Cell : 15th Sep - 17th Oct 2015

I'm in two minds about Cell. On the one hand, I just didn't get on board with the overall conceit of a brain rebooting pulse that turns mobile phone users into 'zombies'. It's a shallow metaphor for the benign influence of mobile phones - and, considering our ever increasing enslavement to the smartphone - wholly accurate, but I'm not sure it's strong enough to hold up 400-500 pages. Telepathy loses my attention a bit too.

On the other, I welcomed a return to the familiar King territor of a band of survivors embarking on an adventure and taking on the bad guy (without all the trappings of The Dark Tower - I still have some unresolved feelings about the series, that i'll be working through. Don't worry, it's less weird than it sounds.)

I know how soft and cosseted it makes me sound to find comfort - and relief? in the familiar and formulaic, instead of hankering for King's ongoing creative evolution and waving the flag for his writing whatever he feels like writing, but in order to keep up what little momentum I have in this mission, I was happy for a 'standard-King'.

Lisey's Story is next. I didn't know a thing about it, but I've recently heard good things.

The Colorado Kid - 10th - 14th Sep 2015

I really should have read this in one go as it's a short mystery novel. As it happened, I had a busy weekend flying to Atlanta, driving to Tennessee, running a half marathon before driving back and flying home.

The Colorado Kid was a cool little book that has acted as both a palate cleanser and a springboard to get cracking and power on through the back nine of the bibliography. It's becoming too common a final word in these posts but, we'll see.

Reaching the Dark Tower - Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower: Apr- Sep 15

So, I went and finished the Dark Tower series. I haven't got the energy to write about the two books individually, and I'm not one for lengthy criticism, so I'll just close out the series with a few thoughts.

It's King's self-professed magnum opus. It didn't hit me the way I'd expected or maybe hoped. Overall, I could say I wouldn't have really minded missing the whole thing out. At the same time, there were sections that really got me, specifically the evolution of Jake and Roland's relationship and the death of one of the characters was like a knife. I read the section while walking home from work and after a couple of great wracking sobs burst out of me, I had to put the book away until I got in the house. 

The biggest thing for me, though, was that I didn't care how things turned out. Apart from the particularly moving passages, the rest was just a story passing by.

Now, I read with interest the introductions to the books where King says that he received letters from people who were dissatisfied with the way he ended one book and other plot decisions he made. Who are these dickweasels that take it upon themselves to write to an author and tell them they shouldn't have written this or that? Your options as a reader are limited to read or don't. That's it. It's not for you. It's mere coincidence if you like it. Jesus.

My final thought is that I'm inclined to find the audiobook series and give it all another go. We'll see.

Wolves of the Calla - The Dark Tower V : Feb - Apr 15

This big bugger didn't take me all that long, all things considered. I finally managed to find some reading discipline and forced my way through.
I suppose using the word 'forced' there says a lot. I wasn't rushing to pick the book up every night, desperate to see what would happen next, but soldiered through it.
I'm still not a Dark Tower convert, but still holding on that everything will fall into place and the scales will fall from my eyes. Or not. Either way, there are worse ways to spend your time.

From a Buick 8: 22nd Jan - 2nd Feb 2015

That's better. 400 and a few pages in little over a week.

I'll kick off by saying I liked From a Buick 8 a lot. It isn't a brilliant book, but I had a good time reading it. It had the feeling of coming home to me. Coming home to the style of Stephen King that I fell in love with all those years whenever when. Eminently readable, head far from up its own arse but still able to grab you by the throat, punch you in the gut or compel you to lay the book down and smile with a faraway look and say "shit, he nailed it."

The Stephen King I love always feels real, even though his stories take you further and further into the unreal. He's someone whose stories can be read without an overt, critical dissection of the themes and subtexts because there's enough satisfaction in just reading the fucking thing. The subtexts and themes come through and sink in without being mined in fear of having missed something because the book was so dry or listless.

As I said, the book isn't brilliant. Nowhere near his best, but it got me revved up. (I actually got a couple of sentences on before I came back to apologise for that pun). There were bits I had to force myself to keep reading (the autopsy being one) because the dread was rising.

Long story short, fun and satisfying.

Black House: 16th Aug 2014 - 21st Jan 2015

Hahahaha, 5 months. Pitiful. I'll list my excuses/distractions at the end.

On the plus side, as Laura of Devouring Texts fame promised, it was way better that expected. Still not awesome, but as I say almost every time these days, it would probably have gone a lot better for me if I'd have just charged through it.

Part of me got excited by the Dark Tower references (probably because it's nice to feel part of the in-crowd) but the other part wished I gave much of a toss about The Dark Tower series. Up to now, I really don't. I'm still looking forward to the three upcoming installments of the series I have coming up after From a Buick 8 and Everything's Eventual.

Anyway, Black House. Early on, it was really obvious who was writing. I found Straub's exposition dreary and could tell when King took over with his crackling prose and irreverence. After a while, I didn't notice it as much. I think it stood out at first because I came at the book expecting not to like it (The Talisman didn't thrill me at all - http://thekinglongread.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/talisman-8th-may-19th-august-2011.html), so, like a dick, it was easy to latch on to this as confirmation that it was going to be cack. As it turns out, it wasn't cack. It made me want to revisit The Talisman. Based on how things are going, that might not be for another 5-10 years, so we'll see.

Distractions:
My rekindled love of American Football, heroically enabled by the NFL GamePass app for iPad. So good.

I've also been catching up on some TV with Netflix/Amazon Prime

Sons of Anarchy - bit of a guilty pleasure.
Justified - love it and looking forward to diving headlong into Elmore Leonard's bibiliography at some point
American Horror Story
- only series 1 so far, not 100% but with so many genuinely creepy moments, I'll go back for the rest.
The League - my wife has an aversion to it because my hooting and belly laughing gets on her nerves
Community - only on series 1 and so much of it falls flat, I wonder whether to keep going, but then there are some great bits that keep me pressing the 'play next episode' button.