April 19, 2013

• Hm.

  Anyone else ever discover an author or a musician or an actor/actress or something where, after the first thing you read/hear/see from them, you're like, "huh, that was kind of awesome...must look more into this", and then been really disappointed?

  I feel that way about Steven King.
  I mean, I should like him, right? He writes about all manner of terrifying things, right? I like terrifying things. His characters have pretty active inner narratives. I like that. Enough that I can see myself mimicking parts of it when I write as a character.
  But somehow, the only two books I've read by him and then thought, "that was a really good book...I'm glad I spent my time reading that" are his book about writing, and Cell.

  I read Desperation because of a story I read by Andrew Schwab (vocalist of a band called Project 86), and he was talking about a book where some cop in the desert "goes crazy and starts killing everyone", and while I hated a lot of it, some bits were too good for me to write it off completely...and I read The Regulators because it was the companion book to Desperation, and it was awful...

  I read Insomnia because something about the idea of not sleeping and so getting caught up in the hallucinatory world of higher powers and good and evil appealed to me...and that book also has its moments, but it just seemed lacking something...

  And I read The Stand because it was supposed to be really good, but my word, that book is a million billion years long! And I say that as a person who loves The Lord of The Rings!

  I don't know...I think...looking back at all the King books I've read, maybe I could have picked the more popular ones, like Carrie (whose movie is being remade), or Pet Semetary or Salem's Lot or something...but I didn't.
  I guess after reading Cell, and then making four more attempts at liking his books I just have to give up. You can only go through so many stories where you think something is building up and becoming this spectacular thing and you can't wait to see what it is, and then getting disappointed when it fizzles out and turns into nothing much after all.

  Sigh, I guess.

  But, if you're ever in the mood for a book filled with good, horrifying details, I definitely recommend Cell. It's a little bit dated, even if it was written only seven years ago (cell phones have changed in new and terrifying ways in that short time) but I liked it enough to read it twice and I still think it's a good book. No disappointments.

  And now, sleep time.

  • 3:30 am
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