked the situation he put the characters in.
   
   That said, I was disappointed to find out it was aliens. Again. We've seen aliens in the Tommyknockers, Dreamcatchers, and now this? While i found the analogy between the humans under the Dome and ants under a magnifying glass to be interesting, the alien thing was just too weird. It would have been a tad more believable if it had been a secret government plot (though I am glad that King had the goverment be the good guys in all this). Leatherhead-faced, childlike aliens. Huh. King does much better and is more believable when he has people against people (The Stand, Cujo, Carrie, Misery), or even monsters against people, as in Salem's Lot. It was almost like he wrote himself into a corner: "Hm, the Dome is impenetrable by any human means...I have to make it alien in origin!" It's the modern writer's deus ex machina.
   
   I also would have liked more "after the Dome lifted" description of the town, how the remaining survivor picked up the pieces.
   
   Read this for an entertaining read, don't expect great literature. King is an entertainer, after all. I don't read him for enlightenment or erudite prose, I read his books for fun and for the same "shock and awe" I get from blockbuster movies. This is a good offering, not a great one, but a good one.

5 comments about Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection.

1. Enjoyed listening to - sent chills down my spine and gave me goosebumps. Love the voices of Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone.
   Both gentlemen have been my idols since my youth. The actors we have now cannot hold a candle to either of these professionals. They make you feel as if you are actually in the Poe story! Don't believe anyone would be disappointed in this set.



2. I got this CD set about six years ago. The readings themselves are excellent; there is no need for music or sound effects for today's spoiled audiences. The fact that the readings are so good is enough to keep a listener interested. Rathbone proves conclusively in this set that by being stuck playing Sherlock Holmes (which he did brilliantly), and not permitted by his Universal contract to do much else in the 1940's, he was soundly misused by Hollywood and not given a chance to prove his incredible range. He is astonishingly good here, especially frightening in the story "The Cask of Amontillado". The disappointment is Vincent Price, who reads his material well, but no better or worse than we would normally expect him to, and certainly not as well as Rathbone.
   
   The billing on the set is misleading; it is Rathbone's readings which come first, not Price's, and the bulk of the set is devoted to Rathbone.
   
   Now, for the problem. When I got my first copy of this set, it appeared to be defective. The Rathbone sections were just fine, but the disc began to freeze at a certain point in the Vincent Price readings. So I exchanged the set for a duplicate, and this duplicate freezes up at the same point on one of my CD players, but not on the other one. By then, I decided to keep the set, and not to exchange it a second time, lest I be given a third copy of the set and discover that it had all been for nothing. I concluded that the fault must be in the pressing of the disc. (If anyone else has had a similar problem with this, feel free to comment below.)
   
   But if you haven't had problems with this set, or if you love Poe and great dramatic readings, by all means buy this set, especially for Rathbone. He will scare hell out of you just with his voice.



3. Audiobooks are books meant to be read aloud, enunciation and clarity are among the most important.
   
   Using these very old recordings done for a 'dramatic appeal' has left me with a feeling of wanton waste of money.
   
   Basil Rathbone's renditions are from a Shakespearean attempting to do Poe. If he would simply read. Alas, he acts, not reads.
   
   All of his recordings are: Volume too low, adjust up, volume to high, adjust down, yelling, adjust down again, whispering, adjust up again, etc. etc. ad nauseum. One cannot possibly hear using one setting of volume.
   
   It is a waste of money. Find a human who can read it and enunciate and let me do the fantasizing and imagining and conjuring. The poetry and prose should stand up alone and by itself, not acted upon. Rathbone died in 1967. The recording is over 50 years old!!
   
   Anyone who needs it play acted is not getting the correct message. It's about the words, not the actor.



4. Yes the recordings are as good as the other reviewers say they are. However a couple of nits:
   
   1. The recordings run into one another. Not having listened to these works for many years, several times it took me a bit to realize that one had ended and I was now listening to another masterpiece. A little breathing room between pieces or even a quick title announcement would have been appreciated.
   
   2. There is no listing of what is on what disk on either the box or the CD holder insert. That means you have to use the paper insert to find what you want or scan the tiny silver font on green disk labels. Unfortunately my insert was missing. It would have been so much nicer to have the play list printed on the cd holder where it would be handy whenever I pulled one out.



5. Excellent collection. Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price are the perfect readers. Great listen on a dark and stormy night!

2 comments about Dolan's Cadillac: And Other Stories.

1. I loved this collection of short stories. Every reader did an excellent job and really pulled me into the stories.



2. If your a Stephen King fan then this book will not disappoint. A wonderful read, revenge is truely a dish best when served cold.

No comments about It Grows on You: And Other Stories.

1 comments about Sorry, Right Number: And Other Stories.

1. Like with all audiobooks, your personal enjoyment comes down to 2 things: the reader and the reader. If the person "reading" the book has the appeal of a root canal, I don't care if Stephen King wrote it or a 5 year old, the audio version won't appeal to me either. They have done a great job picking these readers. All of them, especially Joe Mantegna, have the ability to take you there, in the middle of the action. Stephen King will always be awesome, but to hear his work read by people who have talent takes it to the next level.

1 comments about The House on Maple Street: And Other Stories.

1. For a road trip, there is nothing like a good book.... on audio. Stephen and his wife, and other narrators, read the text with the appropriate nuances.... excellent product.
   And no one else can scare the heck out of you like Stephen King!

5 comments about Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

1. Predictable and not well written. This appears pretty apparent early on, but the book was an easy read so I finished it anyway.
   
   Everyone knows Lincoln experienced a lot of setbacks in his life (the death of his mother, sister, first love and two children; defeat in the Senate), what Grahame-Smith does is basically attribute all of this to vampires, usually in pretty obvious, out-of-thin-air ways.
   
   "The doctor said Abe's mother died of milk sickness, but Abe knew the truth... it was a vampire."
   
   For this reason the book isn't really like Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons; those books were more exciting and not as predictable
   
   The novel is historically accurate (except for the Vampires), but that doesn't do much to endear it. I don't think it'd be that hard to write a similar book, just take the biography of a reasonably interesting person, attribute all their problems and bad luck in life to Vampires, and you're done! It doesn't even have to be that well written. Despite the historical accuracy of major events, Lincoln comes off as a pretty thin character, someone who just hates Vampires because they've caused him a lot of pain.
   
   My advice would be to stick with the truth on this one; Doris Kearns-Goodwin's Team of Rivals is an infinitely better, although more challenging, read.



2. I didn't read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies because it seemed kind of gimmicky (not necessarily a terrible thing, but not an awesome thing in a book, either), but mostly because I loathe Jane Austen. Yes, I admit it: I am a Jane Austen loather. You can go ahead and take away my girl credentials now (I really wasn't using them, anyway). I like my husband's take on Jane Austen, "They're books where a couple of really rich people like each other, play hard to get, finally marry and own a third of Europe." Heh.
   
   Anyway, I like vampires and I like Abraham Lincoln so I figured I'd try this one out. I wish I had liked it, but I really really didn't. Not even a little bit.
   
   Firstly, I think the elements of a mashup should offer a new way to look at each other. For instance, playing The Dark Side of the Moon over the top of The Wizard of Oz is very very cool, but it also makes you look at elements of each in a new way - that's part of the coolness, I think. I'm sorry to say that being a vampire hunter doesn't bring anything useful to my view of Abraham Lincoln nor vice versa. The two things neither complement each other nor utterly destroy each other. Added to that the notion of vampires being behind slavery and the Civil War and I found the whole thing trivializing. The thing that makes slavery horrific is that it's something that people do to each other - we don't need monsters for it.
   
   I'd like to say that the author at least managed a creative play on the Doris Kearns Goodwin style of political biography, but I can't. All told, this wasn't entertaining and wasn't enlightening and mostly just sucked.



3. This just works. Seth Smith found an uncommon thread running through Lincoln's narrative and just went nuts with it. It doesn't seem that out of place. This is like fanfiction for grownups written by a pro with just the right sense of timing. This could have gotten stupid, fast. It doesn't. Instead we get this Tolkenesque epic of the never happened life of our 16th President.
   
   There's always been an element of suspended disbelief around Lincoln. He is a mythic character; Seth builds on that. Lincoln has had so very many biographies that hit on so many obscure notes that it just makes sense that there was this hidden drama going on and no one ever suspected it. Like if you are going to turn a person into a mythic hero, don't sell it short. Lincoln didn't just eliminate slavery, he saved us all from servitude to an undead evil so great no one even knew it existed. Great stuff!



4. I was a bit skeptical at first, but this book, "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter," seemed to take two of my favorite subjects to read (history and vampires) on and place them into one book. I was not disappointed. This is the first time that I can truly say that I could not put a book down. It was fun to read and even better than that; it let my imagination run wild. I am now going to have to try some of Seth Grahame-Smith other books, which I admit do not seem to "tickle my fancy" but if written in the same way with the same zeal - I will enjoy them.



5. I had high hopes for this book which turned out to be just awful. If you want to see how to combine the high charged, dynamic elements of Abe Lincoln's life and vampires and produce BORING then read this book. No attachment to the characters or their asperations. No excitement. No humor. Nothing.

No comments about The End of the Whole Mess: And Other Stories.

5 comments about UR.

1. I just remembered why I hate Stephen King by reading UR.d Having a brand new Kindle DX I have been buying everything in sight that sounds good and I thought a few of King writings were OK and the price on this was certainly OK so what the heck. DUH!!! The only good thing about this was its length, ala short story. This sucked so bad. Please if you are going to deeply discount titles please choose ones that are worth battery energy to download. I enjoyed the references to my DX even the pink/fuschia cover but believe me that was all. One star is too little to rate it. YUCK



2. I love to hook my cd player up to portable speakers and have it in the kitchen while I cook. Or up load to my iPod and laid down and chill.



3. As only the master himself could, Stephen King does it again and strikes fear of the everyday into our hearts. Reading this on a Kindle (and writing the review on one as well) becomes VERY disturbing as this modern retelling of the classic "The Monkey's Paw" unfolds. Another great addition for those following the ka-tet of nineteen as well.



4. This audio book was very entertaining. It was creative and very typical of King's other works. I also like the fact that it ties in with the Dark Tower.



5. It was a waste of money! I can't believe that I listened to the entire book waiting for it to get better and it didn't.