As most (if not all) of you know, I’m a huge book reader, have been since at least sixth grade. In high school, I started reading Stephen King and really enjoyed his stuff, and read several of his thousand page novels during that time.
Eventually my tastes changed (having stopped reading Mr. King), and started reading mysteries, and other stuff, but also started reading Tom Clancy’s 1,000 page novels too. I read about ten of his huge books in the (late) ’80s and ’90s. But, around the time of my separation/divorce (2000/2001), I stopped reading those huge books (but kept reading the “normal” sized books of 400-500 pages). I could not “concentrate” past the middle of these huge thousand page novels any longer, and would end up, putting them aside, with a bookmark in the middle, but never coming back to them.
Like I said, my taste for Mr. King left me in my twenties.
“Recently” (a few years ago), Mr. King wrote a non-horror novel, another thousand pager, called “11/22/1963”, which really caught my interest. So, I bought the e-reader version of it when it came out, but, again, my attention span doesn’t allow me to read books of that length any longer, and I put it aside, and never went back to it.
I’m writing this blog post tonight, because, apparently JJ Abrams has made a limited tv series based on Mr. King’s novel. Eight episodes, came out a few months ago, with my noticing it only a few days ago. Decided to give it a spin tonight. So far (first episode), I’m really enjoying it’s premise.
So, the question becomes (and it’s interesting because the main character is now having a conversation with someone about this exact quandary), which do you find better, the book or the “movie”? In my case, I’ve not read the (entire) book yet, so I’m thinking:
Do I stop watching this new series, and restart reading Mr. King’s book – if I do that, the series may not be as good (for me) as it is now (and, who’s to say, if I’ll actually finish the book, given my “recent past history”), or, do I continue with the series, and then try reading the book, once I finish the series.
Either way, whatever a person does, either the book (and its ending) is ruined, or the series and its ending is (might be) ruined as well.
This is exactly the type of thing that keeps me up till sunrise…with me scratching my head, and ripping hairs out, one by one. [I now have bald spot #4 occurring near the front left temporal lobe – whatever that is!]
Decisions, decisions, and more (sleep threatening) decisions!
I’m going back now, to watch episode 2.
📚📕…>>>…📻📺
