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Summary: From a Buick 8: A Novel
Review: Remember Bob Dylan, before the motorcycle crash. Then after the crash.
This is similiar...Boring! I have never ..ever ..been.. bored ..before by S King.. It a ok story..but not up to previous standards. Good luck in retirement Stephen..
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Summary: ABSOLUTELY BORING.....ZZZZZZZZZZ
Review: I couldn't even get half way through it without tossing it aside. I tried and tried to get into it....giving it the benefit of the doubt, but got sick of wasting my time and wanted to move on to something else by another author. Time for Mr King to retire. The story NEVER picked up and never changed from Shed B. Give ole Shed B a rest!! Do not recommend.
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Summary: Very good book.......
Review: ...trust me, if you're an av fan of SK, then you'll ove this book. Forget about this being another car book. It's nothing like the previous.
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Summary: Good writing, though story not as exciting as his usual work
Review: This book was an easy read. At times I couldn't stop turning the pages, though at others I was waiting for the story to step up. This book showcases not so much a great story with a frightening monster, but highlights the great storytelling and descriptivness of King's writing. The writing is vivid and authentic, and though the plot is slow and leaves a lot of questions unanswered, his story telling is better than ever. The end of the book poses more questions than it answers, but is a worthwhile read if you are looking for a good story. I would skip this book though if you need answers and want to be looking under your bed for a boogeyman.
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Summary: A more mature horror novel
Review: OK, it's a Stephen King book and it's about a supernatural car. I suppose comparisons to "Christine" are inevitable. But really, is it so inconceivable that an author can write two book centering around cars and they be two completely different books? "From a Buick 8" proves the point, for me. As far as I'm concerned, it couldn't be more different from "Christine," despite the spooky car angle they both share. "Christine" isn't one of my favorite King books, really, though it's not one of his worst either. It's a pretty straight horror story, well-told but fairly typical of early King and the genre in general. Nigh-invulnerable killer car goes after a bunch of kids... Friday the 13th for the automotive set, gotcha. "From a Buick 8" has very little in common with "Christine," though, other than an old car with supernatural overtones. "Buick 8" is so much more about buildup and characterization. It's a story about people, and as a story which is told from the perspective of 5 or 6 different narrators (very convincingly, I might add), it's also a story about storytelling. It's a story in which very little actually happens. There are very few cataclysmic events or shocking revelations. The spooky car in "Buick 8" never goes on a rampage or kills a bunch of people in increasingly nasty ways (at least, you're never sure that it does). It spends 95% of the story in a shed behind a rural police station, throwing off the occasional light show and spitting out the occasional oddity.. and at least one monster (and even that is left to interpretation). But the car itself does very little. "Buick 8" is a mystery, but not in the Agatha Christie sense of the word, because it's not all wrapped up in a neat little bow at the end. It's a book that observes that there are very few concrete answers in life, especially for the "big stuff." It's a story about how even the strangest events get incorporated into our everyday lives. We deal with them, we do what we have to, and we move on. It's not always the most dramatic or the most satisfying, but it's the way things are. The message of the book seemed (to me) to be encapsulated near the end, when Sandy observes this: "The world rarely finishes its conversations." It's a truth that King himself seemed to understand when writing the book, something absent from much of his earlier work. "From a Buick 8" is worlds different from "Christine," literally and figuratively. It's a far much more mature book, and it shows King's growth as a writer more clearly than anything other the the "Dark Tower" series. It deserves to be noticed as the work of a mature writer, independent of his previous work.
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Summary: Boring
Review: Nothing happens in this novel--nothing unpredictable, that is. It literally put me to sleep. A good time for the "Master" to stop, indeed.
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Summary: The Master Does it Again!
Review: A car that only LOOKS like a car and the memories of what happened to the troopers of Pennsylvania State Trooper D squad is the subject of King's latest (and, perhaps, his last) book. Told mainly in flashback, "From a Buick 8" concerns a very odd classic Roadmaster Buick that rolls into a gas station one day with a mysterious driver behind the wheel. Pale skin, with an almost melted-looking face, the driver heads off around the station presumably to the bathroom, and disappears. With the driver suddenly missing, the Staties are called in to have a look-see at the vehicle. Things immediately get very strange: there are no prints in or on the car, the car itself has no dirt, dust or pollens in or ON it (the tires won't even hold a pebble jammed down between the treads), and the engine is designed in such a way that there's no way it could ever move an inch under it's own power. It only LOOKS like a car, then, and it's enough to give anyone on Troop D the creeps. The car is stored in a shed out back of the troop's barracks, where a young Ned Wilcox discovers it. Ned is the son of a State D trooper who was recently killed in a pointless and horrific traffic accident. Ned's been hanging around the barracks a lot since his dad died, trying to get a better feel for what his father was like on the job, when he discovers the car under a shed. He also notes that while the temperature outside of the shed is in the 80's, INSIDE the shed it's hovering in the low 60's. What's going on here? Why is the car there? Whats up with the temperature change? The stories start then, mostly told by Sandy, the current Troop D commanding officer, and the book begins to shuttle between the present day and the days when the car was first found, and then started doing mysterious and horrific things. Strange, twisted, potentially dangerous and hideous THINGS begin to come OUT of the car during periods when the car releases blasts of intense light. Turns out Ned's dad was the resident Buick Expert (in as much as anyone COULD be an expert of such a bizarre thing) and spent a huge deal of time trying to figure what the Buick really WAS and where it came from. Ned, like his late father, becomes totally fascinated in the Buick, and begins to wonder if somehow the car managed to murder his father... I am what Mr. King refers to as a Constant Reader-a fan of his writing, in other words. Having read almost all of the works of King, I can say that "Buick 8" departs from King's tradition of grab-you-by-the-throat style of horror. This work is more reminiscent of his epic work "It", where a good deal of the action has already happened, and the reader is just there to hear the story and be enveloped in a good tale. There is a strong sense of nostalgia to this tale, and the plot easily unwinds and you're there, right in the thick of things, trying to figure out just what this devil-car IS, and where it came from. In the end, we wind up being as bewildered as the original cast of troopers who kept vigil over this strange thing from the beginning. There is an audio version of this book that is unique in that there are 5 narrators reading the story. The characters that are telling the story to Ned right now are all voiced by different actors while the parts that happen in the past ("Then", in the book) is voiced by one single actor. I am a diehard fan of audio books and have very high standards for narrators, ESPECIALLY for long audio books like this one which weigh in at 13.5 hours on 12 CD's: unless I am completely engrossed at all times, I don't bother listening to the book. This audio version is stunning and highly recommended. Each narrator takes their time, doesn't rush through the material, and unspools the story as if you're sitting there with them, outside Troop B barracks, hearing all the odd and terrifying tales about the strange Buick for the first time. Kudos to the publisher for allowing the voice actors to take their time and not rushing them to the finish line. Overall, highly recommended, especially in audio format.
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Summary: Like Spending an Evening With a Friend
Review: Sitting down to read From a Buick 8 is like sitting down to listen to an old friend of your father's spin a yarn about something interesting that happened back in the day. You keep wanting to stick around to hear more. The story flows in kind of an easy going pace that still manages to keep your interest. I especially liked how stories of the strange and dangerous Buick are framed around stories of routine state trooper duties. It keeps the story grounded in a way that makes it seem like it actually could have happened. What I really liked about this story was how it's told. All the different perspectives of the various troopers were exceedingly well done. Sandy being our main story teller, but he's helped out by a couple of his buddies to fill in gaps and such in their own unique ways. We get to know these troops and understand where they're coming from. This makes it easy to feel their fear and anticipation when the Buick starts any number of it's weird light shows that could lead to who knows what coming through it's trunk. We're drawn, as Curt Wilcox is drawn, to the mystery of the not quite car, and thusly just as frustrated as he is by the seeming lack of answers to that mystery. We can see how it becomes sort of a weird item in the background of Troop D's normal goings on, as we feel a part of the D family. The book is basically just ruminations of how the car came into being (how it came to be in Shed B anyways) and the many occurances surrounding it. However, past and present collide as Curt Wilcox's son, Ned, is drawn into the mystery of the car, just as his dad was, if not in more dangrous ways than Curt. Whatever you do, don't go in expecting a King book that gives you a monster that chases the characters around as they fight for their lives the entire book. No, you might be disappointed indeed if you come in with that mindset. Just sit down, relax and enjoy the tale as it is unfolded before you as only a master storyteller can do.
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Summary: "Another Page Turner by Mr. King"
Review: "From A Buick 8," by Mr. King is another page turner that had me chewing my fingernails until the last page had been read.
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Summary: Should have left this one in the closet.
Review: I'm a big King fan, have all his books in First Editions...I am only half way through it and that in itself says something since I started it weeks ago and usually I can't put his books down... This book does not grip me. ...
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