Title: The Shining
Author: Stephen King
Published: 1977

I love a good story teller. And Stephen King is exactly that. Seeing this book on the list was like seeing water in the desert, because this book was sandwiched between Silent Spring and The Autobiography of Malcolm X. You know, a little light reading.

Every childhood home is capable of generating emotions and thoughts from those who came to know the world in it. The high school football stadium brings the warmth of past successes or the bitterness of past failures. Places have power and character. We know it in our lives and in our fiction. In Sex And The City New York is just as much a character as Carry Bradshaw.

This is one of Stephen King’s powers as an author. He’s capable of reaching into the places we cannot put words and tell us something of ourselves. In this case, we all respond to inanimate objects like old friends or terrible enemies.

The Overlook housed every kind of excess. All the people who have been blessed with money only to learn that real human connection remains beyond dollars and cents. And the location’s disease leech into all who inhabit it, including the young family that minds the grounds over the winter.

SPOILERS ARE ABOUT TO HAPPEN SO STOP READING NOW!!

I loved Kubrick’s take on this book. I was surprised by deviations that Kubrick made from the book. The creepy little girls beckoning to Danny were all of Kubrick’s invention. And all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy was Kubrick’s addition. As much as I enjoyed the book, I am convinced that Kubrick felt the sinister soul of this story more than the author himself.

Read the book. Watch the movie. Both or either.