the king

I have always enjoyed reading like others have enjoyed tv. Not that I think it is a better means to learning or a better way to spend your time, just a different option. It's more that I can watch characters develop with a more openness, certain qualities become more exaggerated in books since your brain is painting the picture not your eyes. A person is able to dive into a person's feelings, and depending on how descriptive the author is get a better picture of the surroundings then if a director tried to show the same qualities. It is the subtleties in words and phrases that can get a person to grab a different meaning and understanding of a situation, where that is still able to be done in good dialogue of movies it is mostly found in text. What I've never been a fan of is contemporary authors, anything past Huxley or Burroughs never appealed to me. It may have been simply because in grade school all they assigned to us was authors like Dumas, Fitzgerald, Twain, Harper Lee and other authors that grabbed attention with their stylistic choice of fitting words, and story lines. Stories that were pushing on their readers an obvious theme or moral, doing this by hitting the right emotions, choosing the right characters, storyline, climax, etc. The qualities that always pulled me in were not only the storyline, but how the author danced around his ideas. Anything direct and obvious, like my blog, I never enjoyed, something that was not left to any interpretations but just a blatant period at the end of a book, not open to interpretation always left me bored, or uninterested. Now I've only read a few modern authors, although by my unfair bias it would seem I have been disgusted by many, but from the few I've read I found boring and focused only on the decent story. The characters always seem beige and underdeveloped. However, recently I picked up a stephen king book or rather series, something that a few years ago would have laughed at, and haven't been able to put it down. In the past six days I have read over five and a half hundred pages. And it isn't just the story that is so well written, it is the almost unnoticeable quips from the characters that define moments, the anticipation of whether or not the author will allow this character to be able to make sacrifices for an ultimate cause, and the language he uses, not pretentious, but not direct.

Only speak sober with a bottle in hand,

watch time taken from us, slip in sand,

the heavy-worn noose tied around our feet,

lead us to whatever ends we may meet.