I have been told that I am very emotional and that this hinders me and makes me lose control and sober judgement and while I believe it to be true, I also know those all those strong passions also incite me toward deep contemplations and soul-searching and that ultimately makes me turn toward serious thinking and evaluating, which is, after all, inherent in reason and rationality.
There is little of the latter in this book. But there is a lot of heart. But it seems to come quite easily and naturally to the Lemkes, hence it is harder for me to sympathize with them, despite everything that happens to them.
I stand by my words that there is no completely guilty or completely innocent party in this situation. Or anywhere at all. There is only the aftermath and what you learn from it. Jan 05, Danger rated it it was amazing. I first saw the movie for this back in the 90s, long before I read this book. And if you've never seen the film, believe me when I say, it's bad.
But, for some reason, I can't help but love it. Maybe I just like terrible movies. But, that said, I've never read this book. Never even thought about it I first saw the movie for this back in the 90s, long before I read this book. Never even thought about it, until I saw a used copy for sale at a local bookstore for just a few bucks. And I picked it up. Soooooooo much better than that crap movie. Everything is tied into moving the plot forward. And King fills in the blanks with interesting and varied metaphors that never seem forced or tired.
It's a book built to be read quickly. And that's just what I did. Bloody good times. First Stephen King book of the year and I guarantee there will be more. Nov 14, Elizabeth Bedlam rated it really liked it. A curse that keeps you thin no matter how much you eat? Sounds like a miracle cure to me. Stand alone horror story by Stephen King under the pen name of Richard Bachman First published in Billy Halleck and his wife, Heidi, are driving down Main Street minding there own business when Heidi decides, for the first time in her life, to get Billy sexually aroused whilst he is driving.
Billy completely taken aback looks over at Heidi just as a woman walks out from be Stand alone horror story by Stephen King under the pen name of Richard Bachman First published in Billy completely taken aback looks over at Heidi just as a woman walks out from between two cars. With eyes no longer on the road Billy hits the woman and killers her. It turns out that the woman Billy killed was a part of a travelling group of gypsies.
There is a trial but it was a white wash job. Billy is found not guilty of any misdoing and is set free. The head of the Gypsy troupe, a Taduz Lemke by name, is none too happy with this result and decides to serve up his own brand of justice. After the trial when everyone is outside the court house shaking hands Mr.
Billy, who is more than a tad over weight, suddenly starts losing weight. At first Billy is real happy about his weight lose but with his appetite undiminished and still losing weight his pleasure soon becomes concern.
His weight lose is so great now that he has to buy a new wardrobe and he is still getting thinner. Billy is convinced that the old Gypsy has put a curse on him and the only way to stop it is to confront Taduz Lemke.
Billy now feels he is left with no other alternative but to find the Gypsies and have the curse removed. This is yet again another ripper of a yarn from S. A great creepy 4 star read.
View all 5 comments. Had a tremendous amount of fun with this book this time around. I read it three times before, the last time being in , and I have no idea what might have changed in my life to make me appreciate this book more nowadays, but I did.
Appreciate it, that is. Maybe because I had such low expectations going in this time? That's probably it, actually. Oct 05, J. I really thought this was an interesting bit of a departure by King from a basic horror concept.
More of a character study, complete with a gypsy curse and a man struggling not to lose his life and his sanity. Billy Halleck is mostly happily married to his wife and mostly happily employed as a small town lawyer. This mostly happy life has led to a slow increase in his weight and now his doctor and wife are repeatedly urging him to reverse the ticking numbers. This is something he is reluctant or unable to do. The only mar in the comfortable trajectory of Billy's life was a mistake that cost another her own.
He knocked over an elderly lady with his car but, luckily, his great friend was the judge and he Billy Halleck is mostly happily married to his wife and mostly happily employed as a small town lawyer. He knocked over an elderly lady with his car but, luckily, his great friend was the judge and he did not even receive a point on his license or a slap on the wrist for this error. The deceased's husband was not so forgiving, however. As the numbers on the scale creep quickly backwards Billy is forced to confront what occurred and whether stress, disease, or a curse upon his name is the cause for his suddenly getting thinner.
I want to address that this book does contain slurs and could be potentially triggering throughout. The 'G' word is used to refer to a group of people who travel to Billy's town by all of the characters. The subject of weight loss is also the major theme of the book.
As with many of King's other books. I found this novel a quietly subversive one. The horror was slow-building and, despite Billy's fears, were easy to miss amongst the early focus on daily lives and small town politics.
This is what I most admire about this author - he has the ability to make his readers completely unaware from which direction and at what point the terror will strike, but once it does there is no escaping it. This was my first Stephen King novel. I thought that it was good enough but not like great or anything.
I had two main problems with it. The first problem was with the pacing of the novel. The first half was good but when I reached the halfway point, I was confused because I felt like the conclusion should have been coming.
I just thought the roa 3. I just thought the road trip William went on was just so boring and I wanted it to end which is never a good thing when reading a book. The second problem I had was with the characters. I didn't like any of them except for Ginelli.
He was the only entertaining character. Every character except Ginelli and William felt like cardboard cutouts and they weren't fleshed out enough for me. I was especially disappointed that King didn't flesh out the gypsies as I would have been really interested in finding out more about them. I thought the story itself was good. It was quite creepy and as the story went on, it just got more and more horrifying but in a subtle way.
I just wish that the story and characters were better because it would have made me like this book more. I thought the end was good and I liked it. I enjoyed the writing. Apart from a few passages, I was really engaged with the story because of the writing and I thought the writing had quite an addictive quality to it. I would recommend this story if you are a King fan and I would read more by Stephen King.
Some guys-- a lot of guysdon't believe what they are seeing, especially if it gets in the way of what they eat or drink or think or believe.
And I just did, Ginelli. I started reading Thinner back in April of , and I finished it alm Some guys-- a lot of guysdon't believe what they are seeing, especially if it gets in the way of what they eat or drink or think or believe. I started reading Thinner back in April of , and I finished it almost a year later. This has been the book that put me into the biggest reading slump of my life so far, but it was also a book that made my reading slump finally end.
Now that I finally read it, I guess that the book deserve its review. So, lets begin. Thinner is a story of an attorney called Billy Halleck, and the curse that was laid upon him by a gipsy. Billy was an overweight man, and the curse was the starting point of Billy's weight loss. However, loosing weight had a downside to: it never stopped. The concept of this novel was quite interesting to me. The beginning of the book gripped me, but, unfortunately, after a hundred pages or so, the story slowed down.
To be honest, it became boring as hell. That was the part when I put this novel on a pause. After months and months, I finally started reading it again, and boy, oh boy , did the book become so much better after that.
The second half of the novel gripped me again and it did not let go until I read the final page. Not in a long time did a book leave this big of an impact of me. The ending blew me away, and left me wanting for at least a hundred more pages. However, even though it did leave me wanting more, I was satisfied with the way the story ended. When I thought about it, there is not a better way to end a story like this one.
This definitely was not King's or Bachman's best work, but the book still left a huge impact on me, and because of that, I had to give it five stars 4. And to end this review, here is my second favorite quote: In many ways the world is nothing but a pile of shit. But it can also be very beautiful. Another Stephen King book read. I'm doing pretty good this year.
I've spoken to a friend about how Richard Bachman books a. Stephen King books sound so different from his normal ones. There is a different voice associated with the Bachman books. King is a legend in my eyes and to be able to switch the sound of your own writing voice to coincide with your pen-name books is just remarkable. I'm giving this book 3.
I don't really enjoy the Bachman books as much as I do King's books. The Another Stephen King book read. These are slower in my opinion and more generically written, if I may be so bold. They seem like any other paranormal story written by anyone.
I'm glad King only wrote a few books under this name. Thinner is about a lawyer named William Halleck. One day he gets in a hit and run and the woman dies. Of course he didn't mean to kill the old woman, but things happen. It would have been done and over with if he'd only gotten in trouble for his offence.
However having friends in high places he gets away scott-free. What Billy doesn't know is that the father of the old woman has friends in high places as well. The old man touches Billy one die and whispers "thinner". This is when Halleck's troubles begin. I found the story overall enjoyable. The narrator did an great job at changes up the voices so I knew just who was speaking.
I always worry that I won't like a narrator. The story gets a 3. Normally I like slow, but this was a bit too much for me. Also the wife was just so obnoxious. She knew what was going on and refused to see it. I am reminded time and time again of Scully from X-Files, whenever I come across a woman that is too stubborn too see her surroundings that she continues to deny what is clearly right in front of her.
I was sad for Billy that his wife continued to go behind his back. The ending I knew something like that was coming.
It's a traditionally scary story ending where everyone in the book thinks they are going to come away without a scratch and then they are sorely disappointed. Feb 28, Jim C rated it really liked it. Actual rating is 3.
This is a book that Stephen King wrote under his pseudonym. In this one, gypsies put a curse on Billy because Billy killed one of the gypsies in a car accident and got away with it scot free. The curse is that Billy who is overweight will start losing weight without even trying. The problem is that he keeps on losing weight and he cannot stop.
Reading what this book was about I was immediately sold on the idea. Losing weight without even trying. Hell, sign me up for tha Actual rating is 3. Hell, sign me up for that curse. And that is what King excels at. The idea of something that doesn't sound crazy but actually being harmful and a terror. I loved that part of the book as we see Billy love the idea of losing weight but by the end it really being a curse and could lead to his death.
I also liked how the characters in the book had to deal with grief, acceptance of one's actions, and how they deal with a loved one who might have an unknown disease. Even with all these aspects that I did enjoy there were flaws in this book and I believe they were the result that this was early into King's career as an author.
This wasn't the tightest written book. I did think there were plot holes and stuff that happened off screen. I think this novel would have benefitted by being a little longer and aspects fleshed out a little more. This was an enjoyable read that I am glad that I read. It isn't the best King work and I really wasn't expecting it to be.
It did exceed expectations. There were plenty of ideas that worked like the idea of the judicial members covering each other's asses while the "lower" class of the gypsies is harassed at every turn.
I actually wished we looked into that a little more. There is also aspects that did not work but in the end this is a book that is worth reading. Readers also enjoyed. About Richard Bachman. This is a Stephen King pseudonym. At the beginning of Stephen King's career, the general view among publishers was that an author was limited to one book per year, since publishing more would be unacceptable to the public.
King therefore wanted to write under another name, in order to increase his publication without over-saturating the market for the King "brand". He convinced his publisher, Signe This is a Stephen King pseudonym. He convinced his publisher, Signet Books, to print these novels under a pseudonym. In his introduction to The Bachman Books , King states that adopting the nom de plume Bachman was also an attempt to make sense out of his career and try to answer the question of whether his success was due to talent or luck.
He says he deliberately released the Bachman novels with as little marketing presence as possible and did his best to "load the dice against" Bachman. King concludes that he has yet to find an answer to the "talent versus luck" question, as he felt he was outed as Bachman too early to know. The Bachman book Thinner sold 28, copies during its initial run—and then ten times as many when it was revealed that Bachman was, in fact, King.
The pseudonym King originally selected Gus Pillsbury is King's maternal grandfather's name, but at the last moment King changed it to Richard Bachman. Richard is a tribute to crime author Donald E. Westlake's long-running pseudonym Richard Stark. The surname Stark was later used in King's novel The Dark Half , in which an author's malevolent pseudonym, "George Stark", comes to life. Bachman was inspired by Bachman—Turner Overdrive, a rock and roll band King was listening to at the time his publisher asked him to choose a pseudonym on the spot.
King provided biographical details for Bachman, initially in the "about the author" blurbs in the early novels. Known "facts" about Bachman were that he was born in New York, served a four-year stint in the Coast Guard, which he then followed with ten years in the merchant marine. Bachman finally settled down in rural central New Hampshire, where he ran a medium-sized dairy farm, writing at night. His fifth novel was dedicated to his wife, Claudia Inez Bachman, who also received credit for the bogus author photo on the book jacket.
Other "facts" about the author were revealed in publicity dispatches from Bachman's publishers: the Bachmans had one child, a boy, who died in an unfortunate, Stephen King-ish type accident at the age of six, when he fell through a well and drowned.
In , a brain tumour was discovered near the base of Bachman's brain; tricky surgery removed it. After Bachman's true identity was revealed, later publicity dispatches and about the author blurbs revealed that Bachman died suddenly in late of "cancer of the pseudonym, a rare form of schizonomia". The link between King and his shadow writer was exposed after a Washington, D.
Brown located publisher's records at the Library of Congress which included a document naming King as the author of one of Bachman's novels. Brown wrote to King's publishers with a copy of the documents he had uncovered, and asked them what to do. Two weeks later, King telephoned Brown personally and suggested he write an article about how he discovered the truth, allowing himself to be interviewed. King has taken full ownership of the Bachman name on numerous occasions, as with the republication of the first four Bachman titles as The Bachman Books: Four Early Novels by Stephen King in Books by Richard Bachman.
Related Articles. Yellowish pus oozed and flowed in weird channels between bulging dunes of proud flesh. Blood trickled here and there. Coarse black hairs, beard hairs, grew in crazy helter-skelter tufts, and Halleck's horrified overburdened mind realized that shaving would have become impossible some time ago in the face of such cataclysmic upheavals. And from the center of it all, helplessly embedded in that trickling red landscape, were Hopley's staring eyes.
All his life he's heard a bad deal called a dirty gyp. The "good folks" got roots; you got none. This guy, Halleck, he's seen canvas tents burned for a joke back in the thirties and forties, and maybe there were babies and old people that burned up in some of those tents. He's seen his daughters or his friends' daughters attacked, maybe raped, because all those "good folks" know that gypsies fuck like rabbits and a little more won't matter, and even if it does, who gives a fuck.
To coin a phrase. He's maybe seen his sons, or his friends' sons, beaten within an inch of their lives Because the fathers of the kids who did the beating lost some money on the games of chance. Always the same: you come into town, the "good folks" take what they want, and then you get busted out of town.
Sometimes they give you a week on the local pea farm or a month on the local road crew for good measure. And then, Halleck, on top of everything, the final crack of the whip comes. This hotshot lawyer with three chins and bulldog jowls runs your wife down in the street. She's seventy, seventy-five, half-blind, maybe she only steps out too quick because she wants to get back to her place before she wets herself, and old bones break easy, old bones are like glass, and you hang around thinking maybe this once, just this once, there's going to be a little justice I believe in what I see.
That's why I'm a relatively rich man. The book was released by NAL on 19 November The novel is about an obese lawyer who accidentally kills a gypsy, covers it up, and is cursed by the gypsy's father to rapidly lose weight.
Fans applaud it as one of King's best novels. The story follows Billy Halleck, an obese, upper-class lawyer living in Connecticut.
One night, while simultaneously driving home and receiving a hand job from his wife Heidi, he accidentally runs over an old woman from a band of traveling gypsies. He is brought to trial, but is acquitted thanks to his high connections, who fake evidence. His friend, the judge, declares him not guilty.
While Billy leaves the courthouse, an old gypsy man, who turns out to be Taduz Lemke, the gypsy woman's father, brushes his hand on Billy's cheek and whispers "thinner. While on vacation with Heidi, Billy discovers that he is beginning to lose weight, although he has not changed his diet in any way.
As the days progress, Billy's weight loss becomes more rapid. Although he is first pleased by this, he soon becomes frightened by the speed and suddenness of the weight loss.
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