The Great THE STAND Epic Read: Wrap-Up

It took me four months to read THE STAND, longer than it's taken me to read any other book. Then again, I don't think I've ever read a book as long as THE STAND. The next runner-up for length is probably THE MISTS OF AVALON, which I read when I was 19, and even allowing for its oversized pages still only clocks in at just shy of 900 pages - and that took me just two months to read. So, THE STAND was a huge commitment for me. I knew it going in, but I also knew I was going to finish the book no matter how long it took me to read. I read the "Complete and Uncut" version, which a friend suggested.

The god-awful (pun intended) cover of the version I read.

If I had had nothing but downtime, sure, I probably could have breezed through it in a couple of months. If I were still working outside the home and had 30-90 minutes of commute time on the subway every day, it would have gone much faster. But I'm a stay-at-home-mom (SAHM) and writer, with two little ones, and was lucky if I got to read for 10 minutes every day. This isn't an excuse, because I still think four months is pretty good for a 1200+ page book, I'm just saying.

From this point on, WARNING: THAR BE SPOILERS AHEAD!

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Most of the book I really enjoyed. I would not have been able to stick with it if I didn't like the story. Even knowing most of the plot points and the ending, from having seen the 1994 mini-series, I still liked the story. Call me morbid, call me pessimistic, call me cynical (and my husband has called me all three of those at one point or another), but I'm a gal who enjoys a well-told end-of-the-world yarn. I liked the idea of this particular end of the world coming about as a result of a simple government oversight: the lag time for the lockdown of a top-secret facility in which they are creating a deadly superflu. That's all it takes, and weeks later 99% of the world's population are goners.

The rest of the book chronicles what the survivors do: how they meet up, move on, the prophetic dreams they start having that compel them to either Mother Abigail in Nebraska (then Boulder), or to Randall Flagg in Las Vegas. As the post-superflu days in the book start to become weeks, the survivors realize they are being given a choice to side with either the "good" guys in Boulder or the "bad" guys in Vegas.

If you haven't seen the miniseries yet, I
have two words for you: Gary Sinise. You're
welcome.

Where Stephen King excels is in building complex, deeply sympathetic characters. Even two of the "bad" guys in THE STAND -- Lloyd Henried and Trashcan Man -- are given the chance to reveal their pasts, their weaknesses, their incredibly flawed and pitiful human sides. Only King can make you root for the bad guys the way he does during Lloyd's starvation scene or Trash's pyromaniac scenes. In "On Writing," King mentions having been forced to cut hundreds of pages from THE STAND for its original publication, including some of Trash's background. I honestly can't imagine reading the book without Trash's backstory; it adds a level of complexity to that character so deep and sorrowful that you almost cry for him. For me, every moment spent among the "bad guys" - even Flagg - is a study in the greyer, more interesting, areas of human nature and the myth of real, pure, evil. I also had been wondering about children in the "bad" Las Vegas group, and would have liked more of a chance to explore how those kids got there.

I would have loved it if the book did spend more time in Las Vegas overall. I found some of the scenes in Boulder to be excruciatingly long and pointless. I certainly did not need the minutes from the council meetings, or most of the domestic scenes between Stu and Franny. As a writer I can almost understand why King may have put those in there: possibly to lull the audience into the same sense of anticipation and passage of time that was going on for the characters. And I did appreciate the debates about whether or not to send spies, and who to send, and the scenes between Harold and Nadine once they hooked up. Honestly, though, from the time the group gets to Boulder to the time they send Larry, Glen, Stu and Ralph to Las Vegas, could have been cut by quite a lot. Same with Stu and Tom's journey back to Boulder: I get that there's a certain white-knuckle quality to rooting for those two to make it back, but after a while white-knuckle gets exhausting and you just want things to move on. At least, I did.

This cover is, like, a bajillionty
times better than the new cover.
Maybe more.

Aside from those parts, and a few minor info dumps that could have been taken out (like Nadine's entire realization that she is to go to Flagg), it's an oddly quick read for such a big book. That is, the length of time it takes to read THE STAND is in perfect proportion with how many pages it is. It's not difficult reading, it's not touchy subject matter. It's straightforward and fairly mild (for King), with most of the scary stuff being implied and of the raised-hair-on-the-back-of-your-neck variety. Not a lot of gore here, no monsters (except Flagg, who is less of a monster and more of a creep), no boogeymen jumping out at you. It's well-though out, which I always appreciate in a book. There's a slight deus-ex-machina quality at the end, but I can forgive that because, honestly, how else would you end an epic like this? With the way King has his characters set up, there was just no way the "good" guys could have actually fought and defeated the "bad" guys without becoming exactly that which made the "bad" guys, well, bad. Sometimes good guys can fight and still be the good guys; not in this case. It ended the way it needed to end.

I'm glad I read it, and I do highly recommend it - especially if you have more free time than I have.

Reading Project 2014: Spec Fic by Women of Color

I did finish reading THE STAND, finally, on December 28, but I want my first post of 2014 to be about this year's personal reading project. In the next post I'll cover THE STAND, and what I thought of it.

For the past few years my husband has done his own reading projects -- in 2012 he read great works of the 20th century by decade -- and I like the idea of picking a theme and sticking to it all year. My bookshelves and Nook are full of books I bought with every intention of reading, and then just...didn't get around to it. Maybe if I have a goal in mind I'll stick with the books I intend to read this year.

I chose speculative fiction by women of color because that seemed to be a popular theme on the blogs I read in 2013. As a woman writer, and as the mother of two half-Latino children, I feel it my duty -- my awesomely fun duty -- to support my sisters of color who write in this white, male-dominated field. My Cuban-American husband and I have talked often of the two dominant types of narratives most white Americans seem to expect from people of color: the sad and horrifying poverty/war memoirs, and what he calls "culture tourism," where the story is essentially little more than a stage to watch the "others" live their strange and exotic lives. Where are all the good Latino vampires? The African-American witches? The Asian shapeshifters? Where are the types of stories I like to read? And where are those stories with POC as main characters and as most of the characters, and not just tokens?

After two days of research on Goodreads, various blogs, and word-of-mouth, here is the list I've chosen so far:

• DAWN, by Octavia Butler 
• TIGER EYE by Marjorie M. Liu 
• WITCHES OF EAST END by Melissa de la Cruz 
• SIGNAL RED by Rimi B. Chatterjee 
• HUNTRESS by Malinda Lo 
• KALPA IMPERIAL by Angelica Gorodischer
• WHO FEARS DEATH by Nnedi Okorafor
• AKATA WITCH by Nnedi Okorafor
• THE ISLAND OF ETERNAL LOVE by Daína Chaviano
• HAPPY HOUR AT CASA DRACULA by Marta Acosta 

This list is by no means exhaustive, and I'm happily open to suggestions. I'll also stay posted on this blog about what I'm reading and what I think. (I promise to do better than I did with THE STAND updates.)

What about you? Does anyone else do a reading project for new years? 

Zombiepocalypse! and, The Great THE STAND Epic Read Update, 10/15/13

Before I get into a long-overdue update on my Great THE STAND Epic Read!, please take a moment to click over to Nerdy Minds Magazine and check out my piece on Why People With Small Children Won't Survive the Zombiepocalypse. It's actually an older piece I wrote about a year ago for my former blog, Grey Skies (which I no longer do, because reasons), but I updated it slightly to reflect my children's current ages. This piece was inspired by watching "The Walking Dead" and wondering what would happen to us if a zombie plague -- or any catastrophic event, really -- hit while my children were still very small. 

Here's that link again. Click it, read it, "Like" it, comment on it, give it five stars, and show me you love me.

Now, The Great THE STAND Epic Read Update:

On page: 500

On chapter:  44

Just read scene: Everyone who is going to die of the virus is dead. Everyone else who is going to die because of the lack of people, has died. Now, the survivors are making their way across the country, meeting up with one another and having prophetic dreams of the Dark Man and Mother Abigail. I just read the scene where Larry Underwood, quite skinny, exhausted, and bearded, has fallen deeply asleep under a tree by a babbling brook.

I won't lie: reading is going slower than I expected. Not because of the book. King's writing style is, of course, quite readable. The story is just SO LONG, and I get so little time during the week to sit down and just READ, you know? At best I get an hour or so in the evenings when my husband and our 5YO child, the Juban Princeling, have their pre-bedtime "quiet time" together, plus maybe some time during the day when I'm not writing and the 19MO Duke of Juban is napping. At worst I get 10 minutes in bed at night before I fall asleep.

Either way, hitting the 500-page mark feels like some sort of milestone: only 130 pages until I'm halfway through, woo-hoo!

I do like the book a lot so far. I like the slow burn progress, I like the multi-character POV (something my critique partner Tony does really well), I love the dialogue. One of King's biggest strengths lies in the small but highly disturbing graphic details he throws in as a matter of fact: "So-and-so missed the way his friends used to X, Y, SOMETHING HORRIBLE, GAH!, and Z together." 

Example:

The scene: Stu Redman has just left Glen Bateman's house and is now traveling alone, and considering whether or not it would be a good idea to run into other people.

"Just lately Stu had been thinking a great deal about old friends and acquaintances. In his memory there was a great tendency to downplay or completely forget their unlovable characteristics -- the way Bill Hapscomb used to pick his nose and wipe the snot on the sole of his shoe, Norm Bruett's heavy hand with his kids, Billy Verecker's unpleasant method of controlling the cat population around his house by crushing the thin skulls of the new kittens under the heels of his Range Rider boots."

WHAT??? There I am, reading along, and everything seems to be fairly normal and generalized: Yes, we tend to downplay the more unpleasant qualities of the dearly departed. Then first, I get hit with Norm Bruett's heavy hand with his kids - vague enough to let my imagination work overdrive, despite reading earlier in the book this character's idea to break his kid's arm to shut him up. But then comes the increasingly disturbing and graphic image of Billy stomping kitten heads. Gah, indeed. Well played, Mr. King. 

Those details serve to both make the book more realistic -- yes, there are people who do horrible things in real life, and really disgusting things really do happen sometimes -- and to constantly remind me why Stephen King is considered the Master of Modern Horror. 

The Great THE STAND Epic Read: Update 9/16/13

On page: 250

On chapter:  25

Just read scene: Nick is taking care of the dead sheriff's dying wife and noticing how empty Shoyo is.

I was warned that while reading THE STAND I would get paranoid with every sneeze or cough I made, or that someone made around me. It's true. My ragweed allergies are terrible right now, but even worse than that: my older son, the 4-year old Juban Princeling, has croup. Saturday night he went to bed with a fever of 101.2 and three hours later he woke up unable to breathe. My husband rushed him to the emergency room, and while I waited for news of what was wrong I convinced myself he had some sort of super pneumonia and cried my face off. Turns out it was just croup, but that cough is something really awful to hear. Poor kid. :-(

The Great THE STAND Epic Read: Update 9/10/13

On page:  159

On chapter:  16

Just read scene:  We are introduced to Poke and Lloyd, driving in a stolen car full of drugs and guns.

I didn't get as much time to read this past week as I'd have liked; the Princeling being home for the second week in a row was nice because we got to spend a lot of time together, but it meant very little reading and zero writing for me. Still, I'm enjoying THE STAND quite a lot and really love the slow build-up of characters as the virus spreads around America.

The Great THE STAND Epic Read: Update 9/2/13

On page:  110

On chapter:  9

Just read scene:  Where King illustrates how quickly the virus is spreading by showing us the Norris family's road trip

The Great "THE STAND" Epic Read!

Now that I've finished Stephen King's "On Writing," I'm inspired to finally read his 1200+ page epic, THE STAND. I've seen the miniseries twice, so it's not like I don't know what happens or how it ends, but I think it's finally time to read it.

...yes, one-thousand, two-hundred PLUS pages.

That's a major reading commitment, right there. In all honesty it will probably take me at least six months, since I get maaaaybe an hour's worth of daily reading time if I ignore my kids a little bit during the day and go to bed to read before I'm actually tired.

I'm going to do a weekly check-in with the page number and scene I'm on. Maybe at the end we can all talk about it.

Anyone want to read along with me? I am reading this version on my Barnes & Noble Nook reader. Not that you have to read the same version, but it'll help with page numbers and such.

Hooray! Let's jump in to this ocean of book and get reading THE STAND!