Stephen King's Joyland

[Enthusiast]

Don't miss this one. We loved it. It was moving.

My wife isn't much of a Stephen King fan but she really liked it.

[raccoon]

1. On request list for it at my local library. nt

[Inkfreak]

2. Huge King fan.

I somehow missed this book. I haven't heard about it. I'll have to pick it up. Anxiously awaiting Doctor Sleep in September.

[Enthusiast]

4. Readers love it.

http://books.google.com/books?id=1WCSMQEACAAJ&dq=stephen+king+joyland&hl=en&sa=X&ei=UgsEUsWNI4OSyAGZ7IHwCw&ved=0CEoQ6AEwAA

[NRaleighLiberal]

3. My wife and I both devoured it quickly and loved every second!

Of his recent ones, Duma Key is still the go-to book (it is especially wonderful as an audio book read by Mad Men's John Slattery!) - but that is a monster to digest....Joyland is just a wonderfully fun summer book!

[Enthusiast]

5. I liked Duma Key too.

[Curmudgeoness]

6. Thanks for the heads up.

I used to love King's books, but somewhere I got bogged down in a couple that I struggled to get through and I have stopped reading him. I will check this one out-----just because you said I should.

[Enthusiast]

7. You are welcome.

I hope you enjoy Joyland.

You have the cutest name, Curmudgeoness.

[SheilaT]

8. I have a copy on reserve

at my library. Will go there Monday to pick it up. Looking forward to it.

[SheilaT]

9. I'm only about 80 pages into it, but he gets some

details weirdly wrong. It's 1973, and he has the landlady casually microwaving soup. I don't recall seeing a microwave oven in anyone's kitchen until several years later, and that in the household of someone fairly affluent. And it was a big deal that she had it.

The same landlady cautions the narrator to always use rubber gloves because of diseases. Really? While doctors have been using rubber gloves for a very, very long time, mainly when doing surgery, the general public didn't have a sense that they should wear them when cleaning up vomit or blood until the AIDS epidemic hit, nearly a decade after this conversation takes place.

He also has people presciently saying smoking will get banned more and more in the future, and there will be lots more regulations about things to come.

I'm being reminded of too many pre WWI novels I've read in which some character or another is predicting the imminent coming of a terrible war. And by pre WWI novels I do NOT mean ones written before 1914, but ones written well after in which the foreknowledge is too obviously planted by the author.

[Enthusiast]

10. Shelia, you should be a detective.

I didn't even notice any of these details. In any case it wouldn't have been a deal breaker for me.

[SheilaT]

11. It gets worse.

It's 1973. The kid, Mike, is 10. So he was born in 1963. We weren't wearing miniskirts and going braless that early, which is what his mother is supposed to have done before she got pregnant.

I notice details. Plus, I'm all of a year younger than King, so I'm of that era and I remember stuff like my clothes quite well. Mary Quant, a London clothes designer, made the first miniskirts in 1964 (according to Wikipedia), but basically no one in this country was wearing them that early. It was more like 1966 that our skirts got that short.

Because I'm a good detail person, stuff like this bothers me. Especially when it's not necessary to the plot.

[Enthusiast]

12. SheilaT, you are a unique person.

I must say. But you are correct, of course.

[SheilaT]

13. Don't get me wrong. I still enjoyed the book a lot.

I finished it a couple of hours ago.

There's some more stuff at the end that he has wrong, but I don't want to post it here because it would be a plot spoiler, and I won't even post it with the warning. I would still recommend the book. I am in awe of how well King writes. He knows how to tell a story, one that many of us want to read, and that's why so many of us keep on reading his books.

[AngryOldDem]

14. **Sigh**

I'm currently eighth in line for this book at my library.

These sorts of detail errors bug me too, because there is no excuse for them. Stephen King fan here, but yes, Steve, getting things right matters, no matter how famous of an author you are. Farm out the fact-checking, if you can't/won't do it yourself. I'll gladly volunteer.

I find stuff like this a distraction as I read. With some authors, it can be a deal-breaker.

ON EDIT: RE: Your comment above about these facts "not being necessary for the plot." King at times can be example number one of why authors need editors. That makes these mistakes even more irksome, IMO.

[raccoon]

16. THanks for that info. I'm on the list at my library, may remove myself from it. nt

[SheilaT]

17. Don't remove yourself from the list.

Read it anyway. It's still pretty good. It's possible you'd never notice those details yourself, or you simply wouldn't be bothered by them.

It's a pretty quick read, not as bloated and in desperate need of editing as too many of his books.

[raccoon]

20. Maybe those people are time travellers? LOL

"He also has people presciently saying smoking will get banned more and more in the future, and there will be lots more regulations about things to come. "

ITA about that and the microwave. I don't remember them being in common use until the 1980's.

[SheilaT]

21. Love the idea that they're really time travellers!

Prescient remarks about things like smoking being banned also irritate me.

I had to give up reading novels set just before WWI because invariably some old person would sagely pronounce that soon, very soon there would be a terrible war.

In far too many historical novels the characters are just 20th or 21st century people dressed in funny clothes, will fully modern attitudes, ideas, and behaviors. Recently I started a book called The Boleyn King by Laura Andersen. The premise is that Anne Boleyn did not miscarry of a son in January 1536, which is what actually happened, but carried the baby to term. Really cool idea, because if that had happened and the baby lived, Henry would never have divorced Anne and she probably would have outlived him. She probably also would have gone on to have other children, but that's not very important. This novel takes up when William, that son, is turning 18 and about to become King in his own right, without any regents looking over him. The problem is, all of the characters in the novel behave like modern people. I had to put it down after about 50 pages because I just couldn't get past that.

The reason books like "The Other Boleyn Girl" by Phillippa Gregory are so popular, despite real howlers of historical inaccuracy, is that the people reading them know nothing of that era other than what they've seen in things like the dreadful Tudor series on TV. I've been reading about these people for over fifty years, mainly straightforward biography, and I become crazed by this sort of stuff.

[raccoon]

22. Yes, there are too many historical novels with people having ideas about women, race, slavery,etc.,

that are wayyyy too 21st Century.

Intereseting you would mention Philippa Gregory. I just listened to THE BOLELYN INHERITANCE. I didn't catch howlers but maybe I just wasn't listening for them that much.

[SheilaT]

23. A lot's going to depend on how much you already know about that era and those people.

I haven't read that particular book -- actually I haven't been able to read any of her books, and she's become quite prolific. When "The Other Boleyn Girl" first came out I was struck with a basic historic inaccuracy in everything I read about it, mainly that Anne and her sister Mary were in direct competition for Henry VIII's affections.

No. They weren't. Period. To portray it that way is so wrong that I couldn't bring myself to read it.

I did see Gregory when she came to Kansas City and spoke at a Rainy Day Books event (wonderful bookstore) about her then-latest, "The Constant Princess" about Katherine of Aragon. She had tried very hard to get into Katherine's head, but from the part she read to us I was clearly hearing a substantially modern person. Gregory isn't quite as bad as some, because she does do her research, but I think she tries too hard to make her characters somehow relevant to modern readers, as if the only differences between us and them really is the clothes we wear and perhaps the food we eat. No. It's far more profound than that. Which is why I keep coming back to straight biography, because usually those authors are trying very hard to understand their subjects, and get it that there are more differences between us than we can fully know.

[KC]

25. My best

friend's parents had a microwave and
it was before 1968. It was probably one
of the first ones. I remember being fascinated wit it. Funny though I remember her showing me what happened
if you put a dinner roll in for something like
30 seconds. Back then it came out
hard as a rock! lol

[kairos12]

15. Enjoyed it very much

[raccoon]

18. Finally my name came up at my library, and I'm enjoying the book. One thing I like about

it is that it isn't so infernally long and isn't as thickly populated as the city of Philadelphia, which many of his books are.

In the book he mentions the quote

"I'd rather see you dead, little girl,
Than to be with another man." --coming from the Beatles song, "Run for Your Life."

John Lennon lifted that line from a song Elvis recorded, “Baby, Let's Play House.”

Just FYI.

[Enthusiast]

19. Thanks........nt

[AngryOldDem]

24. To me, this was so reminiscent of "The Body."

Simply told, beautifully written.