I think I was 12 when I "discovered" Stephen King and tried to read everything he had written. It wasn’t until I was older, though, and the unabridged version was released that I was actually able to make it through The Stand. For some reason, I was never able to read the original version, but I couldn’t put the unabridged version down.
So why am I talking about this? I saw a guy on the bus this morning reading The Stand and one of the first things I thought was "wrong time of year". See, whenever I would (re)read that book, I would wind up getting , at the least, the sniffles, at the worst, full-blown flu. Every. Damn. Time. It got to the point where I just had to stop reading the book. And somewhere in the past couple of years my box of Stephen King books went missing, so it’s not even really an option anymore.
Anyway, I was just about to say something about his timing with that particular book when I noticed him sniffling pretty badly. And coughing a little. And I remembered that I’m not the only one who would get sick upon reading that book. I can think of numerous people who run into that same problem, some to the extent where they had to stop reading entirely and took their time reading the book only when they were healthy.
This guy was entranced in the book, though, and not *too* far in yet. I figure he’ll follow the same pattern that so many of us have where he gets the full-blown flu another couple chapters in. Oh well, I hope he agrees with me that the book is worth it. Heh.