Play Book Tag discussion

This book is a classic that I have been wanting to read (and I’m actually not a fan of Stephen King) for a while now. This is all to the movie inspired by this book, featuring Kathy Bates and James Caan, that I grew up watching. I had heard that the book was much more gory than the movie, but I feel like it wasn’t really. I feel like the main difference in that regard is that in the book, Annie was less forgiving and had more spells of anger.

I know this is a book review and not a movie review, but I think the movie did a great job at selecting which scenes to keep in or take out. A lot of the added stuff seemed like fluff that wasn’t necessary. Especially the internal dialogue of Paul (which is shown in italics). I’m all for internal thoughts, but if they are just reiterating what was just said in the previous paragraph, there’s no use for them. This just draws the book out unnecessarily.

The same can be said about when the narrator goes into so much detail about things that do not matter to the plot. There were three solid pages dedicated to something about how Paul writes? I don’t quite remember it because I started to skim it as it wasn’t essential to the book.

Something that I didn’t expect to read in the book was snippets of Paul’s progress on Misery Returns. At first I was like “Oh, that’s cool!” but as time went on with it I was questioning why I cared because I know nothing about the Misery stories and I have no urge to know how he chooses to end it. As time went on, the snippets kept getting longer and I just started to skim them.

Throughout the book “Can you?” was used so often. It is such a great way to be super conscious about evaluating if things are realistic or not. I do this so often myself when reading books or watching movies (Can you really be cut in half and survive it? The answer is no, it is not possible ). Ironically, towards the end of the book especially, I think the author threw this concept out of his own book. (view spoiler)[For Annie to survive so many head bashings and still be able to go after Paul and eventually make it to the shed was a big stretch to me. It was like whiplash at the end of the book “Annie was hit in the head and is now dead, but wait, she survived! Then she’s lit on fire which burns most of her body, but this doesn't slow her down. Then she's hit in the head again and is presumed dead. That is until she grabs at Paul from under the door. Then Paul sleeps after taking the Norvil (that’s more than a 20 minute nap so you would assume she would bleed out, right? Ha). He then wakes up and wow she’s not there, she must be alive. However, she is finally dead.” She had the strength after being bashed in the head multiple times, lit on fire, and left to bleed out) crawl out a window that is full of broken glass??? I’m not sure about that one. (hide spoiler)]

I’m glad I read the book, but (I hate to say this) I enjoy the movie so much more.

A local theatre company is producing a play adaptation of this work this month. I plan to go.

Sometimes the movie is just better, or so well done you can't help but love the movie more. I aint mad at ya!
I feel this way about The Shining. I almost look at the movie and book as 2 separate things. The movie is just a masterpiece, there is no way around it.