Insomnia: 23rd Oct 2012 - 12th Jan 2013

I'm an arsehole. Nothing you didn't already know, of course, but here's why this time. Two and a half months to read a 700+ page novel is fucking nuts.

I've been banging away at a few comics - finally finishing Warren Ellis' Transmetropolitan, getting caught up with Joe Hill's tremendous Locke & Key, making some progress with Bill Willingham's Fables and making a start on Brian K. Vaughan's Y The Last Man - so there's the reason. It's not an excuse though, when I charged through the last couple of hundred pages of Insomnia lamenting not having kept up any sort of momentum.

For momentum would have made the book a lot better. I had a few moments of thinking "christ, this is dragging" and, while it didn't approach The Tommyknockers' level, it did a fair bit of limping.

More than anything, it just didn't grab me. I liked the characters of Ralph and Lois just fine, but the book just didn't thrill me. I'll admit the closing pages hit me, but you'd have to be hollowed out not to feel a bit of something at the closing events.
Check me out, writing spoiler free reactions.

Having read the bulk of the book in November, I'm struggling to say much more worth saying. I think I've promised myself I'll hammer the next book each time I've finished the last so I won't kid either of us this time.

Edit:
I've just read Laura's review on her blog, Devouring Texts, as I generally do once I've finished a King book and, while the points she made didn't make me buzz off the book, I will admit to being a sucker for references, links, nods and winks to others of his works. The Dark Tower isn't as dear to me (yet?) but the Derry refs did have me in nerd-glee.

Insomnia: 23rd Oct 2012

I'm looking forward to this one quite a bit. I don't know the first thing about the book itself other than the subject matter inferred by the title. What I did know was that I'd read a glowing review of it somewhere. Just before I started this project, I wrote a couple of posts talking about why I'd decided to read all of Stephen King's works in chronological order. One of these concerned a gorgeous blogpost written by Ryan McKenney (Trap Them - http://www.wecraftindarkness.com - http://trapthem.bigcartel.com - http://insomnialways.blogspot.com - @trapthem on Twitter) enough links? You can read the whole thing here: http://insomnialways.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/constant-reader.html but here's the part I'm talking about:

"I read Insomnia over the course of four nights, two hundred pages at a time. I learned the story of Ralph Roberts and the end results of gradual sleepless nights. By the time I was finished, my heart was aching. Part of it had to do with the story itself. It was, at the root, a perfect story of life and death. The other part of the ache came from overflowing of anticipation. I simply couldn't decide which of his works I wanted to read next."

So, as you can imagine, my expectations are high.

On an unrelated note, if you haven't seen Bob Mould on Letterman,
here you go. If you have, you know what I'm talking about.