The Shining

Author: Stephen King

Rating: ⭐ 5/5

Date Read: 2014/01/10

Pages: 688

True story: I just finished reading The Shining and I’m completely freaked out right now. While writing this review, I’ve turned on The Daily Show (comedy) and started making bacon mac and cheese (comfort) in an attempt to return to the real world, where the only thing that scares me with relative frequency is the economy. I don’t know how well that will work, because I have an irrational desire to lock my bathroom door from the outside. If all else fails, at least there’s wine…unless (and it’s possible) Stephen King has also ruined that for me forever.

Deep breath. There are no creepy dead ghost zombie things in my bathroom. I am a scientist and I’m like 99.9% sure of that. If that degree of certainty is good enough for the journals Science and Nature, it’s good enough for me.

My history with The Shining began spring quarter, Freshman year of college. I was taking Intro to Film Studies, a course which required a weekly screening of a pedagogically relevant film. For horror, we watched The Shining. Now, Film Studies was in a large lecture hall, with a large movie screen and a state of the art sound system. I walked in expecting some campy old “scary” film. What I saw was Kurbick’s masterpiece in all it’s analog glory. Let me tell you, biking from Buchanan back to my dorm that night was pure torture. And when I arrived in the Francisco Torres lobby, this is what I saw:



I lived on the 7th floor. I took the stairs.

Anyway, I kind of ended up avoiding reading The Shining for a long time, for a couple of reasons. First of all, I couldn’t imagine that the book could be scarier than the movie (and it’s not, but it’s on par with the movie, which is pretty damn scary). More importantly, though, I knew that Stephen King hated the adaptation, which gave me pause. See, I thought The Shining (film) was brilliant, and I heard The Shining (book) had such contrivances as moving topiary. So, I figured that this was one of those times where a mediocre book somehow became one of the greatest films of all time.

I was wrong, both about the topiary (OMG please do not let me go near any topiary right now and also I am very, very happy that it is winter and all the plants are dead and I do not want them to come to life and try and kill me), and about the book.

Flash-forward to January 2014: I’m snowed in. A so-called “polar vortex” descends upon the Midwest, and for a few days it’s too dangerous to venture outside. My brilliant idea is to read The Shining, because that seems fitting. Way to make the feelings of cabin fever dissipate, Casey. Luckily, The Shining (novel), which really is fundamentally different from The Shining (film), is actually incredibly good, and I’m kicking myself for not getting to it sooner. And I’m sure I’ll stop being scared of it eventually.

Unrelated: I think I’ll be using the bathroom at the Starbucks down the street until further notice. You know, just in case.