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Tag: literature

  • March 26th, 2012 9:53pm

    Stephen King’s review of The Hunger Games novel

    allthingsking:

    To clarify, this is not about the movie. Off we go.

    As posted on ew.com:

    As negative Utopias go, Suzanne Collins has created a dilly. The United States is gone. North America has become Panem, a TV-dominated dictatorship run from a city called the Capitol. The rest of Panem is divided into 12 Districts (the former 13th had the bad judgment to revolt and no longer exists). The yearly highlight in this nightmare world is the Hunger Games, a bloodthirsty reality TV show in which 24 teenagers chosen by lottery — two from each District — fight each other in a desolate environment called the ”arena.” The winner gets a life of ease; the losers get death. The only ”unspoken rule” is that you can’t eat the dead contestants. Let’s see the makers of the movie version try to get a PG-13 on this baby.

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    This is why I love Stephen King. 

  • March 18th, 2012 11:00am

    “My Da’ and Cuthbert’s Da’ used to have a rule between them: first the smiles, then the lies. Last comes gunfire.”

    “We’re almost there, aren’t we?” Susannah asked. “Almost to the shooting.”

    Roland nodded. “And the shooting will happen so fast and be over so quick that you’ll wonder what all the planning and palaver was for, when in the end it always comes down to the same five minutes’ worth of blood, pain, and stupidity.”

    — Stephen King – The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla

  • March 16th, 2012 3:08pm

    But there’s another reason: I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when we’re a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition.

    — Carl Sagan – The Writing Life

  • March 8th, 2012 2:02pm

    “Fuck you,” Roland said. He did not raise his voice. He might have told Blaine that a little Way-Gog would indeed be very nice.

    There was a shocked, horrified gasp from the overhead speakers— Little Blaine.

    “WHAT DO YOU SAY?” In its clear disbelief, the voice of Big Blaine had once again become very close to the voice of his unsuspected twin.

    “I said fuck you,” Roland said calmly, “but if that puzzles you, Blaine, I can make it clearer. No. The answer is no.”

    — Stephen King – The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands.