The book

Safe to say there's next to nothing in the book that clears up this movie's mysteries.

This is very definitely a Kubrick film that just happens to use King's novel as a plot source

I should confess though that the novel is one of my least favorite among's King's "early" works (i.e. his short fiction and novels up through Needful Things)

Yeah, Kubrick just pretty much did his own thing. It's just another poor adaptation, like The Bourne Identity.

Heres somthing cool about the book and its sequel dr sleep. Spoilersssss.......
Btw I reccomend both books i really loved them













I remember in the book,it was implied that at the end. With Jacks last bit of sanity and love left in him for his family. He was able to sub consciously forget to release the pressure valve on the boiler. Causing the hotel to blow up, and allowing Wendy and danny and the black dude to escape.



At the end of dr sleep danny takes on a powerful clairvoyant foe atop the burned remains of the hotel. In the fight at the last minute he is assisted with a shove to his foe from a family related specter. You can geuss who that was . Jack of course. Now this how i remember these books ending, but maybe im wrong ? Tell me if so. I do smoke pot so maybe im foggy about the details. But i remember both times being very moved at the thought of jack redeeming him self not once but twice. A fathers love for his family gets me every time

During his conversation with Grady, Jack claims to have read about him in the newspaper. We never see that happen and he didn’t know about the tragedy during his interview. But there is a brief shot of a scrapbook by his typewriter at one point. The book goes into great detail about the scrapbook Jack finds in the basement and everything he learns from it.

The book tells us why Jack was fired from his teaching position (violence against a student) and how that experience influences his new writing project.

The book tells us Danny’s full name: Daniel Anthony Torrance. Get it? Tony.

I just finished reading the book for the first time (my mother gave me her first printing, which is in almost mint condition, and complete with its dust jacket-it's probably worth money).

I too, was wondering if the book would clear up any mysteries that were left unanswered in the film. Unfortunately, they are so far removed from one another, that reading the book adds nothing to the film. It's as if Kubrick was influenced by the original story, and borrowed a few things from the novel, but ended up writing his own story. Yeah, the shine is there, the hotel is there, the ghosts are there, the characters are there, but everyone, and everything is put together completely different. A lot is added, a lot is left out, so what we got was a very different story.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND reading/listening to the book. It is phenomenal. And the answer is both. Some things the book expands on/makes more clear. Just as an example, the scene where Wendy comes up on the man in the bear suit going down on the man on the bed. The man on the bed was one of the owners of the hotel who is a closeted homosexual. And the guy in the costume, which was a dog costume in the book not a bear costume, was one of his flings. It also expands on how Jack got the job there and why he's not teaching anymore. And then also some of the stuff you see in the movie is not in the book. But are Kubrick's own variations of what's in the book. A lot of people complain about how different the movie is from the book but what you never hear them talk about is how a lot of the stuff is exactly the same as the book. Especially the dialogue some of it is verbatim directly from the book. Anyway the book and the movie are both awesome and I highly recommend both.