BAG OF BONES : A NOVEL

Rating:
Summary: A real surprise
Review: I was pleasantly surprised by this audio book. I didn't know King read it himself when I popped it in my player. He does a very good job with the reading though. The story is interesting and haunting. I found myself thinking about the story even when I hadn't listened to it for several hours. I think King reads the characters so well because of how he heard them himself as he wrote the story. The last tape has an interview with him that is very enlightening. I enjoyed the whole experience.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating, but not impressive.
Review: I'd never read any King before, but I found this pretty-looking hardcover sitting by the dumpster of my apartment complex, obviously in the belief that someone else might want it, so I gave it a try. I almost want to put it straight *in* the dumpster now. It's a pretty good story, although it could stand to be about 100 pages shorter. But there are some possibly triggering scenes in it that I feel are mostly gratuitous. I'm no prude but there are somethings that I feel shouldn't be *only* entertainment. I think the author felt a little guilty as the last page has a sort of apology to it about how even made-up tragedies should be taken seriously. Eh. Whatever.

Having said all that -- it IS effectively creepy, to this scaredy-cat at least!

Rating:
Summary: READ BEFORE THE GUNSLINGER
Review: Mr King himself says that every single one of his books are, in fact, about the Dark Tower. Some he wrote and he then found he had unintentionally woven in the Dark Tower plot to the story. So all the books are connected, and it's good to read them all in the right order. Or, instead, you can read the DT books in order, then read his other books after. But if you want to read every single book in order read them like this:

Bag of Bones
DT1-The Gunslinger
The Eyes of the Dragon
DT2-The Drawing of the Three
Rose Madder
The Stand
DT3-The Wastelands
DT4-Wizard and glass
Salem's Lot
DT5-Wolves of the Calla
The Regulators
Desperation
Everthing's Eventual:14 Dark Tales
Insomnia
Hearts in Atlantis
The Talisman
Black House
DT6-Song of Susanna

then, some vague connections in:
It
Skeleton Crew
From A Buick 8

then, read
DT7-The Dark Tower

For an explanation on why you should read them in this order, visit www.thedarktower.net

Rating:
Summary: STEPHEN IS DA MAN!!
Review: This is my first book that i ever read from King but this is an awesome book that keeps you reading until you're done because it took me 2 days to read. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes suspense and mystery this is the book for you. GHEA!
Cindy G.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book!
Review: I got this book for a Christmas present last year and it was wonderful! It's one of the less gruesome books that S.K. has to offer. But it was excellent reading, truly a "haunted love story"....definately recommended!

Rating:
Summary: It's a bag of something and it ain't bones....
Review: For the most part Stephen King is a very good writer, hell sometimes he's a great writer (The Green Mile, Wizard & Glass. "The Mist"), but man did he ever miss the mark here.

I couldn't finish it. The audiobook is 20 cd's but by time #16 rolled around I just couldn't take it anymore and sold my copy on ebay. For the last 6 or 7 discs I kept telling myself "Just one more and it's gonna rock out." Finally when I started talking over the cd, adding obscenities to liven it up a bit I knew it was time to call it quits. That was three months ago, I never found out what happened at the end and I could care less.

Stephen does do a great job of reading the story aloud and comes up with a wide variety of voices. I've enjoyed his work on other audio books like "On Writing" and "Blood & Smoke". "Lunch at the Gotham Café" is a personal favorite. But Bag of Bones is about as much fun as hearing George Takei read the Old Testament.

Buy the audiobook to "Salem's Lot" (read by Ron McLarty) instead.


Rating:
Summary: Good Info for Writers
Review: I did not expect this book to give me a lesson on book publishing, and was pleasantly surprised when it did. As for the story line, it was slightly dull, and the heroine and her daughter were a little too perfect for me.

At the end, Stephen King uses the narrator to tie together the loose strings, and it all seems so contrived.

Still, I enjoyed the book. Stephen King hasn't let me down yet. It's a great book for reading on the plane. And as usual, SCARY!

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Finish It
Review: I have read almost all of King's work. In the early days I was a rabid fan, eating up the classic King books - Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, Pet Sematary, Skeleton Crew - then he hit his first rough patch - Misery, Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne - all increasingly claustrophobic and dull. Only when he broke loose again with Desparation and The Regulators did I pick him up again. Then he started revving up The Dark Tower series and he was in the groove again. Bag of Bones reminded me of the dark ages after his initial classics. It is longwinded, static, cluttered and above all - boooooring! He sets up some interesting ideas - the RedTop Boys, Sara Laughs, the mystery of his wife's death, and then the book devolves into the cloying and uninteresting Maddie Devore custody battle. The evil old man, his witchy henchwoman, the sainted young mother and perfect cute girl were just too much. I kept trying to skip ahead but this annoying plot, with its wholly unbelievable legal battle (money can buy a lot in this country, but it won't buy you a judge willing to take a baby from a perfectly normal mother). And why does Maddie stay in the TR - other than masochism??? I wanted to find out what happened in the other story lines, but the cloud of the moronic custody plot eventually ruined the entire book and after 300 pages, I bailed out. This book would have been severely helped by either an editor or Mr. King himself realizing that he did not need the excess plot and get to the good stuff. What a disappointment.

Rating:
Summary: Ghosts of the past
Review: Sean Stewart, in his excellent novel "Perfect Circle," says that "Ghosts don't do things to you. Ghosts make you do unspeakable things to yourself." This is the essence of King's "Bag of Bones," one of the finest novels in King's recent career.

Right off the bat, King sets the reader up for a rough ride, as Mike Noonan's wife Jo dies in an accident. King writes about Noonan's grief with unparalleled honesty and frankness which touched me throughout, and as the story progresses we learn about their marriage and the secrets which lie behind even the best relationships.

The story itself is quite gripping, peopled with King's usually strong characters, and moved along at a consistently brisk pace. Mike Noonan, a relatively popular writer (King does love to write about writers, doesn't he?), begins by struggling with his own grief and a strong case of writers block, but before long he is contending with the pettiness of small-town politics and with a growing sense of a presence, perhaps presences, in his vacation house in Maine. The house, known locally as Sara Laughs, is almost a character in itself, one which reappears later in a different context in King's Dark Tower series. The tale crescendos in a satisfying and chilling conclusion which manages to tie together all of the plot strands King has woven and incorporates all of the complex thematic elements at the same time.

King's role as a horror novelist has evolved over the years, and while there are scares a-plenty to be had in "Bag of Bones," they are not the sort of scares we found in "It" or in "'Salem's Lot." These are not easy-to-digest monsters or vampires, but subtle fears which get under the skin and stay there to crawl around for a while. These are the shapeless fears that we hear in the dark, the worst conjurations of our imagination. Make no mistake, this is not a happy or comfortable story, but its chilling effects resonate in a way that others stories will not do.

"Bag of Bones" is a story about grief, about loneliness, about secrets, and about the way that tragedy can echo through the years and affect lives far beyond expectations. It is about facing the past, even when the past seems to be beyond suffering. King has truly woven one of his finest and most complex tales here, a story of a haunting past which will not be denied, a ghost story in the best sense of the term. The ghosts which haunt this story are those which knock on the walls of darkened rooms, which move things while we're not looking, which whisper secret words on a breath of air... but more than that, the spirits in this book are those which haunt the very depths of the human heart.

Rating:
Summary: Bag of Bones
Review: With the Dark Tower fury writhing in my brain, I have been reading all the books loosely involved in that series. "Bag of Bones" was one that was recommended to me as significant, and I greedily began to read.

It didn't take long for King to weave his magic. After Mike Noonan's wife's death, you are taken on a ride; the book is very involved emotionally, while also having some very frightening scenes (tap once for yes...). I actually really enjoyed the way King didn't define the lines between Mike's dreams and reality. Here was a man who was very realistic about what happened in the read world, and as he dreams his prophetic visions, and then sees those visions brought to life, we are able to sense his own confusion. What world are we in?

It was a very enjoyable book, overall. I didn't give it five stars because of the mass of information put into the story; I believe it could have been a lot shorter and still been as terrifying and moving. Whatever you think of King, however, it is hard to deny that he is very in touch with what goes on inside a person's heart: you could feel Noonan's sorrow in losing and missing his wife, the little things that served as reminders to his loss. Of course, where King is most in touch is that dark little corner in all of our minds that we fear, but cannot help but approaching. I lost some sleep and questioned my sanity: both signs of a great scary story.