The King
When I think about Stephen King, HORROR is the one word that comes to my mind. I have not read any of his works before. I have not even heard of him until I watched Shawshank Redemption. I heard that the movie was adapted from a short story collection written by a Horror book author. And his name is Stephen King.
It was in the last year of my high school, I guess. It was one of the highest rated movies in IMDB. At that time around, I picked and watched movies that were rated high on IMDB not knowing how that rating system works. (Then one day I saw Jilla rated 9+ and changed my opinion)
That was the time I watched The Godfather, Pulp Fiction, The Shining and more. I hated all of them. More like I didn’t understand any of them. After joining the college, I got a movie fanatic as my buddy and because of him I started exploring more English movies; enjoying in the journey.
That’s when I get, I started devouring Quentin Taratinos’s movie and admiring the sheer brilliance of Stanley Kubrick. (In short, I was embarking on the journey of becoming a puluthi) And I rewatched The Shining in a rainy night. The room I lived in the 2nd year of my college would give a haunted vibe. The environment and the visuals of The Shining haunted me for weeks after my watching of that film.
That’s when I once again heard of Stephen King as the Shining was adapted from his work. Also, the shocking part of it was he hated The Shining movie. My prejudice of him made me hate him. Then here and there I would hear his name, but I didn’t bring myself to watch any of his novel to movie adaptations.
It was not until 3 years after that, I heard his name again from one of my office mates. We were in the same FSD training in IBM and she was an otaku. It was hard to find a fellow otaku but in Bangalore, I founded a lot. I even went to a Japan convention and visited Anime Streets at the start of 2020. So, when I came to about that, we became friends instantly. But she was a lighter otaku or seasonal otaku who’d watch short anime series only. I suggested to watch some series and came to know that she was also a bibliophile (AND A MAJOR ONE) and because of that it was difficult for her to find time watching anime.
She reads a lot! What can
I say! I WAS a Bibliophile once upon a time. It was in my early teens. I used
to read a lot of Tamil books but after a stage of my life, I stopped reading
more books and became an occasional reader. Then Chetan Bhagat helped me in restoring
my book reading habit a bit. He was also one of the main reasons I started
reading English books.
I am going to write a whole post dedicated for him and his books in the upcoming days. So, I don’t want to brag about him now. Let’s talk about The King!
Her name is Neeraja. She properly introduced me to Stephen King. Two people I met in my office made me to read a lot of books again. One was her and the other one was Sai Teja – a Telugu guy who introduced me to Sidney Sheldon.
I was just exaggerating when I said that Neeraja reintroduced me to Stephen King. On one our anime talks, she casually asked me about Stephen King. She had read the book IT, it seems. She was telling about it for a moment and nonchalantly bragged about Stephen King. That name stuck in my head. I had bad impressions on him before but somehow, I wanted to read his works and then wanted to judge him.
I thought of buying the book – IT initially. On one of my dates with my girlfriend, (the one who called me brother when I asked her to marry me.) I went to a nearby mall with her to spend time with her. (But I couldn’t bring myself to hate her.) In the mall, we went to a book shop. (Aw! I wish she’d accepted my proposal) **After few hours of cringe-y sobs**
IT was there (Pun Intended). I picked up the book and got blown away by its size.
It was fucking 1100+ pages long!
I decided not to buy IT!
(I don’t know how it had happened but, nowadays whenever I see a huge/bulk book, it gives me a hard on! What’s happening to me?!?!?!)
King – Sheldon – Puzo
November 19, 2020 – I started reading my first Stephen King book – The Dead Zone!
I had chosen this book to get a taste of non-Horror Stephen King. In the end, I made the right choice and I think Stephen King’s writing style is what I would want to write if I ever become a writer. And I also believe that Stephen King is my kind of writer and I would love his works. Let’s see!
It was a pure Cathartic experience!
It was nearly a year after I decided not to buy IT. In the same book shop, I gifted my (self-proclaimed) girlfriend a book called 13 Reasons why.
She gifted me Sidney Sheldon’s book – The Rage of Angels.
As I was told earlier, my Telugu friend introduced me to Sidney Sheldon. Unlike Stephen King, I had never heard of him before in my life. When I think about it, I have heard about him once in my college. I heard it from my brother once, but I had completely forgotten about that long back. But I remembered the book name my brother had mentioned, and it was my first Sidney Sheldon book.
It’s If Tomorrow Comes.
It was one of the badass books that I have ever read. Sidney Sheldon writes female protagonists in a way that it feels natural rather than being feministic or something. I liked Rage of Angels too. It’s a tragedy. It was the tragedy I liked after a long time. (Before that was a Rajeshkumar’s pulp fiction where the villain wins)
I decided it was time to read another Sidney Sheldon’s work and bought Master of the Game.
Master of Game was not what I thought it would be. I didn’t hate it and I didn’t love it!
Felt like reading an Indian TV Serial!
After I started reading Chetan Bhagat, I wanted to read a lot of English books. I had tried reading Sudeep Nagarkar’s books and Ravindar Singh’s books in my college days. Since most of them were young adults, I liked all of them. But I wanted to read genres other than young adults. As a result of that thought, on the final of my college, I had bought a book written by Mario Puzo on a local secondhand book shop for just 100 Rupees.
It’s the Godfather.
I didn’t think too much about it at that time. I just bought Godfather on a whim. I had watched the movie many times at that point. I loved it and that reason was enough for me to buy the book version of it!
It’s a crime and thriller genre book and it’s a change from all the young adult books I had read up until that point of time. It was one of the most difficult read I had experienced in my life. It nearly took a month to complete the book. It was very hard for me to concentrate on such high vocabularied book. And to top it off it was written in 1940s – in a time if people whose political scenario was difficult to understand. Oddly, I enjoyed reading most of its moments though I had difficulty in concentrating on that book.
Later, I came to know that the book has a second part and it involves Michael’s time spent in Sicily. At that time, I didn’t want to read another hectic book. But now it was the right time to read both the Godfather books.
So, I bought The Sicilian!
It was a book full of pure political genius.
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