Two Thoughts Upon Reading The First Chapter Of Doctor Sleep

Thought #1: Jeez, no wonder Stephen King hates Stanley Kubrick.  He has to go, “Hey, you know that guy who got killed off for shock value in the third act?  Well, he’s actually alive and thriving at the end of my version of The Shining, and more than that he’s going to play a very important role right in the first chapter.”
Being Stephen King, he does this right in the second paragraph, but I’m sure as he was writing it, he hated that he had to regurgitate events for movie-but-not-book readers.  Because it’s not his best opening.  It serves, but it’s what he kind of had to do.
Thought #2: I will acknowledge that I literally squeed with happiness when I saw that Stephen had put in an explicit cross-reference to a Joe Hill book, thus knitting the Hilliverse and the Kingiverse together now and forever more.  Yes, they’re father and son, but it was kind of a pleasant way of saying, I trust my boy.  He can be in my worlds.  And since I fucking adore Joe Hill, I’m so glad to see this marriage of creativity.
(Hey may well have done this with his wife Tabitha’s book, which I didn’t care for, and maybe for Owen’s book as well – that’s on my list – but being a Joe Hill fan, it made me all squeepy inside.  YES SQUEEPY IS A WORD.)