Was it at least a study Bible with some decent notes?

I don’t mind having multiple Bibles, because I like studying theology and crossreferencing different translations against the original text, or reading the study notes and learning materials. But then, if someone bought me, say, a generic NIV or KJV or whatever, I’d not be too thrilled, since I have those.

For the record though, I wouldn’t say no to a Douay-Rheims one day. That’s one I’ve not got.

'Salem’s Lot is, I’d say, a great example of his work. It’s an early one and it prefigures some of his other work, like the whole-town setting being similar to Needful Things and Ben Mears coming to his hometown to confront the creepy thing presages It - as does Barlow.

But then there are the “eras” of King. There’s Early King, Coked Up King, Rehab King, Post-Accident King, and Modern King, and it’s like reading five different authors. If you read 'Salem’s Lot and then Fairy Tale, the only thing to tell you they’re by the same author is the name on the cover (well, and the blue chambray workshirt). You might like one and hate the other, and that’s OK.

Cool story bro.

Except most of The Dark Tower was written after he’d got sober. He stopped the coke in 1986, around the time he was writing the second book. From book 3 onwards, he was sober.

There are plenty of great King books which you are missing out on if you simply decide not to read his work. The Green Mile was fantastic, for instance. Stuff like The Shining is definitely not his best work, it’s just super popular because of the film and because Jack Torrence represents a version of the worst of us that we can confront, though I also thought the book itself was lacklustre and frankly boring - and I love King and his work.

At a guess, I’d say they retain the honorifics to preserve the culture as it is recorded in the books. It might not seem necessary, but that’s probably because most of us don’t use honorifics any more. We read foreign literature partly to see the culture of the setting.

For the record, plenty of highly educated and highly intelligent people believe in some god or another.

Saw the article when it came out a couple of months ago, and since then I’ve read The Talisman. Black House is next on the list. I hope sai King completes the thing.

There’s a bit in The Magician’s Land where the main character quotes Genesis in Hebrew. The narrator (Mark Bramhall) just says “tktktktktk” instead of even attempting to pronounce the Hebrew. OK, OK, it’s written in Hebrew letters, but surely it can’t be that hard to find a Hebrew-reader to make a pronunciation guide. It’s not like Bramhall couldn’t have pronounced it, he got Italian and French and Russian and Hungarian pronunciations pretty much perfect over the rest of the trilogy.

Real people don’t conveniently and magically have irrational opinions because Plot.

Real people think there were 5G tranceivers in covid vaccines to track or control people, or that it was the mark of the devil and having it would get them sent to hell. I know one person - a real person who actually exists - who more than once compared vaccine exeptions (which had to be worn in public if one was for whatever reason exempt from wearing a face covering) with yellow stars and pink triangles. She refused to wear a mask and refused to display a card because “that’s how the Nazis started”.

Real people think Donald Trump was a worthwhile president of the USA and still support him as a candidate.

Real people believe the earth is flat.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

Simple truth is, real people are fucking morons.

Sometimes the setting or world is the legacy and the continued use of it is showing respect for that legacy. As a writer myself, I would be thrilled to think that, one day, readers might feel it necessary to continue writing about my world and characters. Similarly, I’d be thrilled to hear during my life of people writing fanfiction.

It’s really not hard if you just parse what’s being said. It’s like riddles but much easier to solve. You just need to get into the metaphor. What looks like overwritten prose there is just atmosphere buinding. The cold is biting the boy’s nose like a hungry dog - so imagine him with a red nose, probably a drop of snot hanging there that he’s not aware of because he’s numb with cold, and so on…

I’ve been reading online that this “subvocalization” actually slows reading WAY down and doesn’t help with reading comprehension (once you know how to read).

[citation needed]

Stephen King revised The Gunslinger (1982) quite heavily in 2003, to bring the continuity in line with the later books in the Dark Tower series.

I’m currently revising my own first novel, after realizing that, as proud of it as I am, the original version could have been better.