Author: Stephen King
The story starts out rather mild....a down and out man gets a second chance after losing his job as a teacher at a prep school. A friend helps him get a position as a winter season caretaker for a remote Colorado resort hotel. The road to the Overlook Hotel snows shut in winter....there is no getting in or out after the heavy snows hit. Jack just needs to keep an eye on the boiler that heats the huge hotel and maintain things. He brings his wife and young son with him....and they prepare to hunker down for the winter season. The only problem is that the Overlook has a mind of its own....an intrinsic evilness. Jack's son has The Shining...a strange, precognitive psychic power. He can see snippets of the evil that's coming. He knows his father is about to lose his mind.....
As is usually the case, the book is so much better than the movie. I loved the movie....it was creepy and strange. But, it also changed too much and left portions of the story out. The newer miniseries TV movie version from 1997 follows the book more closely, but I still prefer the story exactly the way King wrote it. I re-read this story so that I could read Doctor Sleep, King's follow up novel to The Shining, published in 2013. Supposedly there will be a movie version of Doctor Sleep coming out in 2020.
I listened to the audio book version of this story. The audio is almost 16 hours long and narrated by Campbell Scott. Scott reads at a nice even pace and is easily understandable. I have partial hearing loss but was easily able to hear and understand this entire book. Nice listening experience!
I enjoyed re-visiting this story. It was my first experience with King's books.....and one of the first adult horror novels I ever read. Loved it just as much this time as I did back then. Great story!
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