KJ's Book Reviews

  Insomnia Written by Stephen King About 780 pages Originally published in 1994 Rate 5/5 This is now officially the longest book I have ever read. Before Insomnia,  the longest book I had read was Midnight Sun . Even though this book was incredibility long and it was required reading, I really loved it. What is Insomnia about? Ralph Roberts is a 65 year old man. His wife, Carolyn, has recently passed away and he has been suffering with insomnia ever since. His symptoms have been becoming hard to ignore, the hallucinations are just the half of it. All of Ralph's friends offer some advice, but nothing works. It seems to Ralph that he will just have to endure it until the day he dies. One day as Ralph was walking around town, he witnesses a car crash and his one loving neighbor Ed Deepneau turns into a fiery ball of rage as he accuses the person who crashed into him of murdering babies. Confused by the accusation Ralph intervenes.  My thoughts on Insomnia There are quite a bit of plo

  Blaze Written by Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King) About 260 pages Originally published in 2007 Rate 2/5 This book has a lot of really interesting lore to it. Hopefully my summary of the lore is as accurate as possible. Stephen King wrote under the pen name Richard Bachman because he wanted to be able to write stories without people knowing who it was. He did this as a sort of experiment to see whether his book sells remained the same, went down, or went up. No one really bought any Richard Buchman books at first until he was outed as Stephen King. When that happened, Richard Bachman literally died and they found an unpublished manuscript in a hidden box with his things. Pretty elaborate stuff. What is Blaze about? Blaze is a victim of domestic violence. After countless times being thrown down the stairs by his father at a young age Blaze gets a huge dent in his head that disables his mental abilities. Blaze eventually falls into the wrong crowd and learns that the easiest way to m

Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption Written by Stephen King About 110 pages Originally published in 1982 Rate 5/5 This is the third book on the required reading list for my Themes in Literature class. Click here to read the " The Shining " review and click here to read the " Carrie " review.  Like all the previous books, I didn't know anything going into this book and I am glad I didn't because I didn't know what was going to happen. That being said, here's a brief glimpse inside the story. Though the title of the book has Rita Hayworth in it, she's not really a character, but she is important to the plot. Shawshank is a prison where the story takes place. The story is told in pieces by a friend of the main character. He doesn't ever directly say his name, so be on the look out for that. What is Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption about? Simply put, this is a story about hope and the American prison system.  My thoughts on Rita Haywor