danielmolloy's reviews
286 reviews

Pet Sematary by Stephen King

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Did not finish book. Stopped at 21%.
tooooooooo sad i knew it was about to get SAD
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

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dark funny reflective fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

had no idea what to expect from this, and i'm so glad i read it at a time when this kind of gentle absurdity is exactly the kind of thing i love to experience
The Tale of the Body Thief by Anne Rice

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dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

okay so IN THE END i found i liked this a hell of a lot more than i thought i would on first reading.  it's good!!  i wound up loving david, lestat got some great character stuff to do, we got a lot of louis time (!!!!), and lestat got a dog!!  i had to restart a couple of times due to the patented Anne Rice Extremely Slow Opening, but after that i was completely hooked and stayed that way!!
Nightmares & Dreamscapes by Stephen King

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dark mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

SPOILERS ABOUND

dolan’s cadillac - 4/5

lmao i was just thinking how poe this one was and then dolan literally goes for the love of god, robinson! while he’s getting essentially bricked in under the interstate…

the end of the whole mess - 4.5/5

i love when i finish a short story and i don’t really have any thoughts other than “good!!!!!!!!!!!” in mikaela’s caitlin doughty voice

suffer the little children - 5/5

HELLO???????

the night flier - 3.5/5

DWIGHT RENFIELD????  anyway this one had a good vampire and i wish he would write another vampire book!!  i know it’s hard to top ‘salem’s lot but at least try!!

popsy - 4/5

damn he really followed up with another vampire story right after i said that

Then a hand, more like a talon than a real hand, smashed through the side window and ripped the hypo from Sheridan’s grasp - along with two of his fingers.  A moment later Popsy peeled the entire driver’s-side door out of its frame, the hinges now bright twists of meaningless metal.  Sheridan saw a billowing cape, black on the outside, lined with red silk on the inside, and the creature’s tie…and although it was actually a cravat, it was blue all right - just as the boy had said.
[...]
“We came to the mall because my grandson wanted some Ninja Turtle figures,” Popsy whispered, and his breath was like flyblown meat.  “The ones they show on TV.  All the children want them.  You should have left him alone.  You should have left us alone.”

it grows on you - 3.5/5

points for castle rock but points lost for not really going anywhere

chattery teeth - 4.5/5

kooky!  fun!!!  i love a silly goofy story tbh!!

dedication - 2/5

uhhhhhh… no i don’t think so

the moving finger - 5/5

really really excellent but um there’s a lot of puke in this book 🙁

sneakers - 5/5

rad!  love the interpretation of ghosts here!!  will be stealing!

you know they got a hell of a band - 5/5

WOOHOO martian chronicles!!!  how fortuitous that i just finished it!!  silly goofy but SOOO good!!

She had a horrid suspicion that this was how men almost always got their way: not by being right but by being relentless. They argued like they played football, and if you hung in there, you almost always finished the discussion with cleat-marks all over your psyche.
[...]
She took her hand away, but he paused a moment longer, looking at her.  “Only if you’re sure,” he said.
And that was really the most ludicrous thing of all, wasn’t it?  Winning wasn’t enough for a man like Clark; the vote also had to be unanimous.  She had voiced that unanimity many times when she didn’t feel very unanimous in her heart, but she discovered that she just wasn’t capable of it this time.
[...]
You didn’t have to see the town’s only watering hole to know that it would be called The Dew Drop Inn and that there would be a lighted clock displaying the Budweiser Clydesdales over the bar.  The parking spaces were the slanting type; there was a red-white-and-blue barber pole turning outside The Cutting Edge; a mortar and pestle hung over the door of the local pharmacy, which was called The Tuneful Druggist.  The pet shop (with a sign in the window saying WE HAVE SIAMESE IF YOU PLEASE) was called White Rabbit.  Everything was so right you could just shit.
[...]
Never mind Ray Bradbury’s hellish vision of Mars or the candy-house in “Hansel and Gretel”; what this place resembled more than either was The Peculiar Little Town people kept stumbling into in various episodes of The Twilight Zone.

home delivery - 5/5

🥹🥹🥹

rainy season - 4/5

It was a big yellow dog of no particular make or model.  Its paws lay directly beneath one of the rocker’s curved runners.  The old man took no notice of the dog, seemed not even to realize it was there, but the runner stopped a quarter of an inch from the vulnerable paws each time the old man rocked forward.  Elise found this unaccountably fascinating.

my pretty pony - 4/5

docked a point only because i got a tiny bit lost in the sauce as to what mr. stephen was trying to say…

sorry, right number - 4/5

fun little screenplay format for a very coherence-style thing!!

the ten o’clock people - 1/5

ehhhhhh no not really…. i was there and then i was not :/

crouch end - 4/5

straight up cthulu mythos but i liked the ending enough to give this an extra point

the house on maple street - 5/5

YAAAAAAY THE BURDICK STORY

the fifth quarter - 2/5

good but like… i don’t know it just didn’t hit for me babes

the doctor’s case - 5/5

HURRAY IT’S HOLMES TIME!!

We left.  The parlor door was open, but I kept my head down as we passed it.  Holmes looked, of course; there was no way he could not have done.  It was just the way he was made.  As for me, I never saw any of the family.  I never wanted to.

umney’s last case - 5/5

i almost gave this a 4 but i really do like… like the whole shape of it, if that makes sense

head down - 5/5

nonfic!!  wowza!!  dude i think i’m crying abou baseball!!

brooklyn august (for jim bishop) - 4/5

baseball poem <3

notes

Isn’t that - the risk of being bitten - one of the reasons you picked up this book in the first place?  I think so.  And if you get thinking of me as your kindly old Uncle Stevie, a sort of end-of-the-century Rod Serling, I will try even harder to bite you.

it’s soooo refreshing to have an author reflect on their work and go yeah that wasn’t it!!  (Let me tell you something, friends and neighbours: I hate explaining why things happen, and my efforts in that direction [such as the doctored LSD and resultant DNA changes which create Charlie McGee’s pyrokinetic talents in Firestarter] aren’t very good.)

the beggar and the diamond - 4/5

ending good as hell
The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury

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adventurous hopeful reflective medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

like what is there to say.  another masterwork.  mr bradbury did you ever get tired of winning
Dune Messiah by Frank Herbert

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dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

- paul's continued hatred of the desert contrasted with chani's love for it + the unnatural introduction of water to arrakis
- giving in to visions regardless of one's own grief/terror/unwillingness
- deification whether you like it or not
The Tommyknockers by Stephen King

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mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

so the second act of this is needful things pt ii and is the best part :/ this one is Pretty good but it falls flat in a lot of ways and goes on for waaaay too long!!
Song of Susannah by Stephen King

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

was prepared to find the meet-the-author part really cringe.  i did!  a bit!  but there was so much that was incredibly touching and tense, and it continues to amaze me how openly stephen king can look back on his own flaws and the mistakes he's made and that near-death experience AND work them into his own writing.  i'll be in tears when i finish this series.
1984 by George Orwell

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dark tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

somehow i always forget just how unflinchingly depressing this goddamn book is
Dune by Frank Herbert

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

literally SO much better on the second read-through, and it was a 5/5 the first time.  the slow tragedy of absolute power and inherited destiny and losing friends to the ranks of your devoted.