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I am not an abandoner of books. Even if I'm hating a book that I'm reading, I'll usually presss on until the end in the name of time investment. There have, of course, been exceptions to this; I've put a few books down in my time, usually quite close to the end, but generally I manage to stick with it.

When I was about 12, my friend (at the time) Amy urged me to read Stephen King's Misery. I'd never read a King book before and had long been curious about them. The movie, starring Kathy Bates and James Caan, had come out not long before and was very popular amongst the pre-teens in my grade. (These are the same kids who passed around a battered copy of Flowers in the Attic until it literally fell apart. Yeah, I was one of those who read it. Scared the bejeezus outta me, too. But it didn't stop me from reading Garden of Shadows [or whatever the prequel was called], either.) Anyhow, I tried to read Misery, got about 2/3rds in, and then Annie Wilkes cut off Paul Sheldon's foot with an axe and cauterized the wound with a blowtorch. I'd been queasy for a long while into the book, but at this point I had to simply stop.

Sometime between then and now I became a semi-closet King addict. Stephen King books are one of my guilty pleasures. They're a chocolate substitute. The prose is so easy to read that it soothes the brain despite the gruesome subject matter. He's a hypnotic writer. And funny. And scary. During a cross-country train trip when we were 15 or so, I was in an L.A. bookstore looking for something to read and Erica suggested I try The Dead Zone. That was the start of it. I've read It twice. My mother doesn't approve, but my father owns a lot of King's earlier work and usually borrows the newer ones I buy for myself.

Yeah, a lot of his content is just plain vile. I've had more than my fair amount of please-put-the-book-in-the-freezer moments. When Pennywise spoke to the evil guy in the nuthouse from the face of the moon in It, I threw the book across the room in terror and had to wake up my mom at four in the morning.

Been reading a lot of King this summer. There are many worthy must-read books on my list that are gathering dust on my shelves because I couldn't tear myself away from The Tommyknockers these past few weeks.

Just now I reached that part in Misery that had made me stop reading it ten years ago. It's almost three a.m. and I was reading it in my bed and I had to get up and find Kirsten (who, as luck would have it, is in the living room watching anime) and hold the book, shaking, out to her so she could take it away from me. I don't even think this scene is the most gruesome or horrifying I've ever read in a King book, but I guess reading that scene made me feel like a 12-year-old.

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

HE DIDN'T GET OUT OF THE COCKADOODIE CAR! makes me laugh, though.

I'm going to go back to the book this time, of course. Stick it out to the end. Annie Wilkes isn't much more terrifying than the shit-weasels in Dreamcatcher. She's nowhere near as scary as Pennywise the Clown. I think Randall Flagg would probably kick her ass in a fight. But, still. I don't think I'll be going back to that book tonight. I think maybe a little House at Pooh Corner, instead. Yes, definitely. A little smackerel of something.

Why are you in Tavie's head? 2:56 AM | shower me with attention