Audiobook Spotlight of Elevation by Stephen King

• Elevation

• By: Stephen King
• Narrated by: Stephen King
• Length: 3 hrs and 46 mins
• Release date: 10-30-18
• Language: English

Although Scott Carey doesn’t look any different, he’s been steadily losing weight. There are a couple of other odd things, too. He weighs the same in his clothes and out of them, no matter how heavy they are. Scott doesn’t want to be poked and prodded. He mostly just wants someone else to know, and he trusts Doctor Bob Ellis.

In the small town of Castle Rock, the setting of many of King’s most iconic stories, Scott is engaged in a low grade—but escalating—battle with the lesbians next door whose dog regularly drops his business on Scott’s lawn. One of the women is friendly; the other, cold as ice. Both are trying to launch a new restaurant, but the people of Castle Rock want no part of a gay married couple, and the place is in trouble. When Scott finally understands the prejudices they face–including his own—he tries to help. Unlikely alliances, the annual foot race, and the mystery of Scott’s affliction bring out the best in people who have indulged the worst in themselves and others.

Audio Book Review of Joyland by Stephen King read by Michael Kelly

Joyland by Stephen King
Read by Michael Kelly

From Publisher Simon and Schuster:
"Joyland is a breathtaking, beautiful, heartbreaking book.... Even the most hardboiled readers will find themselves moved."
—Charles Ardai, Edgar- and Shamus Award-winning editor of Hard Case Crime.
Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever. Joyland is a brand-new novel and has never previously been published.

My Take:  Once upon a time when I was much younger I read everything that Stephen King wrote.  I have always liked a good scary story and he seemed to know how to scary you.  I did grow weary of the swearing in many of his stories and his views of people who were religious were not always flattering.  I stopped reading after I listened to Cell.  I thought that he had lost what made him good at what he did.  I took a chance on Under the Dome and really enjoyed it.

This book is back to classic King.  There are no scary monsters unless you count the man behind the murder mystery which is really what this book is mostly about.  There is young boy who is suppose to have second sight but that really isn't the main thing in this book.  The whole mystery involves women who are being killed at amusement parks.  Devin and his friends that he meets during the summer while he is working at the Joyland Amusement Park Try and solve the mystery as one of the women was killed at Joyland and people have said that they see her ghost.  Although there is some paranormal things that happen the story is basically about Devin and his friends and how they had to learn that ways of the carny over the summer.  You will learn what it means to wear the fur.  A good solid story.

Michael Kelly does a really good job of making Devin come alive.  He tells that story so that you are hanging on every word and can't wait to get back to the story.

I received a review copy of this audio book from Simon and Schuster Audio in exchange for my honest opinion.

11-22-63 by Stephen King Audiobook Review

11-22-63: A Novel

• UNABRIDGED
• by Stephen King
• Narrated by Craig Wasson

From Audible.com:

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back?

In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King - who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer - takes listeners on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

It begins with Jake Epping, a 35-year-old English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching GED classes. He asks his students to write about an event that changed their lives, and one essay blows him away: a gruesome, harrowing story about the night more than 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a sledgehammer. Reading the essay is a watershed moment for Jake, his life - like Harry’s, like America’s in 1963 - turning on a dime.

Not much later his friend Al, who owns the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to the past, a particular day in 1958. And Al enlists Jake to take over the mission that has become his obsession - to prevent the Kennedy assassination.

So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson, in a different world - of Ike and JFK and Elvis, of big American cars and sock hops and cigarette smoke everywhere. From the dank little city of Derry, Maine (where there’s Dunning business to conduct), to the warmhearted small town of Jodie, Texas, where Jake falls dangerously in love, every turn is leading, eventually of course, to a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and to Dallas, where the past becomes heart-stoppingly suspenseful - and where history might not be history anymore. Time-travel has never been so believable. Or so terrifying.

My Take:  I use to read Stephen King novels all the time when I was younger but I lost interest about the time Cell came out. I recently listened to Under the Dome and really enjoyed it.   I heard alot of good things about this book and that it wasn't a horror novel so I decided to give it a try.  I was glad I did.  This story was about a man going back in time to try and stop the assassination of JFK.  It deals alot with his everyday life of living in the 60s and how much things have changed since then and not all for the best.  I was holding my breath for most of the book worried that Jake would do or say something that would give him away and whether or not he would follow though with the mission or not.  Stephen King is a great storyteller no matter what subject matter he chooses. 

Craig Wasson did an excellent job of bringing the story of Jake and the other characters to life that after awhile I felt like I was hearing the story about and from a long lost friend.  He especially breathed life into Jake's character making him someone that you really cared about. 

I would recommend this book if you are interested in the JFK assassination and if you just like a good story.  There is some sexual content and cursing so be warned.  

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Under the Dome by Stephen King

I really liked Stephen King novels every since I first read Carrie.  One of my favorite books and movies of all time is Misery.  I use to buy every book that he wrote until I discovered that I really wasn't enjoying them very much.  I decided that I would try Cell a few years back when it came out and didn't really enjoy it very much either.  I don't know what made me try Under the Dome but I am really glad I did.  

One thing is I listened to this on audio and the narrator did a really good job the different voices.  That being said this was a LONG book so took me quite a while to listen to it.  I think it was over 40 hours.  

Because there were so many characters I was alittle lost at the beginning trying to keep all of the characters straight but soon realized that I just needed to keep the main characters staright and if I remembered the secondary characters good but if not no really big loss.  

I really think that Stephen King's best works are when he puts people in a situation and lets us(the readers) just sit back and observe what they do.  He did this in The Stand and He does this in Under the Dome. 

One fall day nothing seems to be out of the ordinary,  People are out working in their yards,  a lady is taking a flying lesson over Chester Mills,  a gopher is lumbering along the road looking for food to eat.  One seconD everything is fine.  The next the town of Chester Mill is enclosed in an invisible dome where no one and no thing can get out or in. Even though the dome is the precipitating factor it's what happens inside the dome that is the real horror story.   What human's are capable of if given the means and the motive.  But there is good in the whole mess too.

There is quite a bit of violence and language throughout the book.  The main complaint I have about the book was the way that Christians were portrayed. I am not sure what type of Christians Mr. King has been aquainted with but even though there are people who are bit like Jim Rennie but the majority of the Christians I know are good upstanding citizens and contribute alot of good to the world.