Somehow I managed to not be spoiled all these years. I had never seen the movie or heard much about the book.

All I remember is people using a creepy voice and saying something about "Danny and Mrs(Mr?) Torrence. I didn't even know how many people were staying in the hotel or that they were snowed in.

This was an experience.

The first half was extremely slow, but once the action started, it barely let up. ( )

Somehow I managed to not be spoiled all these years. I had never seen the movie or heard much about the book.

All I remember is people using a creepy voice and saying something about "Danny and Mrs(Mr?) Torrence. I didn't even know how many people were staying in the hotel or that they were snowed in.

This was an experience.

The first half was extremely slow, but once the action started, it barely let up. ( )

Glad I finally got round to it. Just fantastic. ( )

Synopsis: A family Jack (father), Wendy (mother) and Doc (son) go to stay at a hotel over the winter when Jack is hired as the caretaker. The hotel has a dark past and soon the family get swept into that darkness.

My Rating: 4/5

I ended up liking this much more than I expected I would. I watched the movie and wasn't a fan so I was nervous going into the book that I wasn't going to like it. I was pleasantly surprised!
This book has excellent character work. I really enjoyed the complex characters. I usually understood their actions even when I didn't agree with them.
This book is so wonderfully creepy but it's in a subtle way. It really enjoyed how atmospheric this book was.
I also liked the plot. I like how King plays with the energy in places and gives buildings character. I think it is so cool to see him creating these complex histories of a place and how those histories effect the place later.
I sometimes really struggle with King's writing. I love his ideas and the bones of what he is writing but often the writing itself gets in the way of my enjoyment. It can get repetitive and meandering at times. This book has less of that issue than many other King's, but I did feel, a few times, like I just wanted the story to move on and get to where it was going.
For me, this was a very solid read. Not my favorite King but high mid-tier on my ranking list. ( )

To say Stephen King is a genius and a legend in the horror world is an understatement.

I had been meaning to read The Shining for a very long time - I became determined to read the book before the movie, and I've been dying to watch the movie for the past two years! While I have heard the comments over and over that the book and the movie aren't the same, I'll stil wanted to stick to my word and read the book well before I found the movie again.

This book didn't strike me as hard as It and Carrie did, but I still found it incredibly fascinating. The work is legendary and sits on many top shelves of readers I know and look up too. So, of course, I had to dive right in and tear this book apart.

This book was slow starting, but Stephen King's descriptions and writing style kept me hooked. I didn't enjoy the slow pace, but it did pick up about halfway through the novel. Then I was hooked and needed to finish this book, and yearned to know what would happen to these characters.

I read someone, a long time ago, that this book was based on cabin fever. It definitely seems possible, but there were lots of ghosts or mystical beings mashed up within this book as well. After watching Ready Player One and seeing references I didn't understand, reading this book and seeing those figures helped me grasped a better understanding of what was happening in that movie. The creepy descriptions of the lady in the bathtub and all of the other weird creatures really made me feel like I was in this story. At times, I totally understood how this book got turned into a movie (and how has there not been twenty remakes by now? The story is so cool!). If you're looking for a frightful read with descriptions that will blow your mind, Stephen King is absolutely for you!

While I don't find myself to be a crazy horror fan (since I don't get scared from these books, but I am always in awe), I have to say I really like this book. I like how Stephen King writes and I like that it's such a different story. Just comparing this book to It and Carrie (the only two Stephen King books I have read), these books are always well thought out, absolutely insane and full of scenes you'd never imagine! It's A horror and one of the best thrillers.

To me, this book wasn't scary - I don't find books scary because of the lack of noise and background sounds, but it was an epic thriller with scary scenes. I could see readers easily finding this scary, and I would not recommend reading this to children. It's R rated, but a really great R rated ride! Jack, Wendy and Danny are also really interesting characters that develop in crazy ways. Slowly you can see their minds unwinding and going into dark terroritories. Although, I'm really curious as to how Stephen King got into the mind of Danny. Is that how little six year olds think? Or is he mature because of the Shine?

The shine seems to pop up in many books from this point on, which makes me excited to throw myself into Mr. King's collection and have these books intertwine with each other like a horror-filled Pixar theory.

I might never read this book again, mainly because I need to catch up with all of Stephen's other books. Is it worth a second read? Heck yes. I'm sure there are lots of scenes and easter eggs I missed throughout! Would I recommend this book? Oh my gosh, yes! It's a great book, and if you're only going to pick one horror book it might as well be by the King of Horror.

Five out of five stars! ( )