The Shining

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Summary: Stephen King at his best
Review: This is the best Stephen King book except for Firestarter.But this is definitely his most chilling.It's about Jack and Wendy Torrance and their five year old son who are winter caretakers at an isolated Colarado hotel resort.But the son has a special ability enabling him to read minds and project his own thoughts.It also gives him the scary ability to see things other people can't see.The hotel's cook tells him that the things he'll see won't do any harm,they're just pictures.But the cook was wrong.I'm not going to tell you the rest you'll have to read it yourself.It's sort of long but it won't take long to read.

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Summary: Read the book, get scared, and throw it in the freezer!
Review: I read The Shining last year after being sick of hearing how great it was. (Hey! It's just a book!) The last straw was when I saw a Friends episode in which Rachel finds a copy of The Shining in Joey's freezer because he was reading it and got scared. And he says that The Shining is the best book there is. Well I bought it and read it. I found out it really is THAT great! It'll have you looking over your shoulder for a while. Only Stephen King can make you scared of a stupid bathtub. *****

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Summary: The shining best book of 03 and 04
Review: I started reading The Shining in 03 and finished in 04 and I think it is the best book i have or will read in both years and im an avid reader.there are parts in the book where I couldn't put the book down and read for hours and hours even when i had school the next morning.The book was brilliantly put together. I had stopped reasing the book for a week and when I started reading again I remembered everything that had happened. If u are not a big fan of reading u will still love this book if you dont then put the book down no harm no foul. This is a great peice of literature and it earned its place on my shelf. this book a psychological thriller is the best Stephen King book ive read so far but pet cemetary is next. So readers beware u will be scared!!!

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Summary: its great
Review: great book awseome Bush is a great president for our country.

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Summary: Moutaintop Hotel Massacre! it's OK
Review: Stephen King's books I've discovered over the past 20 years have always catered to the most common denominator(namely blue collar people) his horror novels are some of the only ones that have actually scared me, while annoying me at the same time and they almost always have the same recycled characters; writers, village idiots, neglected women or abused wives, lonely drifters, red necks, goofy villains,ect. His books usually start off pretty good with rich characterization and an intrigueing premise, but as you progress to the middle they start to get bogged down with too many plot twists and mind numbing descriptions, sometimes annoying dialogue, irritating protaganists always doing something illogical, by the time you reach the end of the story it really starts to fall apart, incondite dialogue, ridiculous reactions to dangerous situations, mountains of desriptions the size of the Himalayas, suddenly at the end the story it falls flat on it's face.....SSPPLLAAAAATTT!. This book is actually better than most of his later work, it suffers from none of these, like Carrie it's mercifully shorter and to the point, and yes it's scary. They made two film versions of The Shining , though Kubrick's version actually improved on the book slightly, by taking out alot of the silly sometimes cartoonish moments (like the bush animals in the maze coming to life , giving the kid a minimal role Thank GOD!, giving Jack an axe instead of a mallet) making it a darker, deeper, creepier, psychological thriller, too bad he forgot to put in more dialogue(a Kubrick trait) to flesh out the story! (prevents it from being a 5 star film). The new version is a WRETCHED train wreck avoid like the plague! horrible is too delicate a word to desribe it. Read This book, you might like it better than I did.

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Summary: The Best King Book. Period.
Review: King scares at his best in The Shining. The book starts off kind of slow explaining the past and why Jack, Wendy and Danny are going to live in the Overlook hotel all winter. But as soon as Jack trims the hedge animals you cannot put the book down. Literally! I'm not your usual reader, I spend at most 3 hours a week reading but while reading this book I was spending every evening reading for at least two hours! I urge...no I demand any King fan who hasn't read this to READ IT! And anyone who loves the horror genre to read this book too (especially if you think you can't be scared from a book). This is by far (IMO) Stephen King's best and scariest book. Period.

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Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: Stephen King really outdid himself this time with my favorite book of all time. You fall for the characters almost immeadiately and you feel their pain and their happiness. I thought this book was extremely creepy and it toyed with my mind. Just when I thought that ghosts couldn't get you during the day I was soon watching around the corner and pushing open the shower curtains at a much faster speed than what most people are used to. If you saw THE SHINING with Jack Nicholson in it, be prepared for a shock because it is nothing like the movie at all. I truley think it was his best work and is a MUST read.

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Summary: I wish i never saw the movie.
Review: I read this book long after I saw the movie. I personally thought that the movie was pretty scary, but reading the book, you realize that Kubrik actually ruined the whole point of the story and turned it into his own thing he wished it to be.
If the movie had never been made, there is no way that you would know early on that Jack would go crazy. You would just think that some ghostly entity was stalking the family in a creepy hotel (after the part with the old ghost lady in bathtub: scariest part of the whole book).
The whole book builds up and gives off little foreshadows and hints at how the problem will be resolved, at how the book would end. The movie does not even have the same ending! In the book, you can tell at the end that King had the whole format of how it would play out and end all thought out in his head. The way it was crafted and carefully plotted reminded me a lot of M. Night Shamylan's film's (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, Signs) and how every scene and peice from the story is vital for the outcome. If you saw the movie and liked it, it will only make the book ten times better.

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Summary: More about alcoholism than horror.
Review: This was one of the first Stephen King books I read, and I didn't understand why people found it so horrifying. Sure, there were some scary parts, but personally, I found Pet Semetary to be FAR scarier. Pet Semetary is one damn scary book. The Shining was an interesting, bizarre story, but I just didn't find it all that scary.

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Summary: Here's Johnny!!
Review: Have you ever read a book that was impossible to stop reading? I have and it was Stephen King's The Shining. The master of horror is good about writing books that you just can't put down. The novel is about a family that goes to take care of a huge hotel during the off-season. They are not informed that the hotel is ahunted until the last person is about to leave. The little boy of the family has the ability to "shine," which is the ability to see and communicate with the people that had been murdered in the hotel. The little boyalso had an imaginary friend by the name of Tony that played a big part later on in the book. The story contains the famous line "Redrum, Redrum, Redrum<"which is murder spelled backwards: aslo it is a sign of bad things to come. The storyline pulled me right in and i could not stop reading.
The suspense of The Shining is intense. King leaves you right on the edge of your seat. There is a chapter in the book where the little boy rides his big wheel past the room that the murders had taken place. He began to hear voices and saw apparitions at the end of the hall. He peddled as fast as his little legs would take him to get away. Even though he peddled as hard as he could, he could not seem to escape the voices. I wondered if the apparitions were actually going to kill him, but they had other things on their minds. I had to keep reading, that night I think I probably read eight to nine chapters. I could not put the book down to save my life.
The storyline and plot were absolutely astounding. King uses the most descriptive words and phrases. This book made me feel like I was the one there. I could picture the very scenes and conversations that were taking place. I love how King ends the chapters, he was able to keep me wandering what would happen next.
The story continues with horror and fear being bestowed into the family's lives away from home. Stephen King definitely knows how to throw you thorough many loops while reading his books. There are many parts to this book that shocked me and at times scared me a little. At one point in time the mother and son are out walking through a hedge maze that was builit behind the massive hotel. The mother turned around and all of a sudden her son was gone. She began screaming his name and going in circles. WEhen all of a sudden he just reappears. His untrustworthy imaginary friend talked him into leavign so they coul dgo have a talk. Yeah I know, it's kind of weird but King makes it so appealing that I felt like he had pulled me into his world. The father is trying to write a novel at the same time he is supposed to be performing keep-ip duties on the vast hotel. The spirits eventually start speaking to him, which ends up being the worst thing that could happen.
The novel seems to just gradually flow to the next sequence, rather that having a great deal of flashbacks, like some of King's other works. He keeps you in the present story. King told the story of the family at the very beginning and kept sequence after sequence going strong throughout the book. This novel was a very interesting tale of the supernatural and how it can possess other people. King has a very proficient mind to come up with some of the books that he has written. The Shining is a book that you need to just take a whole day to read and use a great deal of imagination to allow yourself to be drawn into his writings.
Hang inthere when you first start the book because it starts off rather slow. Once it hits about half way through the third chapter it starts to pick upand gets a little out of the ordinary. If someone is looking for a good book that you can not stop reading I suggest Stephen King's The Shining.