Remarkable

Sometimes you find a book that you know has been around for quite a while (in this case over 25 years) and finally get around to reading it. I don't know why I put it off for so long really. It is quite remarkable.

Different Seasons by Stephen King. For those of you who haven't read it, go pick it up. I found my copy at a second-hand book store for $2.00 in paperback and the binding wasn't even broken yet. It contains the ideas behind such movies as 'The Shawshank Redemption' 'Stand By Me,' and 'Apt Pupil.' While I haven't seen the last movie I understand that my brother really enjoyed it.

What the book entails is a series of 4 novellas. King explained in the back of the book that he wrote each of these as his winding down from each of his first four major books and stuffed them into a drawer because no one would ever want to publish a novella. That wisdom still holds true today. I can say that I am glad that he, along with his agent (and due to a little bit of prodding on Mr. King's part) bypassed conventional publishing wisdom and released them. Even though they aren't horror stories so much as dark tales (His agent was leery that no one would want to read anything other than creature fiction from his client at the time). They are clunky at times and good reads all around. They show a writer who was unafraid of language and less afraid of writing something outside of his publishing comfort zone.

Well worth my hard earned money and even more worth the time to read.

As I write this a huge machine is tiling the field behind my house, laying a thick black drainage line into the wet soil. I would post pictures but I don't care to go outside and get wet. It looks like a military machine thought up in WWII and the tile line looks like a thick snake that ropes around the field. *Quick, in a thousand words or less come up with a story about this :) *