If a book is adapted to film, do you usually watch the movie first, then read the book or visa versa? Back in the 80's when Disney released Something Wicked This Way Comes I just had to see it. I remember seeing the previews and being intrigued enough to want to see it. Needless to say when we saw the movie, I was scared out of my skin.
At that time it never occurred to me to read the book. It wasn't until a year or so ago, I finally picked up the book and read it, thoroughly enjoyed it. Nowadays, I'd rather read the book first, then go see the movie. So much more fun that way and gives you plenty to discuss afterwards. Of course, there are some books that I have loved, but have no desire to see the movie. A, because it's totally been changed from the original or b, my overactive imagination just can't handle the visual aspect of the story.
Although I may read scary, creepy, chilling books; watching them is an whole different ball of wax. Remember covering your eyes at the scary bits, peeking through your fingers. That's me, even now. My son seems to have the same sensitivity. Nowadays when he expresses an interest in seeing a movie and I know its based on a book, we read the story first. He's the inquisitive type, doesn't like surprises and needs to know what's going to happen. Reading the book first saves me from explaining everything during the movie.
And my friends wonder why I prefer waiting until movies come out in DVD. *grin* At least then you can pause the movie, answer the questions, then move on.
Without further ado:
Synopsis: "For those who still dream and remember, for those yet to experience the hypnotic power of its dark poetry, step inside. The show is about to begin.The carnival rolls in sometime after midnight, uhering in Halloween a week early. The shrill siren song of a calliope beckons to all with a seductive promise of dreams and youth regained. In this season of dying, Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show has come to Green Town, Illinois, to destroy every life touched by its strange and sinister mystery. And two boys will discover the secret of its smoke, mazes, and mirrors; two friends who will soon know all too well the heavy cost of wishes. . .and the stuff of nightmare"
Excerpt Chapter 10
"Just after midnight.
Shuffling footsteps.
Along
the empty street came the lightning-rod salesman, his leather valise
swung almost empty in his baseball-mitt hand, his face at ease. He
turned a corner and stopped.
Paper-soft white moths tapped at an empty store window, looking in.
And
in the window, like a great coffin boat of star-colored glass, beached
on two sawhorses lay a chunk of Alaska Snow Company ice chopped to a
size great enough to flash in a giant's ring.
And sealed in this ice was the most beautiful woman in the world.
The lightning-rod salesman's smile faded.
In
the dreaming coldness of ice like someone fallen and slept in snow
avalanches a thousand years, forever young, was this woman.
She
was as fair as this morning and fresh as tomorrow's flowers and lovely
as any maid when a man shuts his eyes and traps her, in cameo
perfection, on the shell of his eyelids.
The lightning-rod salesman remembered to breath.
Once,
long ago, traveling among the marbles of Rome and Florence, he had seen
women like this, kept in stone instead of ice. Once, wandering in the
Louvre, he had found women like this, washing in summer color and kept
in paint. Once, as a boy, sneaking the cool grottos behind a motion
picture theater screen, on his way to a free seat, he had glanced up and
there towering and flooding the haunted dark seen a woman's face as he
had never seen it since, of such size and beauty built of milk-bone and
moon-flesh as to freeze him there alone behind the stage, shadowed by
the motion of her lips, the bird-wing flicker of her eyes, the
snow-pale-death shimmering illumination from her cheeks.
So from other years there jumped forth images which flowed and found new substance here within the ice.
What color was her hair? It was blond to whiteness and might take any color, once set free of cold.
How tall was she?
The
prism of the ice might well multiply her size or diminish her as you
moved this way or that before the empty store, the window, the
night-soft rap-tapping ever-fingering gently probing moths.
Not important.
Far above all--the lightning-rod salesman shivered--he knew the most extraordinary thing.
If
by some miracle her eyelids should open with that sapphire and she
should look at him, he knew what color her eyes would be.
He knew what color her eyes would be.
If one were to enter this lonely night shop--
If one were to put forth one's hand, the warmth of that hand would...what?"
Melt the ice.
The lightning-rod salesman stood there for a long moment, his eyes quickened shut.
He let his breath out.
It was warm as summer on his teeth.
His hand touched the shop door. It swung open. Cold arctic are blew out around him. He stepped in.
The door shut.
The white snowflake moths tapped at the window."
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