Category: Book review

There are some ideas that are brilliant, some that are maddeningly dumb, and some that can only be done once. This is one of my favorite books and least favorite movies.

World War Z, as the rest of the title suggests, is a oral history of the zombie war. Basically the book is written interview style with multiple survivors of different cultures, creeds, ages, and social standings We get traumatic accounts of epic battles, tearful goodbyes, and get a cool view of how others outside ourselves would deal with such a catastrophic event. The book never feels repetitive in tone or character arcs and that is what makes it so damn enthralling: genuine feeling characters around the world dealing with classic, simple zombies- a threat most wouldn’t take at face value but Max Brooks demonstrates how endearing and dangerous they are.

The movie ditches almost everything but the zombie apocalypse. We get an obscene amount of fast, kinda green looking, Pg-13 28 knockoff zombies overruning the globe as Brad Pitt goes through action set piece after action set piece trying to find a cure and get back to his family. Watching this hurt. Bad. The stories and characters I loved in the book were striped and replaced with a Emmerich wannabe action movie. I admit, I may be hard on the movie; many folks I know that really enjoyed it never read it at all.

I’m going to say pick one, and whatever you pick, don’t go to the other because chances are you will get royally bent out of shape. I favor the book’s variety and emphasis on strong characters, setting, and simple zombies. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Ya know how there’s a drawback to every career choice, no job is completely great and wonderful. I know being famous ain’t all it’s cracked up to be but this made me not want to be a writer, director, or any kind of artist. Misery is the rare kind of story that believably real and so much more terrifying because of it. Much like Pet Sematary, which I covered earlier, both movie and book are great but this time I can say I prefer the book, though the movie is still an amazing adaptation.

Paul Sheldon is a famous author of a series of books named after the main character Misery, which he has gotten fed up with over the years. He has a tradition to go to a cabin he has in the mountains when he’s about to finish a book. He finishes the last book in Misery’s series to his relief. On his way back down to go to his publishers, he gets caught in a storm storm and crashes his car. His car totaled, his body unconscious and wrecked, it looks bad for the author. But he is saved by a large, heavy woman named Annie Wilkes that brings him home and nurses him back to health. Annie loves the Misery books with all her heart. Looking through his bag, she finds Paul’s manuscript for a new Misery; Paul lets her read it, after all she did save his grumpy ass and nothing could possibly go wrong, right? Annie is full of girlish glee…until she reads the ending. She snaps, screaming at Paul, slamming him and his bed up and down in a violent rage. She forces him to burn the new book he has been working on and begin a new book to revive Misery, dedicated to her of course. Paul is in living hell, immobile, isolated from a world that thinks he’s dead except for a sheriff in the mountain town. But can Paul hold out until then while Annie grows more intensely mad and her true colors reveal themselves…

A main difference I get between the book and movie is that the two main characters are much more flushed out. In the book we learn a lot about Paul as he struggles to finish the book he never wanted to make and how by the end he almost loves the series again because of how much it challenged him. Annie’s portrayal either way amazingly lifelike but there were touches in the book that strangely made me relate her to Blaine the Mono from the third Dark Tower book. The movie does an amazing job with the acting, especially Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes, and never ceases to loose tension in it’s confined space. I highly recommend it if you enjoy good old fashion suspense over gore and body counts, though who can forget the hobbling?

“Sometimes Louis, dead is better.” Pet Sematary by legendary writer Stephen King was my introduction to his insanity and brilliance when I was three or four, not much older than poor Gage Creed. To this day the movie still has an impressive talent for creeping the shit out of me and tugging at my heartstrings a bit. The book is equally as good and pretty damn close comparison wise, but I’m getting a little ahead of myself.

Louis and Rachael Creed move into a new house in rural Maine with daughter Ellie, cat Church and baby son Gage. Its a wide, picturesque place; a long road of speeding trucks separates them from there old, kindly neighbors Judd and Norma Crandall. The Crandalls and Creeds hit it off, especially Judd and Louis. Louis is a doctor, and first day at his new job, a young man named Pascow dies on his table after getting hit by a car while jogging.  Louis has dreams of Pascow’s ruined body warning him about something Judd once told the family, beyond the old Pet Sematary out back. While the rest of his family is away, Louis finds Church dead. Judd sees the pain on Louis’s face of having to break the news to Ellie. Judd reluctantly takes Louis to a very special place far beyond the ruins of the cemetery to bury Church. Judd tells him it used to be a special place for the Native Americans that used to live there; after a long trek, Judd tells him to bury his own. Days later, Church returns. Not the sweet lovable cat he knew, Church exists with a horrible stench and a lonesome, sometimes hostile temper. Louis asks Judd how the hell church came back. Judd tells him the legend of the land but stops short when Louis asks the obvious question, have ever buried a person up there. Pascow returns to Louis again, warning him away from the ground again. Time goes by and on a fateful summer’s day Louis finds himself with a broken heart and a breaking family when Gage perishes tragically. Against everything, Louis bring Gage to the burial ground and waits for his son to come home with horrific and tragic results…

A story this simple, genuinely genius in how frightening and sad it is proves why King is a legend at the craft. Whether you watch the unforgettable movie or took the extra initiative and read the book, they sync up really well. The characters feel realistic and flushed out well. A lot of the imagery sticks with you; the most memorable image from the movie to me is Zelda, Rachael’s dying sister. That shit stays with you man. Definitely locked in my  top 3 favorite Stephen King stories of all time, perhaps even my favorite considering how much it influenced me, I can’t recommend it enough. Thank you as always and just remember, “some lines aren’t meant to be crossed, doc.”