King's sequel to "The Shining" ought to be very interesting

Some authors don't write sequels.

Others write nothing but sequels, at least to the point where each novel is a further adventure in the life of the author's primary character.

With the exception of his seven-book "Dark Tower" series, and two books on which he collaborated with Peter Straub, Stephen King hasn't been a big sequel guy. We never learned about the later lives of the kids in "It," or what happened in Boulder after the apocalyptic showdown in "The Stand."

"The Shining" was one of the few books that really seemed ripe for a sequel. It was King's third novel and perhaps the first one that was fully realized, and it had been adapted twice for movies.

The first time, of course, was the great Stanley Kubrick directing the great Jack Nicholson, and the result was a movie King fans mostly hated and Kubrick fans thought was pretty wonderful.

I didn't much care for it, mostly because I thought Kubrick left something very important out of his adaptation. One of the key plot points was that supernatural forces caused Nicholson's character gradually to lose his mind as the story evolved. But Kubrick had Nicholson acting maniacal almost from the first time we see him.

King himself reportedly hated the adaptation, and 14 years after the original came out, he helped make the book into a three-part television miniseries starring Steven Weber in the role Nicholson made famous.

Now I'm pretty sure even Weber doesn't put himself in the same league as Nicholson, although his portrayal is far closer to what King intended for Jack Torrance to be. And anyone who wouldn't rather watch Rebecca DeMornay as Wendy than Shelly Duvall, well, they're probably a big "Popeye" fan.

Of course Danny Torrance, the kid with "the shining," survives the book and both movie adaptations, and King himself says he gets a lot of correspondence from readers asking what happened to that little boy when he grew up.

Which brings us to "Doctor Sleep."

More than 35 years after "The Shining" was published, 16 years after the second movie adaptation, King presents the story of the adult Danny Torrance, who has never really gotten over what happened to him when he was 5 years old and staying at a remote hotel in Colorado.

The book comes out tomorrow, and I'll have it on my Nook soon after midnight. I don't care for everything King writes -- there are three or four of his books I never bothered to read and a half dozen others that never did much for me.

But when he's in the zone I like -- books like "Under the Dome," "11/22/63" and others -- there is no one I would rather read.

And as for "Doctor Sleep," I'm glad he finally got around to the sequel.