Stephen King is a name known by all bookworms – it does not mean you have to have read his books, but you have probably seen a film based on one of his stories, even if you have not realised it. This man is a legend in the book world, probably most famed for his horror novels, but he has books in all sorts of different genres (Mr BookwormandTheatreMouse is a huge fan of the Dark Tower novels) and you cannot escape seeing his books in bookshops, pretty much wherever you are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, you may be like me and had never really picked up a Stephen King novel (well, I made a small attempt at reading ‘The Stand’, but it was a little on the large side for me), but after a friend mentioned that someone they knew had suddenly become a huge Stephen King fan, I thought I should probably give his books a go again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
‘Misery’ had been sitting on my shelves for quite some time. It is a book that is on my ‘100 Books to Read Before You Die’ poster, so I knew I needed to read it at some point. It is also one that I have seen the film adaptation of (quite some time ago), so I knew the plot and thought I could probably handle this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As I read this book, I had one question on my mind: why on earth had I left it so long to pick this book up? Why had I avoided Stephen King for so long (other than the fact I was convinced his books would terrify me)? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
‘Misery’ is an absolutely stunning book – a fantastic masterclass in how a book can create suspense and tension without a whole lot of bells and whistles, but through very skillful writing and chracterisation. A story of pretty much only two characters for the majority of the book is one of the most atmospheric tales I have ever read – and gives us one of the most terrifying villains. I cannot spoil this book for anyone who has not read it (if there is anyone out there who has not read it) – but I urge anyone who likes the idea of a noir thriller with an edge to pick this book up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think it is safe to say that I have now been bitten by the bug to read more Stephen King novels – I am still not sure I am ready for ‘The Stand’ or some of the real horror, but I am definitely ready to read some more of his backlist and I have a few ideas about what I might pick up (thanks to excellent recommendations from friends).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you have a favourite Stephen King book that I should be adding to the tbr pile?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stephen King is a name known by all bookworms – it does not mean you have to have read his books, but you have probably seen a film based on one of his stories, even if you have not realised it. This man is a legend in the book world, probably most famed for his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[987,36,1066,1067,54],"class_list":["post-1816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-a-year-in-books-2023","tag-fiction","tag-misery","tag-stephen-king","tag-thriller"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8jrc7-ti","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1816"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1825,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1816\/revisions\/1825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1816"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1816"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.bookwormandtheatremouse.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1816"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}