If all goes as planned, I'll be participating in Twitter chats (hashtag #sleepalong) and posting updates and answers to discussion questions on the following dates:
Monday, September 30: Doctor Sleep Read-along Kick-off!
Monday, October 7: Discussion #1 (approx. pages 1-180)
Monday, October 14: Discussion #2 (approx. pages 181-360)
Monday, October 21: Wrap-up Discussion (total 544 pages)
I read The Shining soon after it's publication in 1977, at the age of 16 or 17, and have not reread it since. A recent interview with with Mr. King, published in The Guardian, included this insight:
King notes with some amusement that he has been around so long that kids who read and loved him in the 1970's now run publishing houses and newspapers; he is revered, these days, as a grand old man of American letters. The experience of reading King young – "Under the covers with a flashlight at summer camp," as he puts it – doesn't leave one, and although he says, casually, that "it's pretty easy to scare a 14-year-old", the pleasures of his books endure.I don't think the experience of reading King young has left me. The Shining and Carrie helped shape my reading preferences, but I wonder now what other lasting traces the experience left, so I will be focusing on the experience of reading the sequel in "real time". In the 36 years since I read The Shining, Danny Torrance and I have aged together. I've changed, my reading preferences have changed, my perspective has changed. Will it still be as easy to scare me? Will I understand Danny's changes? I think it will be a fascinating read. Join me if you dare.
