Under My Tree This Year: Doctor Sleep

Christmas has always meant getting a good book or two as gifts from my family. Luckily, this year was no exception. I have fallen into the habit of buying myself a few books, wrapping them and popping them under the tree, so that on Christmas morning, I am never disappointed. In my opinion, it's better to take matters into your own hands if there is ever the chance that you might be disappointed in Santa.

This year, our family pulled names from a hat, and my dad ended up being my secret Santa.  As it turned out, not so secret though, because he just picked up the phone to see which book I wanted. Having just finished listening to the CBC interview of Stephen King and his son Owen King, I thought it would be nice to try Stephen King's most recent work, Doctor Sleep.

(Random thought--would it be intimidating to be a fledgling author with your father "Stephen King" watching on? Talk about a huge shadow under which to live. Mind you, I bet you'd have a little in with one or two publishers. Not sure. Owen King sounded pretty confident and grounded regardless. Maybe I should give his work a go.)

Now, I'm not a King fan per se, but as you may recall from my previous blog post in August 2012, I really enjoyed his historically based fictional account of the assassination of JFK in 11/22/63. It was my first kick at King, and I found it well written and very entertaining. When I listened to the interview on CBC, I learned that King had written The Shining. Doctor Sleep, as Stephen King explained in the interview, is the followup novel that presents Danny Torrence as an adult, and shows how the little boy in the movie has grown up. Now, I have never made it through the entire movie--it's just too scary. I sheepishly admit that I didn't know the movie was based on King's novel.

Having finished Doctor Sleep over the holidays, and I am going to suggest that it wasn't as good as 11/22/63. I know it's a totally different genre, and it's probably not fair to compare them two, but I was a little disappointed in Doctor Sleep. I've never read any of King's scary stuff and I wanted to be terrified, horrified, and disturbed. Sorry to say that I wasn't any of those things. In the end though, I did find it entertaining, and I would pick up another one of his novels for light entertainment.

I'm open to suggestions on which one I should read next.  I want it to be really scary. No half measures...I want to lose sleep...not be put to sleep.

I found this really funny interview with King speaking to a room of english university students. Thought I would include it, as an insight into King's mind.