Book Review: The Shining by Stephen King

I usually take between three to six days to read a book. But there are exceptions. Some books are so engrossing that I just have to read them at a stretch, from cover to cover, in a single day. On the other extreme, there are books that I begin to read but get bored of along the way, leave behind, and forget about forever! There are also books, like those of Charles Dickens, that use a vocabulary which require too many dictionary references - so I read them in parts.

The last book I read was different - it was the book that took me the longest to read.

It was the first book I started to read soon after my wedding. I finished reading it a few days ago, eight long months later. Apart from the fact that it was a whopping 447 pages long, and I had no idea that life would be so different after the wedding, the reason I took so long to read this book is because it was...haunting.

Here's my review, which has been posted on Goodreads:

I had no idea what I was getting into when I picked up this book for Rs. 25 at a small second-hand book store. The pages of the book had yellowed with the years, but they didn't look worn out. The cover had an illustration of a yellow and black bee, and the name of the author was written with a wobbly font. And below the title of the book, it said, "Never Overlook the Past". Now, that's a very good pun, and I didn't know until I read the book how well it summed up the entire story I was about to read in the next 447 pages.

What differentiates a schizophrenic from a person with a special gift to see the future? Are those hallucinations or visions? Or are they simply ghosts of the past that refuse to leave and continue to live after they are dead? Does a place become haunted, or is it the place itself that haunts?

The Shining is the scariest book I've read so far - and by far, the best!

Rating: 5/5
Genre: Mystery, Horror
Where I found this book: Second-hand book store at Choolaimedu signal, Nelson Manickam Road (Chennai)

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