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it was amazing 5.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2014 — 4 editions

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The Man Who Fell to Earth

by Walter Tevis

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Fool Moon (The Dresden Files, #2)

by Jim Butcher (Goodreads Author)

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Jan 23, 2026 05:48PM

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The Shining

by Stephen King (Goodreads Author)

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Simon said: "
Critically acclaimed British horror writer once described this novel as “obviously a masterpiece, probably the best supernatural novel in a hundred years!” I don’t think a better statement could have been conjured to enforce the true genius of this n
Critically acclaimed British horror writer once described this novel as “obviously a masterpiece, probably the best supernatural novel in a hundred years!” I don’t think a better statement could have been conjured to enforce the true genius of this novel, Stephen King’s third published novel, a novel that is a far cry from his first published attempt, “Carrie”.

I think everyone who has been alive for at least the last twenty, if not ten years, knows of Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of the novel, an adaptation in which Mr Kubrick took a lot of liberties, and ignored a lot of what Stephen King had written in his fantastic novel. I was one of the lucky people to have read the novel before I watched the film because the film is so different, there could be a lot of disappointment for reading the novel after watching the movie.

There have been many great haunted house/hotel novels in the past: Shirley Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” is one of the greats that comes to mind, but there is something different and more reality-based about “The Shining”, and I think this comes from the brilliance King enthuses his three main characters with when he writes about them. Most haunted house stories have a company of about four different people, most of whom don’t know each other, are innocent within their own lives, and have to face up to a fear that is supernatural. In “The Shining”, the three main characters are a family, known as the Torrance's: Father (Jack), Mother (Wendy) and Son (Danny). Jack is an ex-alcoholic who gets a job as winter caretaker for the heavily pristine Overlook Hotel, one of the greatest American hotels in the last century. He will bring his family with him to stay over the winter months – they will be snowed in, they won’t be able to get out without help from park rangers, if they are able to make it through the snow, and they are not alone.

The title of the novel comes from a gift that Danny has – he is susceptible to people’s thoughts and emotions as well as to the past and future of his surroundings. He is able, through his gift, to sub-consciously awake the hotel’s past horrors – those that have died or been murdered, that are now permanent residents of the hotel that want Danny’s gifts for their own terrifying purposes and they don’t care who they have to get through to get to Danny.

This would have been a very horrific process of story-writing had King just decided to use this as the basis for his novel, but this is Stephen King we are talking about and Stephen King is not a normal writer – he is a genius, up there in the Dickens class as a storyteller, as some critics have put it. Jack has an alcohol problem and a violent temper. He has already broken up his son’s arm in one of his rages before the story has even begun, and the horrors of his alcoholic addiction play a large premise towards the horrors of the story and the way in which the Overlook uses him for their own ends. Not only this, but he has a history of watching his own father as an abuser, someone who took a cane to his wife and, in simple terms, smashed her up. It is these terrifying experiences that make this one of the greatest horror novels ever written, and in my own humble opinions, it ranks for me, as perhaps one of the greatest American novels of the post-war period.

This is the novel that made Stephen King a true star and set him on his way to being the most popular novelist of his generation. “Carrie” and “’Salem’s Lot” had sold very well as paperbacks, but now King had a hardcover bestseller on his hands. The world was now his oyster, and as a writer, he could do anything he wanted.

I can still remember the first time I read “The Shining” and how much fun I had with it. It is a very deep novel, a novel written by someone who has now found his craft and truly understands it. He is not just telling a story that will scare his readers – he is approaching the method of this art with his own demons and his own thoughts and teachings. Stephen King was an alcoholic himself at this point, battling with his own fears, as a writer and as a father and family man. This comes through a lot in the novel. The character of Jack Torrance seems to be Stephen King himself, in a parallel universe, a Stephen King who had allowed his fears to get the better of him, to have never had a wife who had retrieved “Carrie” from the dustbin, urging him to complete it. King is not afraid to admit his own faults and fears, and I think that is another genius of his writing. A lot of authors would never admit to their demons and if they had written “The Shining”, it would just have been another haunted hotel novel that might have passed through the boundaries of time and gone on to become just a good story. But King has made this into a masterpiece and it is a novel that can be read again and again, allowing the reader to discover something different each time they fly through the pages. Kubrick might have made a great movie, but he took out all that made this novel important, and I think King was right in his criticism of Kubrick’s adaptation for all them years.

If you want to really understand “The Shining”, don’t see the movie first – read the novel and you will not need to worry, because your guide for this great journey will be the true genius master, Stephen King himself. For me, it is certainly one of my favourite novels that has ever been written, and in a hundred years when we are all dead (hopefully not haunting the Overlook Hotel), this book will still be read and still be thought of as not just a great horror story, but a great American classic! ...more "

Jan 22, 2026 11:07AM · see review

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