Goosebumps

I just read Night of the Living Dummy and The Girl Who Cried Monster by R. L. Stine. These were alright books. They were really, really easy to read. Night of the Living Dummy is about sisters who are twins that always get jealous of each other when the other one has something cool. When Lindy found a dummy in a dumpster and started ventriloquism, Kris got jealous and wanted one too. Kris's dad found one in a pawn shop and bought it for her. Lindy was much better than Kris with the dummies, and Kris was mad at her. Lindy's dummy's name was Slappy and Kris's was Mr. Wood. One day Kris found a piece of paper in Mr. Wood's pocket and she read it. This made Mr. Wood come to life. He did all sorts of bad things like call people names and barf on a bunch of people in an audience. Kris and Lindy finally got rid of Mr. Wood when a bulldozer ran over him. The Girl Who Cried Monster is a book about a girl named Lucy Dark. She liked to tell her brother, Randy, monster stories and scare the living daylights out of him. One day Lucy left her rollerblades at the library and decided to go back and get them. To her surprise, she saw the librarian, Mr. Mortman, pull handfuls of flies out of a jar and shove them into his morphed head. He had large bulging eyes and a long snake-like tongue. She went home and tried to tell her parents about Mr. Mortman but no one would believe her because of all the stories that she made up. She kept going back to the library to make sure she wasn't seeing things and once one of her friends, Aaron, even went with her. He saw Mr. Mortman change his appearance and he told Lucy's parents about it. Lucy's dad invited Mr. Mortman over for supper one night and Mr. and Mrs. Dark ate him for supper because they were vampires.

Bag of Bones

I have finally finished this book. It took me a long time to read because the beginning was sort of boring but once you get through the beginning, the book is really good. Mike had been cross examined about the custody of Kyra. It didn't really get anyone anywhere because Mike kept coming up with smart comments to keep the hearing from going bad. After that Mike went to the library to see Mattie, and the head librarian kept on giving them dirty looks. A few days later Mattie called Mike and told him that she had been fired from the library. She was devastated because it would look bad in the case if she didn't have a job. After the phone call, Mike took a walk to cool off and he suddenly got dizzy so he was leaned over next to a birch tree when all of a sudden he saw a wheelchair and a pair of legs walk in front of him. He looked up and saw Max Devore and his "personal assistant" Rogette Whitmore. They told him to leave the case alone because it wasn't any of his business. Mike tried to leave, but Max moved his wheelchair so he couldn't go anywhere. Max also hit Mike in the head with his cane. When Mike fell into the lake, Rogette threw stones at him until he swam out far enough where she couldn't reach him. A floating raft was only like 100 yards away so Mike decided to swim to it. He was so exhausted and when he finally got there he looked to shore and Max and Rogette were nowhere to be found. Mike swam in to shore and crawled back to the cottage and went to sleep. The next morning John Storrow called and told him that Max committed suicide the night before. The custody case was over. Mike, Mattie, John, and the other lawyers decided to have a party at Mattie's in celebration. While they were outside playing frisbee, a drive-by shooter shot Mattie and John. Mattie died and Kyra was crying because she wanted her mom. While all of this was happening, a huge storm was brewing and when Mike took Kyra to Sara Laughs to be safe the storm hit. There were trees falling all over the place and the wind was blowing crazily fast. Throughout all of this the lady who the cottage was named after, Sara Tidwell, was the evil spirit in the house and she was possessing people to kill little children with names beginning with "K". Mike had to dig up her remains which were by the lake and pour lye on them. After he did this, the house wasn't possessed anymore. A couple of weeks passed and Mike decided that he wanted to adopt Kyra.

Bag of Bones

While Mike and Bill talked, Bill told Mike that Jo had been to the summer house quite a few times before her death. He also said something about Jo buying plastic owls because it kept the evil spirits away from the house. Mike knew nothing about this and he was upset because Jo never told him that she was visiting Sara Laughs. Mike made a few phone calls to try to see why Jo had been visiting the summer house. Afterwards, he went to look for the owls. He went to check the cellar. It was very spooky and he felt a presence. There was someone or something down there answering his questions by banging on a pipe. Once for yes and twice for no. After he found out that the owls weren't in the cellar he went back inside the house and a message in magnetic letters was on his refrigerator. It said: hel1o. He sat down and started doing a crossword puzzle and when he went to get a drink out of the fridge there was another message that read: help r. Mike moved the letters so it said: lp her. Whoever moved the letters wanted Mike to help Mattie and Kyra. Max Devore wanted custody of his granddaughter, Krya, and Mike was going to help Mattie by hiring a lawyer for her. Mike called up a guy named John Storrow and he said he would be Mattie's lawyer. Mike talked to John for a while about the case and the things that Mike should and shouldn't be doing. It was okay for Mike and Mattie to talk and hang out in the backyard of Mattie's trailer, but they weren't supposed to be seen going into it because the people in the village would think something was going on between them. John and Mike hung up and Mike called Mattie and told her about hiring a lawyer for her. She was so thankful and was glad that someone like Mike was trying to help her.

Bag of Bones

Mike kept on hearing these crying noises inside of Sara Laughs. He didn't know what they were so he was going to try to record them and let Bill listen to them. Mike had been living in the cottage for about a week and he still had not gone into Jo's nook or studio since she had passed and he contemplated visiting the rooms. Jo's nook was never overfull, but Mike said it made his office look crowded and homey by comparison. It was only a square room because the rug, photos, and desk were gone. He felt anger towards Brenda Meserve because he thought she cleaned it out, but a voice in his head gave him the idea that Jo did it herself. The studio, which Mike had visited after eating his lunch, was closer to the way it was before Jo's death.

Mike used the tape recorder that he had found and pushed record before he went to bed. The next morning he re-wound the tape and pushed play. There was a whisper that said "Oh Mike," over and over again which freaked him out. That morning after breakfast, a truck pulled into the driveway and the sign on the driver's door gave away that it was Bill Dean. He had come to visit and see how Mike liked the clean up job of the cottage. Mike and Bill talked and caught up on each others' lives. Bill told Mike that he should stay out of Max Devore's (Matti's father) way because he was crazy. Max would do anything to get what he wanted. Bill also told Mike about Mattie and they sat and talked for a few hours.

Bag of Bones

I completely forgot to post this on Friday because of prom so sorry it's a little late. After Mike woke up the next morning, he decided to go on a walk and while he was on his walk, he saw all of his neighbors. He went for another swim and layed on the float in the middle of the lake. His mind raced about all the events that had went on since he returned to Sara Laughs. He walked back home and went upstairs where he was reminded of Johanna. He cried himself to sleep again for the second time in one week.

Bag of Bones

This book is going kind of slow but so far it has been good. Mike was driving into town on Route 68 and just passed Lakeview General Store when he spotted a little girl walking in the middle of the road. He stopped his car and got out to see what she was doing and where she was going. She said that she was going to the beach because her mommy wouldn't take her. Mike guessed that she was either three or four years old. After a little time passed, a woman in a jeep sped past and slammed on the brakes once she saw that the little girl was with Mike. She reversed the car to were they were standing and Mike and the woman talked for a while. The woman's name was Mattie Devore and the little girl was her daughter, Kyra. Mike went and ate supper at Village Cafe and afterwards he went back to Sara Laughs and took a swim in the lake. It was nice and refreshing. He got out, lounged around his house and the phone rang. It was Maxwell Devore, Mattie's father, calling because he was concerned about his granddaughter's safety. He hung up the phone and the rest of the evening he read until he fell asleep in his bed.

Stephen King

Stephen Edwin King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947. He was the second son of Donald and Nellie Ruth Pillsbury King. After his parents separated, he and his older brother, David, were raised by his mother. When Stephen was eleven they moved back to Durham, Maine. Stephen attended grammar school in Durham and then Lisbon Falls High School, graduating in 1966. During his sophomore year at the University of Maine, he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, “The Maine Campus.” He graduated from the University of Maine in 1970 with a B.A. in English and was qualified to teach on the high school level.

He and Tabitha Spruce married in January of 1971. He met Tabitha in Fogler Library at the University of Maine, where they both worked as students. The Kings have three children: Naomi, Joe, and Owen and three grandchildren. Stephen made his first professional short story sale "The Glass Floor" to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. In the fall of 1971, Stephen began teaching high school English classes at Hampden Academy in Maine. Writing in the evenings and on the weekends, he continued to produce short stories and to work on novels. In the spring of 1973, Doubleday & Co. accepted the novel Carrie for publication. During the summer of 1973, the Kings moved to southern Maine because of Stephen's mother's poor health. Stephen wrote his next-published novel Salem's Lot. During this period, Stephen's mother died of cancer, at the age of 59.

Carrie was published in the spring of 1974. The Kings then left Maine for Boulder, Colorado where Stephen wrote The Shining. About a year later, they moved back to Maine and he wrote The Stand and The Dead Zone. Stephen and his family moved to Orrington so he could teach creative writing at the University of Maine. Stephen is currently the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Some of King’s written works include: Bag of Bones, Carrie, Desperation, Dreamcatcher, The Eyes of the Dragon, Firestarter, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Insomnia, It, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, and Tommyknockers.