Half-way through

Yes, I’m still reading ‘The Stand’. I may know how to read fast and skip through content, but I’m not always willing to. I’ve been reading this since the 4th of August (but not every day). My plan is to finish it before going to Romania, which is basically two weeks from now. Probably doable because the pace has picked up (except for the very long Mother Abigail chapter - 45 - with too much info-dumping in its first half) and I’m properly hooked to the story. The second half of a book always reads faster than the first one, especially because you know most characters, or at least you know the world, the setting, and so on.

Did I ever tell you that I’m horrible at remembering characters? I was a bit scared that this would be the case with this book. It’s got loads of characters, but I swear Stephen King did the best job at making each one of them memorable. At some point, I was thinking about how America could be repopulated (random, I know), and I could easily make a mental list of all the main characters. How? Because each one has something unique - Stu @ Plague Centre; Frannie - pregnant; Larry - musician; Nick - deaf & mute...

Reading this post-COVID is a ride. I’m glad I didn’t somehow pick it up at the beginning of this mess because as much as King got some parts of the pandemic-pandemonium right, he would’ve made me so much more anxious about everything.