<![CDATA[Dreamcatcher]]>

false <![CDATA[Dreamcatcher]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166480214m/11570.jpg 11570 43 Stephen King fans, rejoice! The bodysnatching-aliens tale Dreamcatcher is his first book in years that slakes our hunger for horror the way he used to. A throwback to It, The Stand, and The Tommyknockers, Dreamcatcher is also an interesting new wrinkle in his fiction. Four boyhood pals in Derry, Maine, get together for a pilgrimage to their favorite deep-woods cabin, Hole in the Wall. The four have been telepathically linked since childhood, thanks to a searing experience involving a Down syndrome neighbor--a human dreamcatcher. They've all got midlife crises: clownish Beav has love problems; the intellectual shrink, Henry, is slowly succumbing to the siren song of suicide; Pete is losing a war with beer; Jonesy has had weird premonitions ever since he got hit by a car. Then comes worse trouble: an old man named McCarthy (a nod to the star of the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers) turns up at Hole in the Wall. His body is erupting with space aliens resembling furry moray eels: their mouths open to reveal nests of hatpin-like teeth. Poor Pete tries to remove one that just bit his ankle: "Blood flew in splattery fans as Pete tried to shake it off, stippling the snow and the sawdusty tarp and the dead woman's parka. Droplets flew into the fire and hissed like fat in a hot skillet." For all its nicely described mayhem, Dreamcatcher is mostly a psychological drama. Typically, body snatchers turn humans into zombies, but these aliens must share their host's mind, fighting for control. Jonesy is especially vulnerable to invasion, thanks to his hospital bed near-death transformation, but he's also great at messing with the alien's head. While his invading alien, Mr. Gray, is distracted by puppeteering Jonesy's body as he's driving an Arctic Cat through a Maine snowstorm, Jonesy constructs a mental warehouse along the lines of The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci. Jonesy physically feels as if he's inside a warehouse, locked behind a door with the alien rattling the doorknob and trying to trick him into letting him in. It's creepy from the alien's view, too. As he infiltrates Jonesy, experiencing sugar buzz, endorphins, and emotions for the first time, Jonesy's influence is seeping into the alien: "A terrible thought occurred to Mr. Gray: what if it was his concepts that had no meaning?" King renders the mental fight marvelously, and telepathy is a handy way to make cutting back and forth between the campers' various alien battlefronts crisp and cinematic. The physical naturalism of the Maine setting is matched by the psychological realism of the interior struggle. Deftly, King incorporates the real-life mental horrors of his own near-fatal accident and dramatizes the way drugs tug at your consciousness. Like the Tommyknockers, the aliens are partly symbols of King's (vanquished) cocaine and alcohol addiction. Mainly, though, they're just plain scary. Dreamcatcher is a comeback and an infusion of rich new blood into King's body of work. --Tim Appelo 643924 book 2001 Dreamcatcher total:10807|5:1653|4:2736|3:3674|2:1898|1:847| 10807 34869 12774 360 4 3 false false Thu Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Thu Sep 27 19:20:46 -0700 2007 Sun Nov 11 21:13:12 -0800 2007 more...]]> 1 2 false false Sun Nov 30 09:37:21 -0800 2008 Sun Dec 14 03:53:13 -0800 2008
Unfortunately, Dreamcatcher is a bloated, vacuous, dreadful piece of self-indulgence that mostly goes to show that King has apparently ...more...]]> 3 2 false true Thu Jun 19 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 02 08:16:22 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 20 13:45:08 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 2 false false Tue Aug 14 12:50:36 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 14 12:58:13 -0700 2007 Dreamcatcher is not just a rehash of It. The bad news is it's a rehash of The Tommyknockers, too, which is perhaps my least favorite of all of King's works.

All right, maybe that's not quite fair. Dreamcatcher does involve aliens, a secre...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Sep 28 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Nov 04 07:26:29 -0800 2009 Wed Nov 04 07:28:14 -0800 2009 2
I'm really unsure why I've decided to subject myself to this again. This is one of my least favorite of King's longer winded books. It's about four miserable midd...more...]]> 1 0 false false Mon Apr 07 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 15 06:21:47 -0700 2009 Sat Aug 15 06:30:57 -0700 2009
Back Cover Blurb:
In Derry, Maine, four young boys once sto...more...]]> 2 0 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2004 Thu Oct 08 16:08:56 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 28 23:43:03 -0700 2009 Stephen King
Published 2001

I am a firm believer in the fact that Stephen King has written his way into being more than just a writer. A book with his name on it gets instant success and instant marketing power. I bought Dreamcatcher in a day of simple boredom, ne...more...]]> 4 0 false true Thu May 14 08:47:23 -0700 2009 Thu Apr 23 15:11:52 -0700 2009 Thu May 14 08:47:23 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 0 false false Mon Mar 09 11:43:55 -0700 2009 Mon Mar 09 11:43:55 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jun 10 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Mon May 18 15:54:45 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 10 15:05:24 -0700 2009 Dreamcatcher a long time ago and didn't think much of it, but I liked the book much better. There's something very pleasant about Stephen King's writing--something that feels almost real, a sort of "flavor" that I also see in authors like Poppy Z. Brite. There's grit, and i...more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Aug 05 12:37:31 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 05 12:38:39 -0700 2008 2 0 false false Fri Jul 03 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Jun 17 17:32:25 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 03 10:24:22 -0700 2009 2 ('cause I forgot what it was about since the first read-through) more...]]> 2 0 false false Mon Aug 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 13:16:17 -0700 2009 Fri Sep 11 13:30:25 -0700 2009
Not my favorite book. Not my least favorite though. I have not ventured far into the horror genre as far as King is concerned, I have a weak imagination. And this one was pretty mild as far as the scary factor is concerned, mo...more...]]> 3 0 false false Mon Mar 16 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sat Dec 20 04:35:56 -0800 2008 Mon Mar 16 17:01:15 -0700 2009 more...]]> 1 0 false true Fri Oct 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Mon Aug 25 13:31:47 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 25 13:41:38 -0700 2008
I have an extremely overactive imagination and have been terrified to read anyt...more...]]> 4 0 false false Fri Jun 20 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 11 16:54:31 -0700 2008 Fri Jun 20 12:56:30 -0700 2008
It revolves around four men who have been best friends since junior high. They each have their quirks, but in particular, they all share a gi...more...]]> 5 0 false false Wed Jan 31 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Apr 19 09:27:49 -0700 2008 Sat Aug 01 08:07:29 -0700 2009
There is ALL KINDS of stuff going on... body-snatchin' aliens, telepathy, military quarantines, etc... etc...

T...more...]]> 1 1 false true Fri Feb 22 22:08:43 -0800 2008 Sun May 25 16:25:51 -0700 2008
however.

weasels that bust out ...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Wed Jan 30 08:31:59 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 30 08:31:59 -0800 2008
I should have known better than to start a new Stephen King book at 11PM on a weeknight. Two and a half days later, exhausted, I put it down.

Dreamcatcher (whose working title was "Cancer;" according to King's afterword, his w...more...]]> 5 0 false false Sun Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2001 Sun Nov 25 15:19:56 -0800 2007 Sun Nov 25 15:23:29 -0800 2007
This was the first Stephen King book I listened to as an Audiobook. It is an excellent story and well narrated. As a result I have ended up listening to many more of his books.

Narrator: Jeffrey DeMunn
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio, 2001
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