Early this summer, I was visiting family and the weather was so beautiful that we decided to dine on the back porch. There were, for some reason, more wasps than I prefer about, and when we opened the umbrella over the picnic table, it got worse. We soon discovered why: there was a tiny wasps nest in the umbrella, about the size of a large lemon. While most of us retreated inside, the men-folks got a bottle of wasp-killer and sprayed the nest. The next thing I knew, one brother-in-law had brought the nest inside: Look at this, he said, isn’t it cool?

“Are you nuts?” I demanded. “Take that outside.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” he said with a chuckle. “It’s empty.” And he shook it.

“Did you never read The Shining ?!? Get that thing outside!”

Cooler heads prevailed and he was banished to the outdoors with the wasps’ nest.

This is what reading does for you: it keeps you safe.

I feel like there you could split the world into two parties: one who loves The Shining movie; and one that loves The Shining book. There are some substantial difference between the two.

In the book, the father gives his son a dead wasps’ nest that he finds in the eves of The Overlook on a freezing day. His wife protests but the father insists firmly that it’s safe, tells her not to be stupid. He leaves it on the boy’s bedside table and in the night, the wasps thaw out and emerge, stinging the little boy.

In the movie, there’s a hedge-maze. In the book, it’s a Roque court and topiary animals.

In the book, the boiler is a central character in the story. The husband is warned to keep it from overheating; the husband shows the wife how to manage it and the two of them return to the boiler time and again. In the end, in the book, the husband’s obsession with controlling his wife and son distracts him from his duty to manage the boiler, and it overheats, taking the hotel with it.

All that said, I like the movie better than the book: it’s tighter – the book tends to drag at points – and it’s more visually appealing.

The first time my husband and I watched the movie together – the first time either of us had seen it – we got to the scene where the wife accuses the husband of hurting their child. And I’m thinking, “He so did it. He’s so the bad guy.”

And my husband made me pause the recording so he could use the bathroom. And on his way to sit back down next to me, he says, “She so did it. She’s the evil one.”

So then we had to stop and have an argument.

And I resolved never to rent an isolated cabin in the woods for us to stay in winter.

And yet both the movie and the book suffer from the same problem.

As one of my friends put it: the ultimate evil and the worst it can think to do to you is kill you?

That’s it?