I mostly take notice of the spelling bee because the finals are on my birthday. I actually won my school bee in 8th grade but didn't get past the first round in regional. It's probably for the best, as after winning the spelling bee 8th grade nosedived.

Although I guess I should say, erotic/bondage? Will I be joining the legions of women reading 50 Shades of Gray on the train?

(This is not a joke. Commuting into New York City, reading erotica in their skirt suits. I see it every day.)

And thanks to the rest of you, too I just got carried away thinking about Stephen King. Thanks for the suggestions. Oh, and Chewie, I am in the same boat as you -- I'm perpetually halfway through 4+ books.

First of all, if there is ever a place where people are guaranteed to care about thoughtful discussions of books, it is here. Unquestionably, for real, forever: if there is one thing I love talking about, it is books. I loved your commentary about It. Seriously, it made me want to read the novel really bad... until I remembered that It is the one about clowns, and clowns are just not a thing that I can handle without sleeping with the lights on for months on end.

But even despite remembering it's the one about clowns, I'm still tempted to try reading it because of how you described it. That's powerful

I agree that Stephen King is a truly talented writer. Super prolific -- weirdly prolific -- and many of his novels are just way too long (The Dark Half comes to mind), but every time I read something of his, I am always impressed. He's the kind of writer who can really transport you, and he puts a lot of meaningful themes into "genre" fiction.

Whenever someone says, "Stephen King wrote The Shawshank Redemption? That's so hard to believe!" I know for certain that the person has only seen his movies and never read him. Even his straight horror pieces have so much about interpersonal relationships and fear and fake moral values underlying them.

If you don't have issues with erotic/bondage scenes...THE SIREN by Tiffany Reisz - I finished it a week and a half ago and my brain is still reeling from the portrayal of the characters...and the way she broke a couple of rules and completely pulled it off. It's billed as a BDSM erotica novel, which is why I avoided it at first, but it's not. It's...

Best book I've read in ages. The characters are despicable, the underlying themes are subtle, and there were a couple of scenes where I all but cried (even though I was reading at work).

Stephen King does write too much for his own good, when it comes to quality, but some of his books are very good. My personal favorites are The Stand, It, and Dolores Claiborne. I thought The Shining was good, but when I read it I had already seen the movie, which is one of the rare exceptions to the rule about movies being worse than their written source material. Stephen King novels are serious investments, time-wise, because they're generally really long, but when he's doing a good job, it's worth it. All that said, I haven't read the book in question. It's been a few years since I read any of his books, though I've been itching to read It again, because I haven't read it in a while, and I used to read it pretty much annually. I had a paperback copy, at one point, but I don't know what happened to it, and I'm thinking about buying the Kindle version. I've read lots of novels, and lots of those novels were literature with a capital L, opposed to "genre fiction" but I don't think any other book I've ever read says so much about what it's like to grow up being afraid, and how that fear informs the kind of person you are as an adult. It is, in my humble opinion, really, truly an epic masterpiece. If you never read any other King book, that's the one I recommend.

/long-winded rant that no one cares about.

Sorry. 11.

It's super early.

I'm about to start reading 9/22/63. I've never read anything by Stephen King, besides his autobiography, and I know he has a reputation for being, ah, too prolific, but I keep hearing good things about this one from patrons and people I follow on goodreads.

I get on a kick and when I find an author I like I will go through and read everything they have ever written. (Even if they don't write series books.)

I am constantly checking for new books on my nook: new books, books under $5, classics, free books, etc.

I'm a total junkie. I have like 5 books I'm reading on my nook right now, plus I have 6 or 7 new ones I haven't started AND I am reading 3 non-digital books with a stack of I've lost count of how many more in the queue to be read. I'm hopeless.

I've stopped even going to the library because I'm so far behind in my other reading! It's a disease.

I liked Monsters of Templeton a lot when I read it, and it definitely had a plot that I remember fairly well, but, again, it's pretty much just another personal/familial angst book dressed up with fantastical elements. The fantastical elements were good, though, especially the baby monster.