it's been so long

when i was a kid i loved scary stuff. still do really. but as a young kid and all the way into high school i LOVED horror movies and i LOVED to read scary books. my favorite was the best, and he was so good that eventually he was the only author i read for great fiction novels!
yep... STEPHEN KING.

Say whatever you like about him = sick, dimented, twisted. yep, i totally agree. but, now you have to agree that he is unbelievably gifted and at least one of THE TOP 5 AUTHORS of our generation. (i would argue 1 of the top 2.)

he's one of the 2 or 3 greatest storytellers ever. as a teenager his stories mezmerized me! i read everything i could:
The Shining
The Dark Tower whole series about that crazy Gunslinger...
Pet Cemetary
The Dark Half - the most insane thing i've ever read!
The Dead Zone
IT 
Dreamcatcher
Needful Things

Misery - the last one i read around 17...
Tons more i read that i'll remember tomorrow. i think the last one i read was Misery around my senior year of high school. i haven't read one since. haven't really read fiction at all since 17 until my wife made me read Harry Potter (& i thank her for it!)

but i have been intrigued every since Stephen released his newest book about 9 months ago = Under the Dome

my wife was shopping for Christmas crap and somehow i got tricked into going to super Wal-mart with her. which meant i'm just basically walking around for hours because i'm a good husband. :)
we walked in the front door i saw King's new book as it was just released that week. i picked it up and thought "this will give me something to do."

you have to understand that i was passionate about Stephen King's books 10 years ago. now, i had long lost that passion and just picked it up to pass the time. BUT this book grabbed my imagination just like all the others and i was immediately sucked into this story that seemed like reality in a little town in... yeah, you guessed it, Maine.

i could not put that book aside for a second to see where i was walking. i bumped into like 3 aisles. i wanted to buy it really bad but it wasn't in the budget. (new release hardbacks are so expensive!)

last week i saw it was a new release in paper back and fairly cheap. i started reading reviews from the NY Times and USA Today. They were saying things like this was Stephen King's best book since The Stand AND "The best ever from the best ever."

wait a minute... the best ever from Stephen King... the best ever author. whoa. that got my attention.
i read all about how it has a major agenda and it's not just fiction. it's big time political, ecological, and of course about HUMANITY and our struggle with right and wrong, good and evil, moral choices and what mankind will do in certain situations.

i read an article Stephen himself wrote that he started writing the book in 1976 but quit after 75 pages and now he went back at it over 30 years later!

i had a Borders gift card from my ordination at Ridge Church. so the day before we left for vacation i bought it because i was just sucked into the greatness of the story from one of the greatest storytellers!

it's 1,100 pages! a BEAST. i'll never read it except on vacation when there is no work to be done. i'm reading the next Harry Potter 1st, but then i might read Under the Dome next.