Christine
by Stephen King
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Read in January, 1987
recommends it for:
8th graders everywhere
This book is underrated.
Yeah, sure, the hokey premise is a car is possessed by demons and runs over people. Clearly one of Stephen King's earlier, and weaker, scary ideas.
But King has a knack for drawing very human characters to suffer the creepy situations he thrusts them into. You've got the HS geek with a quarterback best friend set upon my bullies (and bullies from the 1950s are a wholly different menace, remember Kiefer Sutherland terrorizing Wil Wheaton in the King adaption &qu...more
Yeah, sure, the hokey premise is a car is possessed by demons and runs over people. Clearly one of Stephen King's earlier, and weaker, scary ideas.
But King has a knack for drawing very human characters to suffer the creepy situations he thrusts them into. You've got the HS geek with a quarterback best friend set upon my bullies (and bullies from the 1950s are a wholly different menace, remember Kiefer Sutherland terrorizing Wil Wheaton in the King adaption &qu...more
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Read in January, 1982
This may sound strange but as a kid in the early eighties I was a gifted student. My mother had a hard time keeping me occupied and was tired of shelling out big bucks every week as I blew through children's books so she let me pick an adult book one day, hoping it might take me a week or two to finish it. For this reason, when I was 9 years old the first adult novel I read was Christine. It took me two weeks to read, mostly because I kept having to stop and research all the musci , bad words an...more
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A disclaimer: It's been forever since I have read this book. That being said...
Skip it. Seriously. Not one of King's best works.
The premise is Ok...but just Ok. A living entity of some sort possesses a car and slowly takes advantage of a teenage outcast. He begins to be consumed by the same murderous impulses that live within the car...and you can guess the rest from there.
Eh.
Perhaps the sole interesting and non-formulaic wrinkle in the story is the implicit motive behind Christi...more
Skip it. Seriously. Not one of King's best works.
The premise is Ok...but just Ok. A living entity of some sort possesses a car and slowly takes advantage of a teenage outcast. He begins to be consumed by the same murderous impulses that live within the car...and you can guess the rest from there.
Eh.
Perhaps the sole interesting and non-formulaic wrinkle in the story is the implicit motive behind Christi...more
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I have a real guilty-pleasure, love/love realtionship with Stephen King books. I don't care how literarily unhip that is. Christine was the first big-girl book I ever read--I was in the fourth grade and we'd just moved to California. I didn't have any friends or anywhere to go yet, so I spent my days poking around in the library, like any good nerd. I'd heard somewhere that Stephen King books contained scandalous curse words, so I picked it out of the library's King collection because...more
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This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Read in January, 1985
This was the first Stephen King book I ever read. I was maybe 12 years old and it scared me silly. I found that to be quite a delicious feeling and through my early teens devoured anything he'd written that I could get my hands on. At some point I became conflicted about him -- I love the kernel of the stories he creates but, man, sometimes there's a lot of blah blah blah filler. His short stories/novellas and the books that are more in the fantasy genre than horror genre remain the ones that I ...more
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recommends it for:
King fans, horror fans
Nothing sounds more stupid and more cliche than a killer car. Let's be honest, it sounds like a dumb premise.
That said, "Christine" is original, fresh, and really scary. I'm fairly certain that I can attribute my fear of driving to this book - and the fact that I always get lost, but mostly it's the book.
A high school loser buys a junky old corvette that turns out to have a demonic influence over him. Soon, the people who picked on him start winding up dead. Sucky summary, but ...more
That said, "Christine" is original, fresh, and really scary. I'm fairly certain that I can attribute my fear of driving to this book - and the fact that I always get lost, but mostly it's the book.
A high school loser buys a junky old corvette that turns out to have a demonic influence over him. Soon, the people who picked on him start winding up dead. Sucky summary, but ...more
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this book by stephen king is one of my absolute favorite books i have ever read. it totally creeped me out and i remember not being able to put down the book. and just as i finished reading it at some early morning hour (i was no more than 14-15 years old) i remember hearing some strange noise in our back yard, boy, that was the scarriest moment ever in my life. i have to laugh thinking back on it now. ;)
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Read in July, 2007
recommends it for:
SK fans
Ooh, she's so BAD, that Christine! Was skeptical that even King could dish up a good yarn about a possessed car, but it actually works. Couldn't put the book down. Might have something to do with being brought up by a motorhead - King certainly captures the motorhead culture well. But as a much as you feel sorry for misguided protagonist Arnie Cunningham, you kind of want Christine to win...
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Read in July, 1987
It has been a long time since reading Christine. I used to read King paperbacks in grade school under my desk while I should have been learning math or even some bullshit lies of human history.
But even with the time gone by, I still remember it as a qucik read, especially for a little kid. I didn't have a car or driver's license then so the concept was probably even more thrilling. I'd
But even with the time gone by, I still remember it as a qucik read, especially for a little kid. I didn't have a car or driver's license then so the concept was probably even more thrilling. I'd
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Has a copy to sell/swap
We all know all the badness we've heard about this book. Now I can confirm it for myself. I literally COULD NOT finish this book and it even made me not want to read ANY books for a while. I finally picked up Lisey's Story instead and now I can read books again. (Dear Stephen King, Thanks for not giving up after this one. Your other books are much better. Regards, Ali)
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I remember one Saturday in the mid-80's, locked away in my room, reading this from sunup to sundown, listening to B96 in Chicago and, for some reason, DeBarge's "Love Me in a Special Way" sticking in my brain. I wouldn't turn on my bedroom light until it became physically impossible to read in the dark because I was GLUED to the book. Why only 3 stars then. Dunno.
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Read in December, 2007
King explores his familiar themes of material obsession/possession (Needful Things) and adolescent angst. The structure of the novel is puzzling, almost sloppy. King switches from a first-person to a third-person narrative, and then back again, with no real clear motivation. Still, it's a fun, addictive read with a handful of very memorable scenes and characters.
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recommends it for:
King fans
It's been years since I've read this, so I don't remember it too well. But I remember liking it better than I like the movie. (Big surprise.) It's the first Stephen King book that I read probably at much too young of an age. But it started me down a dark road that I'm glad I'm still on.
And I haven't been able to hear Chuck Berry's "Maybelline" the same since.
And I haven't been able to hear Chuck Berry's "Maybelline" the same since.
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I read this in my bedroom in Portland while my roommate threw a death metal party downstairs. Sorry, boys, Christine was fiercer! I really think Stephen King is one of the most underrated writers today. A keen gift for describing the most macabre and grotesque things you'd never want to imagine on yr own, yet can't erase from yr mind's eye afterward.
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Read in November, 2007
I'm a Stephen King defender when it comes to a lot of his output, but novels like Christine that makes that hard to do that with a straight face. While I get the conciet of King's premise- a lot of us ARE scared of cars and driving, so Christine the possessed car is takin' that fear to the next level- this book is sloppy and bordeline awful.
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Read in January, 1984
This book completely freaked me out. I got it for Christmas, one where we drove to Florida to spend the holiday with my grandparents. My sister got a book and tape combo for the Care Bears, singing each bear's individual theme song. To this day, I cannot listen to those songs without getting a chill up my spine.
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Read in July, 2006
This was my first Stephen King book, and I have to say, my expectations for his style were way over what this book brought. There was nothing really scary in it. It was a good book, with a promising plot line (I wanted to know how it ended) but now way was I quiviring from the fear of what was going to happen next.
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Read in May, 2008
Like most of King's novels, I found that the supernatural elements in this book were secondary to the surrounding themes of high school life, teenage rebellion and friendship. The story didn't seem as polished to me and seemed to drag on at times, probably due it being one of King's earlier works.
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Read in December, 1990
My first Stephen King novel... I was forbidden from reading his books... I had to hide it from my father... I was fourteen... and it scared the crap out of me, but I became hooked on Stephen King for the next few years of my life. I consider this experience a rite of passage for all young readers.
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book data (includes all editions)
avg rating (all editions): 3.34 (5643 ratings) avg rating (this edition): 3.33 (5013 ratings) number of reviews: 124popular shelves
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"I think part of being a parent is trying to kill your kids."
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