Wednesday, January 26, 2022

stephen king

 

February is National Bird Feeding Month and O’Neal Library is offering free DIY bird feeder kits for every birding book or dvd checked out beginning February 1st!  Simply visit the display on the 2nd floor and redeem the bookmark included to receive your kit.  The kit does require you to supply your own peanut butter.  Also, take a birdwatching walk with Alabama Audubon on Wednesday, February 23rd at 9am, departing from the library parking lot and utilizing the sidewalk alongside the Birmingham Country Club golf course.  Register here: https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/5822362

Mark your calendar for the return of the Friends of O’Neal Library book sale!  Friday, Saturday, and Sunday February 25-27, shop the Book Cellar for great deals or the treasures available in the Community Meeting Room.  Monetary donations to the library of $25 or more entitle you to an invitation to the Preview Party on Thursday, February 24th so donate today: https://oneallibrary.org/support-mblf-2210

The next meeting of Books & Beyond is on Tuesday, February 22nd at 6:30pm and the topic up for discussion is ancient civilizations.  Join us in the Conference Room or register to receive a Zoom link: https://emmetoneal.libnet.info/event/5494757

This week, Books & Beyond met to discuss the work of Stephen King:

Elevation

“Written in masterly Stephen King’s signature translucent…this uncharacteristically glimmering fairy tale calls unabashedly for us to rise above our differences” (Booklist, starred review). Elevation is an antidote to our divisive culture, an “elegant whisper of a story” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review), “perfect for any fan of small towns, magic, and the joys and challenges of doing the right thing” (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

The Shining

Jack Torrance's new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he'll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote...and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.

11/22/63

On November 22, 1963, three shots rang out in Dallas, President Kennedy died, and the world changed. What if you could change it back? In this brilliantly conceived tour de force, Stephen King - who has absorbed the social, political, and popular culture of his generation more imaginatively and thoroughly than any other writer - takes listeners on an incredible journey into the past and the possibility of altering it.

Hearts in Atlantis

Each of these five interconnected, sequential narratives, set in the years from 1960 to 1999, are deeply rooted in the 60s culture and the haunting images of the Vietnam War.

Different Seasons

Four gripping novellas tied together by the changing of seasons. Includes 4 stories, most of which have been adapted by Hollywood.  “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption,” “Apt Pupil,” “The Body,” and “A Winter’s Tale.”

Pet Sematary

When Dr. Louis Creed takes a new job and moves his family to the idyllic rural town of Ludlow, Maine, this new beginning seems too good to be true. Despite Ludlow’s tranquility, an undercurrent of danger exists here. Those trucks on the road outside the Creed’s beautiful old home travel by just a little too quickly, for one thing…as is evidenced by the makeshift graveyard in the nearby woods where generations of children have buried their beloved pets. Then there are the warnings to Louis both real and from the depths of his nightmares that he should not venture beyond the borders of this little graveyard where another burial ground lures with seductive promises and ungodly temptations. A blood-chilling truth is hidden there—one more terrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful. As Louis is about to discover for himself sometimes, dead is better…

Cujo

The number-one national best seller for Stephen King's rabid fans, Cujo "hits the jugular" (The New York Times) with the story of a friendly Saint Bernard that is bitten by a sick bat. Get ready to meet the most hideous menace ever to savage the flesh and devour the mind.

The Stand

This is the way the world ends: with a nanosecond of computer error in a Defense Department laboratory and a million casual contacts that form the links in a chain letter of death. And here is the bleak new world of the day after: a world stripped of its institutions and emptied of 99 percent of its people. A world in which a handful of panicky survivors choose sides -- or are chosen. A world in which good rides on the frail shoulders of the 108-year-old Mother Abagail -- and the worst nightmares of evil are embodied in a man with a lethal smile and unspeakable powers: Randall Flagg, the dark man.

IT

Welcome to Derry, Maine. It’s a small city, a place as hauntingly familiar as your own hometown. Only in Derry the haunting is real. They were seven teenagers when they first stumbled upon the horror. Now they are grown-up men and women who have gone out into the big world to gain success and happiness. But the promise they made 28 years ago calls them reunite in the same place where, as teenagers, they battled an evil creature that preyed on the city’s children. Now, children are being murdered again, and their repressed memories of that terrifying summer return as they prepare to once again battle the monster lurking in Derry’s sewers.

Cat’s Eyes

Stephen King, the modern master of horror, offers up two terrifying tales from his bestselling book "Night Shift," and an all-new tale written especially for this movie.

Night Shift

Stephen King’s first collection of short stories showcases the darkest depths of his brilliant imagination and will "chill the cockles of many a heart" (Chicago Tribune). Featuring “Jerusalem’s Lot,” the basis for the upcoming tv series Chapelwaite.

Carrie

An unpopular teenage girl, whose mother is a religious fanatic, is tormented and teased to the breaking point by her more popular schoolmates. She uses her hidden telekinetic powers to inflict a terrifying revenge.

The Green Mile

Welcome to Cold Mountain Penitentiary, home to the Depression-worn men of E Block. Convicted killers all, each awaits his turn to walk the Green Mile, keeping a date with "Old Sparky," Cold Mountain's electric chair. Prison guard Paul Edgecombe has seen his share of oddities in his years working the Mile. But he's never seen anyone like John Coffey, a man with the body of a giant and the mind of a child, condemned for a crime terrifying in its violence and shocking in its depravity. In this place of ultimate retribution, Edgecombe is about to discover the terrible, wondrous truth about Coffey, a truth that will challenge his most cherished beliefs...and yours.

Eyes of the Dragon

The Kingdom of Delain is at stake when King Roland is murdered and his son and rightful heir, Peter, is framed for the crime. Plotting against him is the evil Flagg and his pawn, young Prince Thomas. Yet with every plan there are holes - like Thomas's terrible secret. And the determined Prince Peter, who is planning a daring escape from his imprisonment. Stephen King has taken the classic fairy tale and transformed it into a masterpiece of fiction for the ages.

The Long Walk

In the near future, when America has become a police state, 100 boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. Among them is 16-year-old Ray Garraty, and he knows the rules - keep a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings and you're out - permanently.

The Dead Zone

Johnny Smith awakens from a five-year coma after his car accident and discovers that he can see people's futures and pasts when he touches them. Many consider his talent a gift; Johnny feels cursed. His fiancée married another man during his coma, and people clamor for him to solve their problems. When Johnny has a disturbing vision after he shakes the hand of an ambitious and amoral politician, he must decide if he should take drastic action to change the future. 

Everything’s Eventual

A collection of 14 dark tales, Everything’s Eventual includes one O. Henry Prize winner, two other award winners, four stories published by The New Yorker, and “Riding the Bullet,” King’s original ebook, which attracted over half a million online readers and became the most famous short story of the decade. 

Maximum Overdrive

Stephen King’s only directorial credit, the film explores the events after a comet-induced radiation storm on Earth causes machines come to life and turn against their makers. Holed up in a North Carolina truck stop, a group of survivors must fend for themselves against a mass of homicidal trucks. A diner cook, Bill Robinson (Emilio Estevez), emerges as the unlikely leader of the pack, attempting to find an escape plan for himself and the survivors, who include his boss, Bubba Hendershot (Pat Hingle), and a newlywed couple.

Creepshow

Stephen King writes and acts  in this compendium of five short but terrifying tales contained within a single full-length feature, conjuring scares from traditional bogeymen and portents of doom. In one story, a monster escapes from its holding cell. Another focuses on a husband (Leslie Nielsen) with a creative way of getting back at his cheating wife. Other stories concern a rural man (Stephen King) and a visitor from outer space, and a homeowner (E.G. Marshall) with huge bug problems and a boozing corpse.

Christine

Stephen King's ultimate evil vehicle of terror, Christine: the frightening story of a nerdy teenager who falls in love with his vintage Plymouth Fury. It was love at first sight, but this car is no lady.

From a Buick 8

The state police of Troop D in rural Pennsylvania have kept a secret in Shed B out back of the barracks ever since 1979, when Troopers Ennis Rafferty and Curtis Wilcox answered a call from a gas station just down the road and came back with an abandoned Buick Roadmaster. Curt Wilcox knew old cars, and he knew immediately that this one was...wrong, just wrong. A few hours later, when Rafferty vanished, Wilcox and his fellow troopers knew the car was worse than dangerous.

GENERAL DISCUSSION – Obviously, King’s 11/22/63 captured most of the attention and drove a great deal of the conversation!

Connie Willis’s Oxford Time Travel series

The series is set in the 2050’s and 2060’s and time travel has been invented. Since it is apparently impossible to bring objects back from the past, commercial organizations lost interest, and time travel is now the domain of the history departments of universities. Historians travel back in time, to engage in research of the periods they are studying.
-Fire Watch (available from Interlibrary Loan)
-Doomsday Book
-To Say Nothing of the Dog
-Blackout
-All Clear

House on the Strand by Daphne du Maurier

Dick Young is lent a house in Cornwall by his friend Professor Magnus Lane. During his stay he agrees to serve as a guinea pig for a new drug that Magnus has discovered in his scientific research. When Dick samples Magnus' potion, he finds himself doing the impossible: traveling through time while staying in place, thrown all the way back into Medieval Cornwall. The concoction wears off after several hours, but its effects are intoxicating and Dick cannot resist his newfound powers. As his journeys increase, Dick begins to resent the days he must spend in the modern world, longing ever more fervently to get back into his world of centuries before, and the home of the beautiful Lady Isolda....

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain

In this classic satiric novel, published in 1889, Hank Morgan, a supervisor in a Connecticut gun factory, falls unconscious after being whacked on the head. When he wakes up he finds himself in Britain in 528 — where he is immediately captured, hauled back to Camelot to be exhibited before the knights of King Arthur's Round Table, and sentenced to death. Things are not looking good. But Hank is a quick-witted and enterprising fellow, and in the process of saving his life he turns himself into a celebrity of the highest magnitude.

Just Visiting (not available in the library system, but available to rent on several streaming services)

"Just Visiting" is an American retelling of the 1993 French comedy blockbuster "Les Visiteurs" in which stars Jean Reno and Christian Clavier reprise their popular roles for original director Jean-Marie Gaubert. In the film, A French nobleman, Count Thibault of Malfete (Jean Reno) and his servant André (Christian Clavier) find themselves in modern day Chicago -- transported from the 12th century due to a wizard's flawed time-travel potion.

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