Complaints to One Mr. Stephen King, Regarding The Green Mile
or rather
Tiny Little Annoyances
First off, I'd like to let you know that if The Green Mile is your favorite book, I don't intend to offend you when I say it's been slightly annoying me, mainly for one reason: Redundancy. Part of why I think this is because it's the second time I've read these pages (The first time was two or three weeks ago, I barely remembered any of it). However, several things could and should have gone without being repeated, and the description could have been shortened or used later in the book (Though I don't know this for certain, I'm only on page 13 of 536). Overall, I'm not saying I hate the book, just that the book could be a little more...or rather
Tiny Little Annoyances
...interesting.
And don't get me wrong, I do find it interesting. In some places, it's interesting in ways that it shouldn't be. Within five pages of chapter two, the narrator has mentioned his urinary infection three times. At the same time, he is remembering when John Coffey, who can be assumed to be the main character, first enters the state penitentiary. Each time he says something about his urinary infection, it's always equal to him saying something like, "My urinary infection was aggravating". It doesn't appear to serve a purpose, and reminds me of the book How Not to Write a Novel by Howard Mittelmarx and Sandra Newman; The authors use an example that they title "The Gum on the Mantelpiece", in which they mislead the reader into thinking that a piece of already chewed gum will serve some purpose in the story, only to have all the characters leave the room and have one character simply clean the gum off the mantelpiece later. It completely distracts the reader from the storyline. Quite simply, the urinary tract infection and piece of gum don't need to be involved in the story, and pull away from it. People want to hear about urinary tract infections and insignificant pieces of gum as much as they want to hear a full plot summary of some TV show they don't plan on watching from the show's biggest, most obsessive fan, or most resentful, cocky critic.
King's redundancy in The Green Mile also appears when he is describing John Coffey's size. While it is important to know how large a character is, it makes one weary when they are told the exact size,"six feet, eight inches" (King 10, 13), of John Coffey twice within four pages. In between, King uses words such as "huge" (King 11), and "big" (King 12). Yes, the reader is aware that someone who is six feet and eight inches tall is pretty big and huge. Using one paragraph, or even one sentence to express his size would suffice for at least one chapter. In regards to description, so far the book has been only that. Granted, it is important to know the setting of the story. But King's use of setting drags it's feet along for an entire chapter, especially since his first couple sentences, "This happened in 1932, when the state penitentiary was still at Cold Mountain. And the electric chair was there, too, of course" (King 3), doesn't bring the reader to want to find out much, other than to find out what "this" is. At the end of the chapter, the only thing really pulled out from it is that sometimes murderers die at Cold Mountain by electric chair. It appears that the barely introduced conflict has disappeared in the fog of the setting and won't be back for a long time.
Frankly, a last annoyance from the story is that so far, the reader has not been told the narrators name. While King takes the time to introduce minor characters who are unlikely to resurface and quickly force five new major characters on the reader, four of them all within one sentence, he neglects to tell the reader the narrators name. It would have been easy to let one of the characters address the narrator by his name in dialogue, after all, it happens often in real life. But no, Stephen King won't let the reader know his name. He even takes one of the characters, Harry Terwilliger, and has him address the narrator as "boss"(King 12), where it would be the perfect opportunity to tell the reader just who, exactly, is speaking.
Despite all these little things that buzz around my face, I can swat them away because even though The Green Mile has it's flaws, King has given the narrator a riveting way of telling us what is going on and what has happened in the past at Cold Mountain. And I'd like to read what else he has to say. Even if I know too much about his urine, but not one of the simplest things about him, his name.
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12/24/2010
I guess this is sort of like a backup blog post; I’ve just had this thought in the back of my mind for a while (By the way, I’m still on the same page as before).
Every single time Stephen King describes the state penitentiary in The Green Mile, I never get anything out of it. I’m sure he has some image in his head like this:
I tried to make it accurate, but I couldn’t figure out how it looked even after reading it three times. Maybe I’m just a little dense. What I see when I read his description is this:
…What I’m trying to say is that if you’re reading this book for leisure, you may get a bit frustrated at Mr. King.
Hey, cut the urinary infection some slack!
ReplyDeleteWith the start of The Green Mile comes a new reading experience for me. I've never read any horror/ thriller books, and this will be my first. On that note, in the 57/536 pages I have read so far, I have not felt the least bit scared... maybe this will change as i progress farther into the novel? Anyhow, aside from the lack of scare factors, there are many interesting qualities to the writing workmanship and plot of the novel.
ReplyDeleteFirstly, I must say that the writing style is very different from that which I am used to reading in other books. If this makes sense, the writing is very human, very real. The story is told in first person, from the perspective of a prison gaurd working in the section of the penitentionary designated to prisoners waiting for execution. The narrator is quite witty , and certainly doesn't leave out details: he goes on and on about his urinary infection throughout the first several chapters of the novel. I think this very realistic approach is a good way of telling the story because the reader can relate to common emotions the narrator is feeling. Also, the narrator doesn't just tell the story, but adds in info about his life outside of work, who he likes of the coworkers, and who he despises (aka Percy Wetmore). The style of writing also incorporates humor, because the narrator is pretty funny and adds wit into what might otherwise be a dry read.
One criticism I have towards the story so far is that it seems to reiterate points already made, and the story moves fairly sluggishly. So far, I don't think the story has actually moved through one full day. The author likes to bask in specific moments and details of one small event, instead of moving forward. Although this is a good technique for some events crucial to the unfolding of the story, such as the tale of how John Coffey murdered the twin girls, at points, so many details are not necessary. For example, the narrator takes up almost a page and a half talking about how he was able to find the story of John Coffey's murder in a library above where he works. As was mentioned briefly earlier, I think that the narrator's urinary infection is mentionede way too much; the reader gets tired of hearing about his poor health, and would rather read something that actually leads farther into the ultimate plot of the novel.
Lastly, the character descriptions in the story are very smartly written, and connect well to each other to support stereotypes the reader is supposed to see throughout the novel. At the beginning of the novel, the narrator tells the stories of many past criminals who have been executed during his career. One idea that is emphasized in each criminal's story is that they did not put up a fight when going to be executed, that all their evil notions they may have had when performing the original crimes were drained from them long before they got executed. This gives the reader the idea that these criminals that the narrator oversees everyday don't make the job too hard, and almost softens the reader to these poor guys, stuck forever in a gloomy cell with no one to talk to. The narrator turns the reader against his enemy, Percy Wetmore, by almost antagonizing him, and describing scenes in which he is annoying. One quote I liked by which the narrator describes Percy reads, "Everyone hated him, presumably, except for his political connections, Percy himself, and maybe (but only maybe) his mother" (King 48).
Overall, I am enjoying the witty writing style of King in The Green Mile but hope that the story will start to move more quickly towards the main points of the novel, instead of detouring off to describe minute details that the reader does not care to read.
Mr. King, You Have My Full Attention (Why Yes, That Was a Lie)
ReplyDeleteWell, I’m catching up. Somewhat. I’m only on page 64 out of 536 (Yes, I’m planning to continue reading and finish the novel in one sitting during a lonely icy day, when nobody will be able to enter or leave my house because the street leading to it is so steep their car would slide into the lovely holiday display set up by my neighbors. Oh, you didn’t guess it? Well now you know). Also, our literature group has come across some difficulties regarding who is or isn’t the main article. Abby posted her initial review first, however my post showed up first because I started my draft in blogger before she posted hers. In addition when I went to copy, paste, and delete my post, I discovered that Natalie had reposted her post underneath my initial post. HELP IS DESPERATELY NEEDED.
I’d like to review my comments on my initial post, then move on to responses on my fellow readers of Stephen King’s The Green Mile, and then continue to new comments on pages 14 through 64. My initial post, in a nutshell, grieved about the following: redundancy in the novel (urinary tract infection, height of John Coffey) and it’s relation to the book How Not to Write a Novel by Howard Mittelmarx and Sandra Newman, long, drawn out descriptions, and the lack of introduction to the main character.
Regarding the urinary tract infection, it comes up more and more often in the novel now, often being used as a way to make other characters feel sympathy for our main character, an excuse for our main character, or a reminder of the setting (talking about how they did not have much treatment for illnesses at the time). It appears to come in useful. However, every time it comes up, it’s not always for a good reason, and still does not appear to be necessary to the plot. King appears to have the incessant need to remind you, again and again, that our main character’s groin is painful, and goes on repeat saying how much hotter it made that summer. In contrast, if King has continued saying how large John Coffey is, it has become less noticeable because of how much more interesting the plot has gotten (I’ll get back to that later). King’s descriptions in this novel have stopped being as long as the first chapter, but they seem to have become more confusing. He talks of how the buildings switched places in a way that my brain doesn’t appear to be able to visualize (But I didn’t quite understand the placement of the buildings in the first place, so it might just be my problem. A final comment about my previous article is that I’d like to withdraw my comment about not knowing the narrator’s name, due to the fact that four pages past the point that I wrote my article from, I was told that the main characters name was “Paul Edgecombe” (King 17).
In response to “C-Bizzle”: Fine, I’ll “cut the urinary infection some slack”, but it is rather annoying. In response to other comments/articles: Natalie, I don’t really have any comments because I agree entirely with everything you said. Yes, it makes Paul seem very real, sometimes a little too real, if possible. Also, I find your last point very interesting as I didn’t notice this at first. And Abby, I love your comment on the narrator’s age, because I just realized how ridiculous it is. Along with that, I feel like Paul talks more about Mr. Jingles than he does about Percy, which caused some confusion to me when all of a sudden Paul was upset over Percy and I had forgotten everything I knew about Percy.
ReplyDeleteIt’s likely that if I add every single new comment I have about the portion of the novel I just read, it would make my post way too long. So, I’d like to address my new main issue with this novel: the book in its entirety; the big picture, ignoring the excess of little redundant little flowers all over the pictures landscape. To me, and likely many others, Paul’s perspective is simply not interesting enough. I found that the most interesting chapter barely had anything to do with Paul, and was actually about the crime that John Coffey had committed. Chapter four was riveting, exciting. Chapter four made me want to read more. But then, in chapter five, Paul was back to his own life, talking about how enjoyable it is to pee outdoors. And then he went on to complain about how annoying Percy is, without giving much detail on anything that would lead me get a strong hatred for Percy. And then he went on to talk about a magical mouse (of which was apparently the ONLY MOUSE in the place where PEOPLE DIE. So, executions take place in the building, you can smell burning meat, and there are virtually no rodents? Seriously? What’s even more annoying is that we haven’t had any personal sightings of Coffey after learning about his crime. Overall, what’s the most annoying is that Stephen King is attempting to make three stories at the same time all while introducing new characters (of which the reader doesn’t know which ones they really need to remember). The first one is from the perspective of Paul Edgecombe, who I don’t find an interesting character. The reader gets a break from Paul’s perspective in chapter four (my favorite), where the reader is told the story of Coffey’s crime (rape and murder of two nine year-old girls). Personally, I wish King just started the story from the conflict of chapter four and created an entirely different story from there. Finally, the last story is about Mr. Jingles, an intelligent mouse, of which I believe is too fanciful of a character and throws any realistic part of King’s novel into the Twilight Zone. Along with that, King’s multiple stories seem off balance. He spends more time talking about the dullest story, giving the reader little snippets of the kind of writing they were looking for, as opposed to making most of the story fascinating and providing dull sections to tell the reader important information. Why should I read this somewhat interesting book if I could pick up an entirely different book that’s interesting all the way to the end?
King needs to bring the plot together and stop repeating himself like a parrot. Soon. Or else staying indoors during that dreaded icy day in winter break is going to be the worst day ever.
Page: 116/536. (Finally de-lazified myself enough to move my post.)
ReplyDeleteSince I'm not much of a person for saying "Blah, blah, blah" at the beginning of a blog post, I'll just jump right in.
The beginning of the book was difficult to understand. The author chose to start with a story about a woman known as Beverly Matuomi. I don't know why the author threw in some random story, but hopefully its purpose will become clear to me later in the book. It was disappointing, not to mention confusing, that four characters were mentioned in the first three pages, and yet I saw nothing about those four characters after the first chapter. Granted, two of them are dead, but that doesn't mean the author can get away with being irrelevant.
The reader finds out that the narrator, Paul Edgecomb, worked at E Block nearly eighty years ago. (E Block is a place where capital offenders are detained and eventually executed.) Obviously, this does not make much sense, unless the narrator worked there when he was twenty-something and is now a hundred years old, which sounds unlikely. I'm really curious to find out how this is possible. At the same time, I'm also wondering about Mr. Jingles, a very talented mouse. It's like he's psychic or something, because he can tell the difference between an ill-intentioned person like Percy Wetmore (Paul's annoying coworker) and a good person like Paul. Between these two observations, I'm thinking that the main plot will have an element of the supernatural mixed in somewhere. I'm excited to find out what this supernatural element could possibly be.
Speaking of plot, this book is lacking. Sure, there are tensions between Percy Wetmore and his coworkers, but the conflict hasn't escalated at all because Mr. Jingles is stealing the spotlight from the other characters. (Not that I don't like mice, but it's much easier to understand the motives of characters that actually speak English.) It's hard to tell whether Percy Wetmore will be a major part of the plot or just some random annoying person that was thrown in at the beginning of the book to capture the reader's interest.
I thought it was strange that the narrator, Paul Edgecomb, was talking a lot about John Coffey at the beginning of the book, and I haven't heard anything about him since. John Coffey is an intimidating inmate because of his height and build, but he's quiet and wouldn't hurt a fly. It's hard to believe that he raped and murdered two little girls. I'm suspecting that he will play a bigger role in the main plot, once I figure out what the main plot is (see previous paragraph).
Because Stephen King is a critically acclaimed author, I'm hoping that he will successfully tie up all these loose ends. If he doesn't, I will be very disappointed.
In all truth, since my previous post I have found it very difficult to pick up the novel and continue to read. Mainly because the last two chapters I have read consist of the whereabouts of a random mouse that sometimes visits the green mile section of the penitentiary.There is no interesting plot whatsoever, and none of the events in the book seem to have anything to do with each other in the slightest so far.
ReplyDeleteThe author started off talking a lot about the tenants of the penitentiary, which was semi-interesting. At least it seemed to move the story along a bit. But all talk of the tenants has ceased, and the spotlight is now on one single mouse who doesn't have anything interesting to be said about it.
Overall, I am on page 98, and wishing I could just finish the book already. At least the narrator has stopped talking about his urinary infection so constantly for the past few chapters. It would be miraculous if the story suddenly picked up an interesting plot and characters, but I have major doubts that this will happen. For such a well known author, I am not totally sure of his writing ability.
[SPOILER ALERT]
ReplyDelete(Sorry about not posting, my internet wasn't working.)
Page: 246/536.
Finally! Paul shut up about his urinary infection once and for all! I'm not going to spoil this for all you people who haven't read this far, not to mention that the details of what happened sound really weird. Like REALLY weird.
However, as the first two words of this post suggest, I am spoiling something, happening as of right now. Percy came back into the story (I noticed Amy pointed out that Percy magically disappeared), and he killed Mr. Jingles! Or at least, he almost did; it’s kind of hard to tell. Maybe John Coffey will come to the rescue. Must read on!!
But before I do that, I still have more to say. The plot is still disappointing me. There's a new factor in the plot, making the book all the more confusing. Now there's Billy Wharton, an annoying prisoner that gets sent to a rubber room in a straitjacket. The plot was (yes, past tense) at so much of a standstill that it almost made me wish for Percy's antics. The only part of the plot that was even mildly interesting was John Coffey and his magical healing powers, which is totally unrealistic and throws off the rest of the book.
Hopefully, some of these problems with the plot will go away now that something actually happened (See paragraph about Percy and Mr. Jingles). @Natalie – Maybe this book will turn out to be like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in the sense that all of the seemingly random parts of the book will connect at the end. It’s hard to imagine this book turning out any other way without it failing miserably.
So, I read ahead while I was writing this. It turns out that Paul is back at his retirement home, where there isn’t much of a plot either. He keeps repeating himself, especially when it comes to Ellen, his “special friend.” Maybe he has Alzheimer’s due to old age. But that still doesn’t explain the redundancy in the E Block parts of the book. I haven’t read up to what happens after Percy kills Mr. Jingles. But unlike my feelings toward the earlier parts of the book, at least I’m excited to find out what happens next.
Wrote another post.
ReplyDeleteYou can't put images into comments though, so I put it after my first post.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
ReplyDelete(Yes, that is the title)
I decided to stop taking notes on The Green Mile for the sake of saving time, so I apologize if I’m not able to give you any exact quotes for this book. However, I dog-eared some pages because the quotes would definitely come in useful, so I have two quotes I would like to share with you. Also, given that I realized how ridiculously long my last post was after I posted it, I’m trying to make my comments very brief (I am also doing this for the sake of saving time).
Current page: 152
Pages to go: 384
Excitement towards reading the rest of this book: very little
As I have previously stated, the urinary tract infection that’s bothering our main character, Paul Edgecombe, has been very frustrating. I thought that it was going to go away, and it did, for a little while. But it came back, more descriptive than ever. I’m not going to quote it, because, quite honestly his description takes up several paragraphs and it’s utterly disgusting. Also, I still can’t visualize the setting very well, as described above. The redundancy of the novel has appeared to lessen, but probably not because he has stopped being redundant (I’ll get back to that later).
Commenting on other’s posts, I agree with Natalie in that this is a very dull book. As for Abby’s most recent post, I do not have a comment because I haven’t gotten that far in the book.
Now, here are my favorite quotes:
Quote Number One: “Maybe Harry came closest when he said it would do no good to tell other people, not just because they wouldn’t believe but because they wouldn’t care” (King 98).
Quote Number Two: “I guess what I’m saying is that I didn’t realize how far back I’d have to go in order to tell you about John Coffey, or how long I’d have to leave him there in his cell, a man so huge his feet didn’t just stick off the end of his bunk but hung down all the way to the floor. I don’t want you to forget him, all right?” (King 118).
What I love about these quotes is that they point out exactly what I’m feeling. In the first quote, King states that people wouldn’t care if they were told about the experience that he just told the reader (the selective eating decisions of Mr.Jingles, the mouse). Now, what in the world made you think that if nobody would care, then I would be the one to care? If it’s not interesting, don’t put it in the book. Quite frankly, there’s been an issue in this book where uninteresting things are put into the book for no good reason. And with the second quote, I feel like Stephen King is just being lazy. I didn’t forget about John Coffey, I was wondering where he went. Meanwhile, it appears that King has just written and written and decided that he didn’t want to take the time to remind the reader of one of the main characters.
And King has gotten more and more confusing. I can’t tell if he’s being redundant anymore, simply because he has decided to make several different stories happen all at the same time. I think we’re time travelling, because he keeps going from one event to another in no particular order. There isn’t any one direction that the story is moving in; it appears that King just hasn’t made up his mind about where he wants the story to go. The story is first about John Coffey, then about Paul Edgecombe, then about Mr. Jingles, and then once again about Paul Edgecombe.
Another final problem I’m having with The Green Mile: the narrator keeps telling you how he’s feeling as a way to describe how you should feel. If the narrator is descriptive enough, this shouldn’t be necessary.
I’m not saying Stephen King is a bad author. I’ve read Cell and It, and those were both pretty good. I’m saying it seems that The Green Mile is one of his worst books, or so it seems to me, since I’ve been trying to tear it apart from day one.
Ok, so basically, this is one of the worst books I've ever read! Which is saying a lot, because I tend to try to find something good in every novel I read. But I think I've found the first book where really... I can't. I expected so much more from Stephen King, as he is such a highly renowned author. Everyone obsesses over his novels and movies, so I don't understand how he could have written this.
ReplyDeleteIt takes about half of the book for Paul, the narrator, to actually get to the point about what he's trying to say in the story. And then, it turns out all he really wanted to tell us is that this inmate guy, John Coffey, actually is a magical genie sorta guy who can heal people. Which makes me take this book even less seriously! This was supposed to be a thriller... not some book about magic that I might have been interested in about eight years ago. I still don't know why exactly Stephen King thought this would make an interesting story... but if he ever spills that, I'm sure it would make a much more interesting story than "The Green Mile".
In truth, I've always been more drawn to realistic or historical fiction, but I decided that I would give another genre a try this time around. Unfortunately, my experience with this fantasy/thriller (although it's not...) is of disappointment. I think I'll stick to my preferences next time.
The most unfortunate part is that I wasted my time reading this book.... so unless you're the type of person who enjoys reading boring, no plot whatsoever stories that always end in happily ever after, this novel is certainly not for you.
The Green Mile, by Stephen King: Contradicting Previous Statements, Not Too Bad
ReplyDeleteContrary to my previous reviews and Natalie’s article (and maybe Abby’s, she hasn’t posted yet but I assume hers will be negative towards the book as well), I actually ended up enjoying this novel. This might seem ridiculous, considering that all my previous review said the novel was, among other things, redundant, boring, and illogically organized. However, within the last 384 pages of the novel (most of which took me the entire day today to read; the rest of those pages I read at a debate tournament), King really brought together everything he mentioned in the book, and while it was still not very logically organized, it fit the well, because SPOILER ALERT like Abby mentioned, he is actually around a hundred years old (specifically, one-hundred-four), because John Coffey’s magical powers made it so. Thus, old age led to Paul Edgecombe’s disorganization throughout the novel.
I feel as if this book was written during a transitional stage for Stephen King; it appears as though halfway through the book he suddenly gained some sort of professionalism and realized how to write in an appealing way. Part of this probably comes from the more frequent mentions to his current life and discovering that his story isn’t actually just some random memory but actually a connection to the sad and depressing life he lives in his retirement home. In the end, the story actually becomes meaningful and finishes off every conflict that it started, making all of the characters the reader wonders about an important part of the story and giving description to what happens to all of them. King gives the excitement that he showed in chapter four of the novel, and also manages to get the reader to feel emotion for the characters such as love (for John Coffey) and hate (for the obnoxious Percy, who eventually goes insane, thanks to Coffey). At some points during the book, I literally wanted to punch Percy in the face; I was ridiculously happy when he finally got what he deserved.
Along with that, I’d like to say to my fellow The Green Mile reviewers that even though Stephen King is normally a horror/thriller writer, this book was not in his usual genre. I remember once I read somewhere that it was supposed to be inspirational (I don’t remember where, and I’m not even sure if it was this book or another), but so far I haven’t found a direct source where they clearly state what genre this book is. After reading it, I feel as though it was a fiction that was fantasy/mystery/drama/thriller.
Finally (there’s really much more I could say, but I feel it’d be too long and make others groan having to read it, and it’d have to take up more than one comment), I’m going to go ahead and give it an 7.8972374823894129347162 out of 10 (That’s right King, you get a C+), because I feel that it became a very satisfying book in its second half. I’d recommend this book to anyone who wants to feel good at the end of reading the book for not only the ending that leaves no loose string untied but also for reading the entire 536 pages, who wouldn’t mind having to sit through 200 or so boring but necessary pages.
Review of "The Green Mile"
ReplyDeleteRating: 4/10
So if you read my previous post, you probably would have assumed that I would give this novel a rating of 0.5/10. But as Amy said, the book does pick up a little towards the end, for which i give it some credit. I mean, at least it wasn't thoroughly boring the WHOLE way through. Still, I must say that it just isn't my kind of read. I don't enjoy fantasy/sci-fi/thriller novels unless they are really well written (here's to you Harry Potter!)... which is usually the case. Maybe it takes a certain type of reader to endure this book, but I couldn't find it in myself. The text was dry, and the plot was not well directed. Even if it does turn out that the narrator is 100 something years old, the reader doesn't find that out until the very end, and if one doesn't read to the end, it is probably because they gave up halfway through.
I'm sorry to be so pesimistic, but it's my opinion. I just found the whole turnout of the story really unrealistic. I mean, seriously? Magical powers? Well, one thing I can say for this book is that it really has enlightened me to the books I enjoy reading, and what I probably won't. On a sort of random note, this novel was made into a movie, which I would be interested to see, starring Tom Hanks. Perhaps it's better than the book?
Page: 300.
ReplyDeleteYou may have noticed that I haven't read very far since my previous post. That's because this book is too depressing. I'm also hating on Percy right now. If I make myself read one more word about him, my mind will explode from all of my angry thoughts.
Let me explain. Percy almost killed Mr. Jingles, Delacroix's mouse, which must have been terrible for both Delacroix and the mouse. However, that's nothing compared to Delacroix's execution. Percy supposedly "forgot" to make the sponge wet, so instead of conducting electricity, the sponge caught on fire, thus causing Delacroix to catch on fire, leading to a horribly painful death. This may be the narrator's bias affecting me, but I think Percy did it on purpose.
Although, I must say that this particular event was very well-written. The image may have been horrifying, but Stephen King did a good job of describing what happened. However, I still have a problem with the retirement home sections of the book. It seems like that part of the plot is almost at a complete standstill. He is so redundant that it’s affecting me. In fact, I almost typed, “He is repeating himself repeatedly.” Maybe he has amnesia? Oh well, I’ll find out eventually, after I read the last 236 pages in the next two days.
Page: 536/536. Amazingly, I actually finished the last 200-something pages in two days. And I actually enjoyed reading it, despite what my other posts say.
ReplyDeleteEven though I read everyone else’s reviews before I even finished the book, I was still surprised at how good the ending was. It definitely did not disappoint. Like Amy said, Stephen King did a good job tying up all those loose ends, leaving me satisfied. However, the first 250 pages or so were still a drag. If I didn't have to finish this assignment, I would have put the book down long ago. Until John Coffey was snuck out of E Block, nothing even remotely interesting happened. If you’re willing to endure long, boring beginnings to reach an interesting end, I would recommend this book for you. If you hate being bored, I’ll tell you now: whatever you do, DO NOT read this book. I’m not interested in your brain exploding from boredom.
Like Natalie said, maybe the movie could actually be kind of good. The beginning of the movie certainly can’t be worse than the beginning of the book. I’ll probably end up watching it in my free time, if I ever find any. (Don’t expect me to be skipping Winter Formal to watch a movie, though.)
Rating: 5.00000001/10. The 5 is for an excellent second half, and the 0.00000001 (yes, I counted the zeros so there are no inconsistencies) is for a lame first half.