It's been a while since I've blogged here (or anywhere, really, though I did do an entry at my Disney blog about watching Toy Story). But I couldn't let December go without a single entry so here it is.

I HAVE been doing a fair amount of reading. Among the books I got through in the past month or so were Stephen King's massive novels 11/22/63 and Under The Dome. The last several King books I've bought (in hardcover, King's always been a HC type of author for me) have sat on the shelves untouched. Still.

But the premise of the latest book concerning the Kennedy assassination grabbed me and I picked it up almost immediately. I, like many others, have had some level of fascination with the events surrounding that "watershed moment" in history, and the idea that someone as imaginative as King would tackle the subject in fiction was enough to make me start right in on it.

And it was a great read. Not, however, because of the parts about the Kennedy assassination itself. Those moments in the book were almost uninspired. The beauty of this book lay in the small Texas town where the main character meets his soulmate and develops a relationship with her. Those scenes, which were quite numerous and made up a large part of the narrative, vaulted this book into the upper echelon of King books for me.

Under The Dome, however, was a bit of a different experience. Oh, it was a good enough read. It took a while to get into, and the characters never developed as much as I wanted them to. I found myself just not caring about these folks all that much. The ones I liked the best (Rusty the physician's assistant and Joe the genius teenager) were not in it enough.

For me, this was a slow starting book. The first 200 plus pages just dragged and there were a few times when I thought I was going to set it aside and move onto something more compelling.

But at some point after those pages, something clicked and I started wanting to find out the resolution of the crisis that was affecting this small town. The last part of the book was a good, solid read. It doesn't fall into the worst of King, but it doesn't ascend into the "best of" category either. I wanted more...not necessarily more words but more...depth? Something.

Anyway, I read these two back to back and I'm glad I was able to clear a book from my King backlog out of my reading pile. And even gladder that I was able to keep from ADDING a King book to the reading piles!

*****