The Green Mile
The Green Mile is a 1996 serial novel by American writer Stephen King. It tells the story of death row supervisor Paul Edgecombe's encounter with John Coffey, an unusual inmate who displays inexplicable healing and empathetic abilities. The serial novel was originally released in six volumes before being republished as a single-volume work. The book is an example of magical realism. The Green Mile won the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel in 1996. In 1997, The Green Mile was nominated as Best Novel for the British Fantasy Award and the Locus Award. In 2003 the book was listed on the BBC's The Big Read poll of the UK's "best-loved novel".
Stats for nerds
5recommend
9mentions
8people
2016–2024years
56% recommend33% neutral11% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > How tragic would it be if someone’s deep empathic nature made them feel personally responsible for a death beyond their control – to the point of suicidal ideation - and was then imprisoned for it?
Haven't you ever read The Green Mile?
- Fiction
- Three Body-trilogy, Cixin Liu
- The Children of Húrin, Tolkien
- The Silmarillion, Tolkien
- The Hobbit, Tolkien
- Lord Of The Rings-trilogy, Tolkien
- The Green Mile, Stephen King
Non-fiction
- Practical Vim 2nd ed., Drew Neil
- Pestens år: döden i Stockholm 1710, Magnus Västerbro
- Read the book. I was in the same camp as you. Most of his writing is just hack nonsense. But, some is well written (The Stand, Misery, Shawshank, The Green Mile, Cujo, for example). He's just inconsistent.
Seriously, read the On Writing book. It really set his theory up for me to understand exactly why he's inconsistent. You can read his books and tell when he's thinking and processing, versus when he's writing to pay for a car or house or whatever.
- For me - I prefer fiction audiobooks over non-fiction. Non-fiction often requires re-reading certain paragraphs or flicking between sections to refresh my memory on certain points. But with a good fiction book I can just relax and let the words wash over me and get lost in the story.
My favourite book on Audible is The Green Mile by Stephen King read by Frank Muller. It's an experience that can't be matched by a physical book. The narration is top notch and you feel really invested in the story.
- I love this thread. I've been a long time HN lurker, but only fairly recently did I create an account and start contributing.
See the honesty and emotion on these comments really makes me feel I'm hanging out with a good bunch of people. It's so refreshing compared to the toxic communities of the other large social sites.
I'm a cryer. I cry a lot, I'm also clinically depressed with social anxiety, which makes social interaction difficult, so my emotional are mostly on the surface anyway. Crying for me is the best form of emotional release. I cry at the big ending in films, I cry at the end of amazing books (The Green Mile totally destroyed me, I was in business class on a plane at the time, blubbering my eyes out...).
On balance though, I also get very angry often. I guess you can't have one without the other...
- It’s my opinion, and probably only my opinion that the shorter his stories, the better they are. I love love love his short stories, but his novels are only meh for me—-two exceptions being the The Stand and Misery. I have read most of his stuff except for anything released in the last 3 years or so.
I think even his short stories adapt better to movies as well…Shawshank, Stand By Me, The Green Mile…all three to me are simply awesome movies but were heavily adapted from the source story. Misery was good as well, but I kind of blame the casting of Kathy Bates as a genius move that really made that one work.
