I've been reading a lot of "New" Stephen King lately, books that I've put off reading because I was afraid that they would not be as good as "Old" Stephen King. I wish I had not, because while "New" King is different, he is still The King.

I listened to it on audio, but kind of followed along in the book too, sort of. Mare Winningham did a good job reading, and after a while I got used to her voices, although I think that she added a bit too much to the story. She made certain characters sound t More...

It started out fairly well. Youngish widow going through her brilliant writer husband's papers...maybe it was a thinly veiled biography of King's wife Tabitha? Maybe it would be good.
Its initial promise wore thin after about the 70th time the word "smucking" appeared. After about the 5th time the main character called her sister "Manda Bunny", the promise was not only rubbed off the book, it was replaced with a bit of sandpaper that grated directly against your nerves.
Stephen King could have do More...

Smucking smucking oh my god so much smmmmuckkking!!

Do you know what i mean, babyluv? Can you feel this smucking annoyance towards this smucking book? Sure you can. Every great artist produces a smucking turd every now and again. Smuck the smuckers who think everything has to be so smucking perfect all the smucking time.

annoyed at all the smuckings? Yeah me too. Try reading 300+ pages of that plus other made-up language that repeats itself in almost EVERY paragraph.


To be honest, the last 200 pa More...

This was a hard book to read, but I did enjoy it. I would give it 4 stars on story, but only 3-1/2 on the way the story is told. At times, the main character, Lisey, is revisiting 2 different major events in her past, while at the same dealing with a new, frightening situation that is currently happening. So I found myself struggling to keep up with "when" she was. Also, at one point Lisey mentions an old pinto car she used to have that she had to keep cranking the ignition to get it started, an More...

This is the first King I'm reading in about 25 years.

ETA: I don't really like it much. I had it on my TBR list since it came out. I suppose I read a good review of it somewhere. I'm almost 100 pages in and feh. Not much has happened and while I don't dislike the protagonist I find her kind of vapid and not interesting. There is way too much made up language that is DUMB. So that doesn't leave much, IMO.

I'm stopping at page 320. I am not wasting any more of my time on this. It's waaaay too long. More...

It's a "love story" done "Stephen King" style and so perfectly done that my first thought after finishing was to read the novel a second time. The characters are so genuine and universal that everyone will love them, and the story is both magical and heart-breaking at exactly the same time.

A famous writer's widow can't get over his death. A seedy professor is trying to weasel her husband's papers out of her. When she puts him off, he ends up sicking a violent "persuader" on her. Meanwhile, one of her sisters is a mental case, prone to cutting and catatonic fits. Throw in another world you can only get to through imagination, where the water will heal you and everything else will kill you after dark, and the whole thing gets messy.

The problem here is that the story, towards the lat More...

note to stephen king: 'smucking' is not a pleasant word. maybe it's something your grandma used to say, but it's awfully distracting. please don't let it threaten to ruin another decent book. and i had been fooled into thinking you finally got an non-brownnosing editor.

once finished:

okay, so this book had some moments, but overall, it's helped me figure out what is wrong w/stephen king. i skimmed about 200 pages because they were just repetition, repetition, repetition. there were no suprises h More...

After the minor disappointment that was Blaze, I decided to pick up the copy of Lisey's Story that had been moldering on my bookshelf since we bought it during its debut week and promptly forgot about. This can be blamed on a combination of factors, the first being that I decided to allow my boyfriend to read it first, but after I finished it I couldn't help wondering why I hadn't started it earlier.

Lisey's Story treads the line between the slasher-horror novels that have made up the bulk of Kin More...

The one where Lisey's author husband seems to be sending her on a scavenger hunt from beyond the grave.

In his afterword, King specifically mentions how heavily his editor went at this story; he says he had first-year French compositions come back with less red ink on them. I don't care. It needed more. The first 200 pages could have been taken down to about 75, no exaggeration.

The book is basically about memory, and so I'm willing to accept that it's 50% flashback. But the way the flashbacks are More...

SOME SPOLIERS, NOTHING TOO SERIOUS
Garbage. Stephen King has apparently lost all of his previously considerable talent. This book reads like a mismash of about 4 of his other books (most notably coming to mind, the Stand, Rose Madder and the Dark Half) this book is absolute crap. Booya moon is boring and uninteresting (the place is pretty much a sissyfied version of the territories from the tailsman with a character actually mentioning the territories at one point), and contains an "evil monster" More...

this was boring. not engrossing at all. you could probably skip the first 100 pages and not miss anything. it's lazy writing and i found the relationship between the two main characters odd, stilted, to say the least. i thought it was terrible. i didn't finish it.

I gotta be honest with ya, I had a difficult time putting Lisey's Story down.

I believe Stephen King himself said that LS is his attempt at romance writing- (and I clearly am paraphrasing here!) The thing is, while it is a love story and there is indeed a happily ever after ending- though certainly not in true Cinderella fashion- this is not just a story about the love between a hero and heroine, or even man and wife, as Scott and Lisey Landon were for 25 years. No, this is also a love story betw More...

I truly wanted to like this book. I'd never read King's fiction before, but I did love his On Writing and I can tell how much he wants to be accepted by the literary establishment and this seemed his ticket out of the Steele-Patterson-Evanovich crew. He even got a female editor to make his female protagonist more credible. I keep on hearing how great his stories are and the select movies that I'd seen based on his writing suggest he does have much to offer ("Shawshank Redemption," "Stand by Me," More...

I went on a bool hunt that covered 513 pages of typewritten text and when I came out to the other side, the one where one does not eat fruits after dark, I was not afraid of anything.

Interestingly enough, I was ten, the same age as Scott when he lost both Paul and his dad, when I read my first Stephen King novel. I'll never forget the experience of reading Salem's Lot. It took me two days to consume what would become the portal to all things King for the next 25 years. My love affair with Mr. Ki More...

If you have read just one Stephen King novel, then you are well acquainted with the format of his stories. There is the main character(s) who battles at least one internal and external force with plenty(or sometimes excessive amounts) of character background. The protagonist will suffer some damage and undergo some transformation, but will(most likely) ultimately triumph. Such was the pattern in "Lisey's Story".
The story opens with Lisa Landon(call me Lisey), a middle-aged widow, going through More...

All I can say is that getting to the last page was a relief. Reading this novel was like staring at a cow for five hours.

As King grows older, his books seem to turn ever more emotionally overwhelming and wistful -and this one, particularly, very sweet. Lisey's Story has a thread of fundamental wrongness going through it that keeps the suspense going -the horror side of King's narrative is strong as ever, the descriptions of the physical hardships are engrossing and captivating in a level that makes you feel terribly uncomfortable, but there's another thread of horror, a very human, everyday thread, about love and More...

I was hesitant to read Lisey's Story. I love Stephen King's older novels but his recent novels left me disappointed. I can now say I am glad I read Lisey's Story.

In a nutshell, the book is about Lisey Landon, widow of best selling author, Scott Landon. Two years after his untimely death she is finally cleaning out his office. She's also got a nutcase sister and a stalker after Scott's last manuscripts.

This book is different from traditional King horror novels in that it is mostly a love story More...

It's not all that often that King strays from his horror roots that have made his so popular, but it does happen, Eyes Of The Dragon, On Writing, and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, to name a few. Lisey's Story is King's latest contribution to that stack, and it's a considerable offer, though with some definite drawbacks.
King uses this story to focus on the relationship that a marriage creates, drawing greatly from his marriage to Tabitha. As he pulls on the reader's heartstrings and even throws More...

This book really surprised me. I tried to read it a few months ago and gave up after the first few chapters, but recently decided to give it another try. I'm glad I did. I still became frustrated on my second attempt for several reasons, namely my lack of familiarity with code words and phrases, the constant shifting between past memories and present reality, and teasing references to things that either have happened or will happen, which you don't find out about until later on. However, these e More...

How long have I had this one sitting around? Well, the book was published in 2006, and I had an advance copy of it. I had tried to read it before, but put it down near the beginning, so this time I was determined to get through it (unless it turned out to be like Dreamcatcher, which is to say essentially unreadable). I'm pleased to say I did get through it.

I am not an encyclopedic reader of authors, or at least I haven't been since I read Agatha Christie and Erle Stanley Gardner books in junior More...

this is a great story! about a writer,his wife, their life. i liked the magic. the metaphors...the long boy...trying to figure out that one, like what is it, the wrong side of the book case? its "piebald side"? could be wrong but we have license. booya moon, the laughers/hyenas, lisey telling scott, "this isn't the library" all that howling laughter. still, a special place.

scott's story toward the end is nice, as well. all those stories within the story w/king. nice stuff.

a good read. More...

This book was very slow and disappointing. Not what I expected from Stephen King.

Publisher's Summary

Lisey Debusher Landon lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a 25-year marriage of the most profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, best-selling novelist, and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey had to learn from him about books and blood and bools. Later, she understood that there was a place Scott went, a place t More...

As I read Lisey’s Story by Stephen King, I am reminded why I love King’s work so much. It is constantly changing, constantly evolving. Each book is a different experiment. Each book is a different tale; yet no two are the same.

King has gone beyond the horror genre with Lisey’s Story and written a, dare I say it, literary masterpiece. Its part horror, part love story, part tribute to a woman’s husband. It’s part creepshow, part romance and absolutely unclassifiable. King has written a novel that, More...

Dear constant writer;

Hiya, Steve! So glad to see you didn't give up after the utterly dismal Cell; Lisey's Story really is an improvement. Then again, what wouldn't be, eh?

Kidding, old buddy, kidding! Hey, we've been friends since I was 11, and if you can't take a joke from a friend, then what? Seriously, there are things about Lisey's Story that are quite good. You're back to ordinary people with actual depth dealing with both life and supernatural horrors, you've stopped pretending that you More...