(I do a lot of reading online, and I clip some of what I read to Evernote. Sometimes, I write about the things I read. It seems to me that some of these clipping and thoughts might be of interest to others, so I’m experimenting with a weekly post that summarizes and discusses the most interesting things I’ve clipped in the last week. Consider this the inaugural post for my Weekly Web Clippings experiment. Let me know if you like it. It will help me decide whether to continue it long-term.)
Stephen King talks about Doctor Sleep with Entertainment Weekly
There is a great interview with Stephen King on the Entertainment Weekly site, where he talks about Doctor Sleep, his upcoming sequel to The Shining. It was interesting to discover that his thoughts on sequels were generally similar to mine:
When I really got serous about it, I thought to myself ‘Do you really want to do this? Because most sequels really suck.’ The only two exceptions I can think to that is Huckleberry Finn, a book that is a sequel to Tom Sawyer but is really a much better book, and I think Godfather II is a much better movie than The Godfather.
King had to go back and re-visit The Shining when writing Doctor Sleep. In the interview he was asked if he ever re-read any of his other work:
Not a whole lot. I read It again. I had to do that because I wanted to use it in 11/22/63 – not just because some of the characters from It show up, but because a lot of it was set in [the fictional town of] Derry, Maine, and didn’t remember the geography. I had to go back to and be as careful as I could to get everything to fit together so there would be a smooth transition from one to the other.
This was interesting because the only two Stephen King books that I have re-read are It and 11/22/63, the latter of which I am in the process of re-reading right now. It’s a great interview. Stephen King always seems to give good ones, whether they are in print or live. If you are a Stephen King fan, you might go check it out.
King Richard III found in a parking lot
One of the more fascinating things I came across this week was the news that a skeleton found buried beneath a parking lot in Leicester is that of Richard III. The kind was supposed to have died in battle, and according to what I read:
His skeleton had suffered 10 injuries, including eight to the skull, at around the time of death. Two of the skull wounds were potentially fatal. One was a “slice” removing a flap of bone, the other caused by bladed weapon which went through and hit the opposite side of the skull, a depth of more than 10cms (4ins).
Aside from the fascinating genetic identification aspect to the story, it also has to make you wonder: who else will be identified in this manner? I can almost imagine, 500 years from now, archaeologists recovering a skeleton from somewhere near the Meadowlands, and using DNA testing to show inconclusively that the remains are those of Jimmy Hoffa.
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