Around the Year in 52 Books discussion

"Johnny, the small boy who skated at breakneck speed into an accident that for one horrifying moment plunged him into The Dead Zone.

Johnny Smith, the small-town schoolteacher who spun the wheel of fortune and won a four-and-a-half-year trip into The Dead Zone.

John Smith, who awakened from an interminable coma with an accursed power—the power to see the future and the terrible fate awaiting mankind in The Dead Zone."

I read this Stephen King book for the Week 19 topic: "A New York Times best-seller". This seems to be one of the more popular of the Stephen King books, but I honestly didn't know anything about it going in. Well, not until I read On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft and Stephen spoiled a scene for me, a couple weeks ago.

It is one of the stronger King works I've read. As is common for his books, it has great characterization and realistic setting but then throws in one bit of the supernatural, in this case psychic ability. That the main character, Johnny, when realizing his ability behaves in much the same way I would if suddenly come upon such, makes it a fun read.

My only nitpicks would be that there were some slow parts and there is one unfortunate scene were he has a Vietnamese character pronounce a word with Rs instead of Ls. It's an Asian stereotype, and there are Asian cultures which do have issues with the L, when learning English. But that is specifically cultures which lack that sound in their language. Vietnamese is not one of those. In fact, they are good at the L and bad at the R.

In Vietnamese the R sounds like a cross between an R and a Z, such that my wife often says, "give me ze zremote, I don't want to watch your silly zrobot film."

I haven't read The Dead Zone in years, but I loved it. That is unfortunate that he included that stereotype. Being who he is, I doubt he would do that now, but of course, it does not excuse it.

Oh goodness - I just realized that this post was from 2017! Oops. I saw SK though, and I HAVE to comment. :)

it's a good comment, discussions are welcome.

I'll move it to the proper folder, if y'all are interested in discussing! (Us mods have been slowly deleting the threads of backlog, but we are happy to revive any conversation that gets revived!)