In the Dead Zone

is apparently where I put all my memories of this book. Not a slow read at all! Perhaps I got the book confused with the movie - which was very slow (and what were they thinking when they cast Christopher Walken?!?).

My general rule, when starting any new book, is to read the first 30-40 pages without interruption. To me, this insures that I will continue with the book, because I am invested in reading it. Whereas, in the rare cases that I have sat down and started a book and only read 10 pages, I ended up not finishing it. This is all to illustrate the fact that I found The Dead Zone so engaging that I read 65 pages the first night.

The other thing that has struck me about this book is that The Dead Zone is a Richard Bachman book - or Stephen King trying to unite the halves of himself as an author. King's first three books, Carrie, 'Salems's Lot, and The Shining, were horror novels, no doubt about it. Carrie, is not really that scary, but it is disturbing. Then he publishes Rage under the name Richard Bachman - a purely fiction work, with no terrifying elements, at all. TDZ, seems to be a work that encorporates his love of the supernatural with fiction.

When people talk to me about Stephen King and how they do not read his work because they do not like horror novels, I often point out that King is an author that is interested in the exploration of the supernatural, not horror. Sometimes horror and the supernatural dovetail nicely, but I do not think it is his intent to frighten. I then go on to point out how the person talking to me already enjoys Stephen King, they just don't know it. I list off The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, Stand by Me, and they nod about how they really enjoyed those movies. To that list, I will now add The Dead Zone, as a novel they should read.