The Running Man by Stephen King
In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for president, they run for their lives…
Ben Richards is out of work and out of luck. His eighteen-month-old daughter is sick, and neither Ben nor his wife can afford to take her to a doctor. For a man from the poor side of town with no cash and no hope, there’s only one thing to do: become a contestant on one of the Network’s Games, shows where you can win more money than you’ve ever dreamed of—or die trying. Now Ben’s going prime-time on the Network’s highest-rated viewer participation show. And he’s about to become a prey for the masses…
For the Reading Challenge(s):
The Stephen King Constant Reader Challenge
The Reason
For the The Stephen King Constant Reader Challenge and my online bookclub was having a Stephen King buddy read extravaganza during Halloween season!
The Quotes
“In the year 2025, the best men don’t run for president, they run for their lives. . . .”
“He understood well enough how a man with a choice between pride and responsibility will almost always choose pride–if responsibility robs him of his manhood.”
“…like words repeated until they are reduced to nonsense. Say your name over two hundred times and discover you are no one.”
My Thoughts
It’s so funny that my previous reviews were for a 5-star King book, singing his praises as a writer, and now I’m only giving 3 stars to another King book! It wasn’t a bad story, and in fact, I love the premise, but the execution left me a little disappointed. It may also be unfair because I grew up watching a lot of Schwarzenegger movies and The Running Man was one of my favorites, and although I knew the movie didn’t follow the book closely at all, I was hoping for the same thrill, and I don’t feel like I got it.
This book is also horribly dated, having been written in 1982, and a lot of King’s imagined ideas for what 2025 would look like falls comically short. Not his fault, and probably not an issue when it first came out, but it does take away a little from my enjoyment of reading this book for the first time in this day and age. I’m expecting the new movie coming out to be updated from when the old movie was released, and in a way, I wish there would be an updated version of this book too, but I recognize this is a me problem and not the book problem.
My Rating
⭐⭐⭐/5 stars.
Have you read this book? Would you read this book? Did you like the book or do you think you would like it?
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