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The Shining
This is the first one I read and I started it while I was in Florida and finished in while we were in Virginia. It’s a 447 page horror novel by Stephen King who you’ve probably heard of. It’s pretty long and it took a while to get through it. The first chapter was honestly pretty dull and I considered dropping it right then and there but then it starts to pick up later. The three main characters are Jack, his wife Wendy, and his five year old son Danny. Jack has just taken up a job as the caretaker of a hotel called the Overlook where he’ll be staying over the winter with his family. The previous caretaker had gone insane and murdered his family and then killed himself. The story revolves around Jack as an unseen evil force lingering inside the hotel slowly corrupts him and drives him mad. There’s a lot of plot points I’ve left out, the most important being the shining which is a sort of superpower Danny has, but I won’t get into much detail because that would spoil things. One thing that bothered me about the book is that it didn’t really scare me despite being a horror book. I scare pretty easily too. Granted, I did read a lot of it in broad daylight with a lot of people around me, so that could have been a factor. When I read it at night when everyone was sleeping, I found it very unnerving and creepy, although I could probably find anything scary when it’s dark with no people around. I also found the opening to be pretty tedious, as the first several chapters are dedicated to explaining who the characters are and their backstories. I assume it was done this way so by the time the protagonists reach the Overlook, you care about them. And I did. The beginning is still boring though. Once they reach the Overlook, things get interesting. What I think is unique about The Shining is, unlike most horror novels and movies, there isn’t a creature to be afraid of, a creature chasing them through the woods and tearing them into bloody pieces. The threat is more like an invisible evil, an unseen force that slowly creeps in and suffocates its victims. All the horrors that occur at the Overlook are never explained, and what exactly this evil is also remains a mystery. Imagine you live alone, far away from the rest of the world, and you are lying in bed. The room is pitch black. And you can’t see it, but something is watching you. You don’t know what it looks like or where in the room it is but it is watching you. You tell yourself that it’s not real and nothing is there but as the silence begins to suffocate you as darkness seems to shift and shake as you feel its eyes staring right back at you and as it becomes increasingly obvious that something is there, there is nothing you can do because your screams will reach nobody so the only thing you can do is lie there completely blind and defenseless knowing that something is there and you can only wait for it to finally do something to you. And finally, it does. The Shining is something like that. Its horror stems from fear of the unknown and suspense, like staring straight into the barrel of a gun and waiting for it to fire. In conclusion, I enjoyed reading this book. It’s not the most scary thing ever so even if you’re not a fan of horror it’s still a fun read. And if you’re brave you can put on your big boy pants and read this alone at night. Not that I recommend doing that.
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American Psycho
I read this one because I had seen a few clips from the movie and thought it was cool. American Psycho was published in 1991 by Bret Easton Ellis and it follows Patrick Bateman, a yuppie in the late eighties. He has a nice apartment, designer clothes, and a beautiful girlfriend. He is also a serial killer. The book is 399 pages of social commentary on rich people’s arrogance and greed. I think. Either that or it’s just a goofy story about some dude chopping off prostitutes’ body parts and leaving them around his apartment. I find Patrick Bateman to be a very intriguing character because despite all his evil deeds, I don’t hate him. I don’t like him either. I just think it’s interesting to see his exploits and his strange view of the world. The book starts off extremely boring. Actually, a lot of the book is boring. And I think the author did it on purpose. You see, Patrick is a god awful narrator. The story is told in the first person perspective, so all of his thoughts are shown. And he thinks about very mundane things, as a psychopath would. Many pages are filled with him describing clothes. He can spend a whole page or two describing what outfits people were wearing and what brand they were, and he does the same for himself. This can be pretty dull to read, but it provides a lot of insight on Bateman’s character. He is a yuppie that is obsessed with appearances so of course he’d be thinking about clothes and judging people. He also spends an entire chapter discussing his morning routine and all the products he uses, because that is also probably important to him. Entire chapters are dedicated to describing music. Describing food. Describing murder. Patrick describes his mundane day to day routine with the same enthusiasm and tone when he’s describing how he reached down a woman’s throat and ripped out her vocal chords. So that’s my opinion on why there are so many dull monologues of Patrick describing things. But that begs the question: if something is purposely boring, that does make it good? Anyway, let me describe the tone of the book. Judging from the plot synopsis you might think this is a serious book looking deep into the mind of a serial killer. It’s not. It’s not a goofy fun book either. It’s semi-serious with some dark humor thrown in there if you’re into that kind of stuff. No jokes are made, you’re just supposed to laugh at how absurd Patrick’s mindset is. My favorite line and the one I personally think is the funniest is, “Maggots already writhe across the human sausage, the drool pouring from my lips dribbles over them, and still I can’t tell if I’m cooking any of this correctly, because I’m crying too hard and I’ve never really cooked anything before.” It’s such an absurd statement to make that it’s funny. (By the way, if you want context for this joke, Patrick has just mutilated a woman’s body and tries to cook it in several ways, including making her into meatloaf, boiling, and microwaving her severed head which burns it and makes it inedible. So he settles on trying to make her into a sausage of some sorts.) Despite how I’ve made this book sound, there’s a little more to the book than mindless gore. Actually you don’t get to read about Patrick killing anyone until about a third into the book. Many times in the book the characters mistake each other for someone else. I believe the author does this to commentate on how alike, shallow, and interchangeable the men are. I even found myself unable to imagine a character to attach to the names. This is because despite all the time Patrick spends describing their luxury outfits, he spends not a single paragraph describing the person wearing the suit. Because after all, they’re entirely surface level people with not much personality to discuss. Since there was no character to associate with the names I read, I eventually gave up trying to differentiate them just thought of them as names, not people, just as Bateman would. Because there was nothing that set them apart from each other. In most books characters all have distinct personalities to set them apart and stand out to the reader; entire pages are dedicated to giving the reader a good idea of who they are. This book does the exact opposite, and I think that’s pretty clever. If you’re queasy and easily disturbed you probably shouldn’t read this book because it doesn’t really pull any punches when it comes to showing Bateman’s disgusting acts. Also if you don’t have the patience to read a lot monologues than you should skip this one. If you do choose to read it, however, then hopefully like me you’ll be drawn into Bateman’s twisted world of murder and money.
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Of Mice and Men
You’ve probably heard of this one. I was actually forced to read this for school and the enjoyment you get from reading a book greatly diminishes when you’re forced to read it. Thankfully this book is actually pretty good and pretty short too unlike the previous two books. It’s only a 107 pages long and I finished it in one afternoon. Written by John Steinbeck in 1937, Of Mice and Men follows George and Lennie on their way to work on a farm in California. George is smaller and the smarter of the duo. Lennie is the big dumb one. Lennie gets into trouble. George has to get him out of it. George hates that Lennie keeps getting him in trouble but cares for him anyway. You’ve probably already seen this dynamic a million times before so I won’t spend too much time talking about it. George and Lennie head down to the farm and as you can guess Lennie gets in trouble and George gets him out of it. The two of them dream of saving up enough money to buy their own land, not working for anybody. It’s a pretty simple book that anyone can read. Short and sweet. I really don’t have any complaints about it. It’s really too short for me to write much about it. If I had to complain about one thing though. The book is tall and thin so when I read it I can’t open it all the way without feeling like I’m bending it. That’s about it. The ending might leave a lasting impression on you (no spoilers) but other than that there’s not much you can think about or interpret. Just an all around good book you should probably read sometime.
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Kafka on the Shore
The most recent book I’ve read and also the longest at 480 pages. It was written by Haruki Murakami in 2002 and was translated to English in 2005. The book is about Kafka Tamura who runs away from home at the age of fifteen. And in the beginning it seems like it’s just going to be a coming-of-age story. It’s not. It’s an extremely strange story. Only every other chapter focuses on Kafka. The other chapters focus on Satoru Nakata who is an old man who can talk to cats. Nakata gets caught up in a bizarre situation involving a cat murderer and soon Kafka and Nakata’s journeys connect. I don’t want to spoil too much but let me just give you a good idea on how strange this book is. Fish and leeches rain from the sky, Colonel Sanders from KFC shows up except its actually a god pretending to be Colonel Sanders, Nakata is basically Jesus and gets a disciple and the two of them go on a journey to flip a rock to open a magical portal, etc. I found it entertaining. But later in the book, it starts to get confusing. No, it just doesn’t make sense. I don’t know if there’s something I couldn’t see or what but nothing made sense. I get the feeling the author didn’t actually have a hidden meaning for any of this stuff either. I like weird stories. I like stories that make you think What the hell is happening? Because those stories are unique. And I like them because as you’re reading, you start to piece together the nonsensical scenarios and figure out the story. At the end most of the things are tied up and you finally understand. Not everything is explained though and I like that because it leaves room for speculation. Kafka on the Shore sets up a mystery and strange occurrences and while you’re reading it you start to think that you’re getting it, but at the end, nope. Nothing is explained. It’s unsatisfying. Near the beginning a case where a large group of children suddenly pass out is brought up. And so you wonder when that case will be explained, why it happened. They never explain it and give you no clues to solve it on your own. Many things happen without any explanation at the end. Kafka’s journey while confusing still kind of felt like story, at least near the beginning. Nakata’s journey is just a mess. He wants to find a stone and open the entrance. Why? How does he know about the stone? What does opening it do? None of these are answered. And you can’t piece it together by yourself either. Why can he talk to cats? Why does he lose the power? Why did Johnnie Walker need a flute? Why did he need cats souls to get one? What happened to Nakata during the war? At the end there’s a climactic fight between Nakata’s disciple and some strange monster trying to get through the stone entrance. Except it’s not exciting at all. You don’t know what the monster is, why it wants to go through the entrance stone, and what will happen if it does. You don’t even know of the existence of the monster until a few pages before. There’s faint themes of self-identity sprinkled throughout the book but it’s muddled with things that just don’t seem relevant to the plot. Why did fish and leeches have to rain from the sky? It didn’t really affect anything. Who was the god masquerading as Colonel Sanders and why was he helping Nakata? Who even knows? I wonder if even the author knows. Despite all this I still found the book enjoyable. I was a bit frustrated during the second half of the book because I got no answers to anything, but it was still fun. I don’t recommend reading this book at all, but still feel free to check it out. I don’t have any desire to ever reread this, but who knows? Maybe I’m just dumb and can’t understand it yet. Maybe you’ll find some value in the cryptic mess of a story.