Charlie and I started listening to this in audiobook format when we left South Carolina. It is a total of 32 hours long, and while Charlie would listen when he was in the car with me back and forth to school, I would listen in between -- and then fill him in. I mean, I didn't want to spend the rest of my life listening to this particular book, entertaining as it was. And Stephen King will use 20 words to my three to describe something, so there was 20 minutes left when I dropped Charlie off in the morning, and I waited to pick him up before listening to the ending. Which left me on a drive with just the radio! Not even satellite radio, because I was in the Jeep and apparently our free service is gone! (When we bought it last year, used, it came with it, it just stopped last month. Thank you to whomever has been paying for it for us!)After the book ended, Stephen King spoke about how he came up with the idea of the book and how long it took him to write it because he wanted it to make sense. (Seriously? King has been taking huge leaps with his story lines for years, why let "sense" get in the way this late in the game?!) Which reminded me of the time when I was in high school, when I gobbled up anything he wrote until one day I was reading some book about aliens or what have you, and the Coke machine was killing people, and I was done. I even wrote to him and asked him what sorts of drugs he was on when he was writing, because I felt that if I too, took the drugs, the story line might be digestible. (He never replied.)
I basically gave up King, despite how much I had loved his stories, such as Carrie, Salem's Lot, Cujo, Pet Cemetery and my mostest favorite, Misery.
I can actually remember flying to Arizona with Peter, it was mid-80's and we were going to the Grand Canyon for a wedding of a childhood friend of Peter's. On the flight there I was reading Misery. I am a fairly fast reader and I was inhaling this book, when it got to the parts where the crazy lady starts hacking off parts of her captive with an axe. Right now, as I sit here, I can recall how I had to close my eyes and stop reading, in order to let the horror pass through me. The attention to detail in that book is really mind boggling. King was NOT doing drugs when he wrote that, no way. When the guy manages to get out of the room and gets his wheelchair down the hallway into the bathroom, then hears her car and has to get back into the room so she won't know he can get out ... and then he sees the mark of the wheelchair wheel on the floor .... every cell in my body was screaming. What would the nut job do NOW?! (If you have only seen the movie, Misery, and not read the book, you need to rectify that immediately.)
I have a friend who remained a loyal King fan, and when she would ask me if I had read so and so, I would tell her that he was too off the charts for me now, I don't read him, and she would tell me I was nuts. After thoroughly enjoying Under The Dome, I am now going to go back and read those books that I haven't -- and my heavens -- there are so many!
I think it was The Tommyknockers that signaled the end of my King road. But then years later, I read The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and thoroughly enjoyed it, but those long books are such a commitment. But listening to them in the car is perfect, especially for a daily commute. So I think my next one will be The Stand. Nope, not on Audible.com yet, so I went with Rose Madder.
What is kind of exciting here is that there are so many to choose from! All these years I've been scorning Stephen King, and he has gone and not cared one bit (do you think he even READ my letter?) and just kept writing. Geesh.
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