Being thoroughly refreshed and cheerful following my Misery conquest, an adrenaline rush urged me to stick my nose into yet another King classic, The Shining. Of course, generally when you've seen a certain Jack Nicholson film more times than you care to remember, you start to wonder, why bother? But then you hear how Stanley Kubrick practically threw Stephen King's novel into the fire after a quick skim read and went about making his own super version, makes you pretty inclined to read the novel that made King the bestseller he is today. Initially I was apprehensive about starting the book as I'd heard some negativity surrounding the content of the first few hundred pages. I honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. For a 500 page novel I shot through it in less than a week and enjoyed it immensely, even more so than Misery, King would later revisit The Shining's Colorado location ten years later to write Misery.

Whilst Stephen King was still writing novels for cash fixes rather than for worldwide recognition, Carrie and Salem's Lot his first two novels were sublime and set the wheels in motion for, what is regarded as, the novel that defines King. The introduction suggests that King is playing down his two early masterpieces to build up his most well known piece of literature. The Shining is the novel where King transferred from being a fairly poor part-time writer trying to support his family on the income of what he writes, to where he reached perfection in supernatural/horror literature. The Shining brought King eternal immunity and set him up for life.

The plot is centered around the Torrance's, a family struggling to earn enough money to survive and with a recovering alcoholic father, Jack Torrance. Jack who is temporarily unemployed and desperate for work is recommended a job by a friend to work as Caretaker over the winter months at the Isolated Overlook Hotel. While Jack's rage is uncontrollable when linked with alcohol, previous outbursts on Danny in the past has Jack and his wife Wendy's marriage hanging by a thread. The transition of Jack into a maniacal lunatic is far more subtle and progressive than the film. Jack becomes increasingly obsessed with his job and when certain unforeseen forces try to deter and wreck his work and interfere with his love for Dannie he becomes highly exasperated. As the novel develops Jack becomes increasingly unaware that he's drifting away from his family due to his obsession with The Overlook Hotel and its rather colorful history and unable to control his body with his mind.

There are many differences between Kubrik's version and the novel. The deteriation of Jack is far more gradual, rather than Jack Torrance being crazy before he set foot in the hotel's lobby like Nicholson. He is also much closer to Danny than the film indicates, making his demise more tragic. There is much more of a haunting atmosphere in the book with certain spooky sounds the family hear at night such as the elevator clicking on and of course the infamous 217 scenes are described in terrific detail by King. Notably in comparison to Misery later on is the scrapbook. Which was the highlight of reading Misery where Paul Sheldon comes across all these newspaper articles from Annie's colorful past. This was used to an enormous atmospheric effect in The Shining where Jack Torrance finds a rather 'conveniently' placed scrapbook amongst the rubbish in the basement. With newspaper articles describing certain horrific events especially the clever twist with the Mafia/Vegas connection that King added makes this a real gem to read early on in the book.