At first, he seemed to me like the kind of guy that I should feel bad for, except that I couldn’t get over how many of his unlucky breaks have come because of his own terrible decision making. Jack is a man very much on edge, and he’s already teetering when we meet him. Reading it again over the past couple of weeks, I’m struck at just how much tension King was able to work in from page one. But I know I blazed through it at the same rate I blazed through King’s other works, and that while it left certain indelible images behind (the hornets in Danny’s room, the thing that Jack became smashing its face in with the roque mallet), I didn’t feel the full force of its impact until the readings that came much later. Those days are a blur of discovery now, some 30 years later, and the order of things has been irrevocably shuffled about. I was in the early stages of discovering King, those heady days when I had lots of books of his to catch up on, and this was one of a batch of paperbacks I bought that day – I think it also included Different Seasons and maybe Firestarter – for something like fifty cents apiece.ĭid I read it before seeing the movie? I honestly don’t remember. The top right corner of the cover had been clipped off, and the bookstore’s name – Trade ‘n Books – was stamped on the side opposite the spine. It was the paperback edition with the metallic silver cover that has the faceless head of a child front and center. I bought my first copy of The Shining at a sidewalk sale my favorite (then and now) used bookstore was having.
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