Turning the Page

I’ve begun reading for pleasure(escape?) again. It started with picking up Stephen King’s Bag of Bones in December. Sunshine and me were in Logan Airport and anticipating long waits on the trip home from Massachusetts. Since then I’ve burned through a passel of King novels: Insomnia, Desperation, The Dark Tower epic I-VII. I took a detour through The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and just finished The Talisman and Black House, a couple Peter Straub/King collaborations.

It’s been fun, knocking off these huge novels, one or more a week. The reading is usually fast and easy. I do feel a bit compulsive about it- it’s one of those activities requiring little effort for much pleasure, like sex(masturbation, at least) and drugs, which have the high potential for abuse. But considering the empty intellectual calories I’ve been ingesting from television and the web, a binge on pop fiction/fantasy/schlock hardly seems the greater evil.

The most significant effect this reading has had upon me was re-awakening of a desire to write. I’ve written songs all along, but my prose has been little and infrequent as of late. The title of this blog is a small tribute to Mr. King. I’m grateful that reading his work has made me want to write again. Of course, his writers very often come to bad ends, but who wants to live forever- right?