Thoughts on Books: 'The Shining,' 'The Walking Dead: Fall of the Governor Part One'

There’s been a lot of talk about the ridiculousness of heaven and Thomas Jefferson's terrible farming skills as of late, so I thought I would take the time to lighten things up a bit and talk about books. 

Wonderful books. Fantastic books.

It’s been too long since I’ve talked about the wonderful world of books on here, mostly because I’ve been reading more, so writing about every book I finish would be impractical. Actually it’s just because I’m lazy and writing is work. But Spanish class offers the perfect opportunity to space out and write, so here we go. 

Now... now I’m realizing that the last two book I read would both be considered fairly or very dark, so it might not be the light hearted discussion I was looking for, but, oh well, books, yay!

So let’s get started.

I finally got around to reading The Shining. You know, you know, the book by Stephen King. Like the two other King books I’ve read (11/22/63 and Under the Dome), it was pretty awesome. And, like Under the Dome, it had a pretty disappointing ending. I think that Stephen King is just too good of a writer to have great endings. 11/22/63’s conclusion wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t as epic as the rest of the book. Under the Dome was one of the best books I’ve ever read, until the last 25 or so pages, where it suddenly took a predictable and not too interesting turn. Stephen King is just so talented that the meat of the book comes so unbelievably awesome that any conclusion is going to be a letdown. I don’t know how he could have ended The Shining to make it better, so that probably means his ending was the best one. Still, it was a bit of a letdown.

The book just built up and built up, leaving all these clues, leading up to some finale, epic battle between child and hotel, and then.... well, it sort of happened. The “final battle” between Danny and his dad’s body possessed by the hotel was pretty great. It was rather creepy and awesome. But then there’s a big explosion that fixes all of their problems and they lives sort of happily ever after. That last part is the part that bothers me. 

But the rest of the book is pretty fantastic. From the very beginning, even before all the supernatural stuff sets in, you can already tell that something is slightly off. You can tell something is going to go terribly wrong. Then the creepy supernatural stuff begins to set in. There’s the thing with Danny being able to read people’s minds, the kid named Tony that only Danny sees that tells him all sorts of things that he shouldn’t know. Then there’s the hedge animals. That was quite creepy. I liked that. 

I’ve heard from several sources that The Shining is a “scary” book. I wouldn’t call it that, unless you are incredibly frail and easily frightened. I would call it creepy though, one of the creepier books I’ve read. King slowly amps up the creepy throughout the novel, accumulating in the face being smashed in thing, and the “not too late, not too late” thing. But then it all just goes away with the explosion. Again, a bit disappointing, but it’s okay. 

I could do a real review of this and start talking about how the characters are pretty good, except maybe Mary or whatever the moms name is, who is pretty flat and boring, but that’s sort of understandable, seeing what she’s been through. Jack and Danny are both really good characters, and thankfully we spend most of the book inside their head. 

I’m not going to do a full review with plot summaries and stuff though, because that would take a lot of time and there’s probably nothing I can say about this book that hasn’t been said before. 

So that’s The Shining. 

And now, for the other book I finished recently: The Walking Dead: The Fall of the Governor Part One. Ugh, that name is so long. The “Part One” part is stupid and unnecessary. Why can’t they just come up with a different title for one of the halves. This part isn’t even really “the fall” of the Governor, it’s just the background story that sets up his fall. Well, that’s me assuming that he’s going to fall in the next part. Maybe the title is misleading, but I doubt it. 

Anyways though, this is the third novel in the pretty stellar Walking Dead novel series. The first book, Rise of the Governor, gave a pretty great origin story for my favorite villain, and was generally a good, interesting story as well, with good characters and emotional turmoil and the like. It wasn’t quite as emotionally shocking as The Walking Dead TV series, but the awesome origin story made up for it. It’s seriously one of my favorite origin stories, and I’ve seen/read a whole lotta origin stories in my day. This origin story continues in the second book, The Road to Woodbury, which was even better. The first half was a bit slow, but it was necessary to introduce us to the new characters. Then the second half got incredible. We got the first great Walking Dead romance, or the first one in the novels at least. The whole Walking Dead universe does a great job with romances. They’re never simple “we both love each other wholeheartedly” things, and the fact that the entire world is collapsing and dying around them doesn’t make things simplier. We get to see inside the heads of those involved in the romance, and that’s just fascinating, seeing them question everything they do and everything their partner does and gah, it’s just fascinating. It’s not the lovey dovey sweet romance of most books. It’s rough, tough, and hard. But there is a hint of sweetness beneath it all. 

But the most amazing part of The Road to Woodbury is the look inside the Governor’s head. The Governor is now my favorite villain of all time, and possibly my favorite character of all time. Sorry Lost’s Daniel Faraday. 

Besides being incredibly evil, the Governor also somewhat sympathetic. The look inside his head that we get is so fascinating, the writers simply did a stunning job with him. He’s torn between three vastly different personalities, all existing inside his head at once. Brian, the sweet, kind, loving, cowardly man he originally was. Phillip, his brother’s rough and tough personality that he has adopted since his brother’s death. And the Governor, the calm, cool, and collected leader that he tries to be for the community. Each of these personalities are large enough to be a full person, but they all exist inside of the Governor, and it’s tearing him apart. 

And that leads us into The Fall of the Governor (Part One). We return to Woodbury, sticking with the main characters from The Road to Woodbury, mainly, Lilly and the Governor. Which is good, because both of those characters are round (to use a silly word from English class) and incredibly interesting. Especially the Governor. He’s just awesome. So awesome. So lovely. Okay, I need to stop fanboying. Moving on. 

If you’ve read the Walking Dead comics, you’ll probably recognize a lot of the plot in this book, but you’ll be seeing it from a new point of view. Several big characters from the comics (and the show, but that’s a different universe) come into the story, but the book does a great job at handling them. It doesn’t feel like you’re reading the same old story from the comics, there is enough new, meaty stuff here to get a full, new, awesome experience out of it.
I really want to hurry up and get to the spoiler-y awesomeness that is the book, so I'm going to not say a lot of things that I could say about this book. Basically, it's awesome because it tells a great story with interesting characters. Yes that could describe literally dozens of books, probably more, I don't know. Whatever. I want to get to the good stuff. Here we go.

**Spoiler zone** 

I need to rant about the final scene in this book. It’s so wonderful. It is one of the darkest, most twisted scenes I’ve ever seen. And it’s not just that this brutal torture is going on, it’s what we see going on in each of the characters heads that makes it so intriguing and dark and simply wonderful. This is where we see the Governor become somewhat sympathetic. We see him reduced to tears to fear. We see the kind, Brian part of his nature come out. We don't want Brian to be tortured. We don't even want Phillip to be tortured. Neither of them deserve it. But we also see the effects of all the evil he has done in the form of Michonne. She is this way now because of him, because of the Governor. We are constantly reminded of what he did every time we see her. While neither Brian or Phillip deserve to be tortured, the Governor, the twisted, mangled combination of the two brothers, does deserve it. He is pure evil.
And yet we still feel bad for him. The lifeless Penny in the next room serves as another constant reminder of his humanity. But then Michonne. But she sort of feels bad for doing what she's doing... or does she?
Ahhhh, words can't describe how much I love that scene. The books have finally dove head first into the darkness, they've gone full dark, full sinister. There's no coming back from this. The Governor and Michonne are different people now. They've changed each other, and not for the better. There's no way either of them are good people now. I can't wait for Part Two to see how the Govenor's fall finally comes about, even though I will be a little sad to see him go. He's so great guys.

Okay, I'll shut up now. End spoilers. 

So yippy, I finished writing about books, go me. I have a sort of busy book reading schedule over the next couple of months, hopefully I'll find some time to discuss the with the general Internet sometime in there. From now until the end of the year I plan to read: S (A new novel by Doug Dourst and JJ Abrams), The Great Book of Amber, Self Comes to Mind, Timeline, probably Gone with the Wind, and around Christmas time I'm finally going to get around to starting to reread the Harry Potter series. So yeah, lots of reading is in the future for me. That's incredibly intimidating, but also very exciting.