In Which We Discuss Insomnia, Rose Madder, and the Green Mile

I've been getting really behind on these posts, huh?

Recently, I've read Insomnia (on Kindle) and listened to Rose Madder and The Green Mile as audiobooks, hence the speed.  Audiobooks always go quicker, now I've gotten used to listening on 3x speed.

All three were books I'd read before.  Insomnia only once; I remembered being surprised that someone as old as Ralph could be the protagonist, something James Smythe echoes in his own article on the book.  I also hadn't read any of the Dark Tower series when I first read this book, so all of those references went totally over my head.  They're a lot more meaningful now, and I'm sure that will be even more true once I've read all of the Dark Tower novels.

Rose Madder, as I've mentioned before, is my favourite of Stephen King's novels.  I've read and listened to it several times.  I love the life-building aspect of it, how Rose escapes and builds something good for herself.  I also love Blair Brown's performance.

I'd forgotten how horrifying The Green Mile was, particularly Delacroix's death.  I have the film on dvd as well, though I've not rewatched it yet.  Hearing the description was somehow worse than watching it or just reading it.  Delacroix, despite being a rapist and a murderer is the closest thing the novel has to a clown, and his death is utterly heartrending.

The Green Mile was published, Dickens-style, as a series of short novels, with the ending unknown even to the author as they were written and published.  I've always liked Dickens; for his tenacity - there's a lovely story in How to Win Friends and Influence People about how, as a poor teenager, he wrote his first novel and sent it to a publisher in secret, because he was so embarrassed about thinking his work might be good enough to be published -and for the fact that he was always blatantly in it for the money, at least in part.  I don't think creating art for the money is a bad thing.  Nor do Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, or Terry Pratchett.  I like that Dickens responded to audience reactions as the novel went along, and that he set up his own magazines to self-publish.  Dickens was a pretty cool guy.

There's a reference to Dickens in Rose Madder.  I remember noticing it, but I can't recall what it is.  I remember it seemed interesting, in light of the Dickens-style publishing of The Green Mile.  I also hadn't realised that Dickens was a big deal in America, especially at the time he was publishing, not until I listened to the introduction.

I've started keeping a bullet journal, which I love, so I've added a Stephen King page (or three) to it.  It's taking me about a year and a half to read a decade of his writing, so I should be done by 2020 - apart from the books he'll write between now and then!

The next one is Desperation; I haven't read it before.