Finally got my copy of Stephen King's latest book - Cell. Like many people I've been a fan of Stephen King for years now, but haven't actually read much of his work! Of his forty-odd published works, I can only remember reading Misery, 'Salem's Lot, Pet Semetary, Night Shift and Desperation!
It's a sad state of affairs, I know...
The reason for my King deficit is quite simple. I've never felt the need to read the books, because of all the movie and TV adaptations! Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (disliked by King) remains one of my favourite movies of all time, The Green Mile was a decent film, The Shawshank Redemption is a classic, I remembering being freaked out by moments in the It mini-series with Tim Curry, caught most of The Stand mini-series on TV, Carrie was very unsettling during its Prom sequence, Misery with James Caan was also very enjoyable, and The Shining mini-series was interesting, yet inferior to Kubrick's reworking...
Adaptations of King's novels come in for criticism from his fans, but the movie/TV examples above are all worthy of praise. I'm sure King's original material is just as brilliant (if not better) but I can't read a book of a movie I've seen -- unless it particularly struck a chord with me. As it is, though, I don't care if I never read The Shining or Carrie. I know what happens in those stories, so they hold no surprises for me.
Conversely, I don't care if I never see the movie versions of 'Salem's Lot or Pet Semetary... because I've read the books. Just one of those things. Perhaps I should read the stories that became bad movies -- The Tommyknockers, Dreamcatcher, Thinner, etc? Hmmm.
Cell concerns a "pulse" signal sent to every mobile (er, cell) phone on the planet, turning every mobile phone user into a homocidal maniac. The book has already been picked up for movie adaptation by Eli Roth (Hostel), and its plot has a vague similarity to Spiral - the TV spec script I'm working on myself. So reading Cell can also be considered research for me -- to see how King dealt with his "end of the world" scenario...
A review of Cell will be posted on DMDB in due course. I'm only a few chapters in, but... so far, so bloody...
