I was driving home yesterday afternoon at about 6:30 and as soon as I turned east I was faced with this enormahuge orange/yellow harvest moon. It was gigantic yall. It looked like one of those Hollywood scenes that they superimpose into a scene. Kind of fake looking with all the clarity and detail of each crater and each lunar mountain visible. And I am kind of wavering on how I feel about the first thing that popped into my mind.
T-O-M spells moon.
Are you guys following me here? Or am I the only person on the planet to read The Stand and own the movie? If so then damn, my literary choices may be considered questionable.
Actually, I know they are. I like smut. I like mindless drivel and novels that are purely entertaining. I enjoy Patricia Cornwell, I enjoy Dean (R heh) Koontz, I enjoy Elizabeth Lowell, I enjoy Janet Evanovich and I enjoy the hell out of some Stephen King. No, let me make that I enjoy all*, not some, of the stuff that Stephen King slaps into any medium. Books, movies, web novels, tee-tiny novellas that end up making on hell of a book (The Green Mile for instance), collaborations and the like.
I really just enjoy the mans brain.
His books make for a very fast and pleasant read for me.
Two weeks ago Mister and I went to the Half Price Books by our house. I wandered around aimlessly. First I forayed into the new releases and then I wandered around in the hardback section and then into the Horror section.
I found three things.
#1) The 4th installment of the Harry Potter novels Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and yes, I know. The movie has been out for nigh on a frillion years and it is being released on dvd (or it already has been) in the next few days. What can I say, I am late to the party.
#2) The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
And
#3) The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower
Numbers 3 and 4 are in a series of novels by Stephen King. I started reading the first installment shortly after it came out in 1982. It was 1983 or 84 when I found the first one so reading this series until the end (The Dark Tower is the last one) and taking about twenty some odd years to do it is very comforting for me.
I have read and re-read each of Mr. Kings novels and serial novellas and short stories over and over, but none more than the Dark Tower or as they are also called the Gunslinger Series. I have sold and repurchased the books dozens of times over and each time I open one of the books of the series, as a filler before I read something new, or just as a re-read, it is almost like I am visiting again with old friends.
The Dark Tower concept and its characters are threaded through most of Mr. Kings novels so when I would come across a Randal Flagg reference (in The Stand) or a Cort (in The Eyes of a Dragon) reference it always made me feel tied to the story because I had a whole other layer of back story already in my noggin.
I read Song of Susannah in just a few days and I kept reading other things to put off the opening of the last of the series, The Dark Tower because I just dont want this familiarity to end.
As with each of Mr. Kings novels there is a distinct flavor to the Dark Tower series. The characters have a different dialect and a different cadence of speech that I find seeping into my thoughts. I find myself referring to others as sai and the pleasantry of long days and pleasant nights to you has almost slipped out on more then one occasion in the past week or two. I mentally add big-big to phrases I hear others say when they speak with conviction. Oh, I love that house! in my head big big.
Gah.
I know. I know.
But the context and the visuals within each novel and the sheer fucking size of the task blow me completely out of the water. These are not 200-300 page novels. They are like 600+ pages each. Can you imagine trying to take on that kind of project? And to make things a little bit more woo-woo King goes ahead and writes himself into the last book. (!)
He writes himself into the book yall. And it works. It works.
Yeah, what kind of egomaniac or genius does that? The man is either certifiably insane or brilliant. I am going to split the difference and say both.
*Except for Kingdom Hospital. Holy crap, that was bad.