Under The Dome Notes #1

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A long book is hard to keep up with. By the time you're finished, you've forgotten interesting sub-plots that got you there. I thought it would be fun, for me anyway, to write some notes as I read. This will be nothing more than my own rambeling notes.

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1. Writing.

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King's writing is extremely good. Sharp, descriptive and well paced. I'm only a few pages in, and already there's been a small animal cut in half, plane crash and a murder.

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2. The Cannibals.

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Having read the first 120 pages of the Cannibals, I can honestly say that this version is much, much stronger. In the Cannibals people simply spent their time trying to open the door. Interesting, but not superly superly interesting. But the dome coming over an entire town opens the story up. The problems here are going to be much bigger than doors that won't open.

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King doesn't take the long build up he did with Needful Things and other books. The action is immediate. The payoff's start coming quickly.

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3. UNDER the dome, okay!

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So, I"m not very bright, okay! My children remind me of this often. And, I'm not reading U.T.D. in my easy chair, I'm listening as I drive around our small town. Somehow I missed that the plane was on the UNDER side of the dome. I kept wondering how Dale was seeing the parts fall. Shouldn't it slide off the dome? Then I realized: OH, stupid! The plane was inside the dome.

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4. What a naughty boy.

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Junior certainly has an attitude problem. Wow! I love the way King brings us inside his head -- even when that head is exploding with pain. And it is also interesting that he passes information to the reader that none of the characters in the book know. For instance, that Jim Rennie Jr. has a brain tumor that doctors never thought to look for. Actually, in the realm of writing, I thought the narration usually had to follow the same knowledge the characters had.

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I won't say any more, other than Junior is a very very naughty boy. I'm freaked out that King has gotten me to see the world from Junior's distorted view already.

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5. Rated R.

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How good is this book? I find myself sitting in the car listening even when my driving is done. My wife's head appears in the window. . . "you coming in?" her look says. Listening does add its own problems, like I can't listen while my kids are in the car. Too much talk about breeding farms! And it's not stuff that will get past a nine year old.

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I wonder what they'd really rate this if it was a movie. Well, it went to HBO, not NBC -- that says something.

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Aren't-ja glad you read all that mess.