Viva La Book!

I’m currently re-reading one of my favourite series - The Dark Tower, by Stephen King. If it seems I’m a bit of a crazy King fan, I’m actually not. I like some of his books, but TDT are the only ones I really love. There is just something about Roland - the gunslinger - and the world he inhabits. It draws you in and makes you feel that same mad passion that he does for his Tower - and also the love he feels for his companions.

I fell in love with these books as a teenager, and waited eagerly as each new book was released. After King had his accident, I, like many others, was distraught - ‘we’ll never learn if Roland reaches the Tower now!!’

But, thankfully, King survived, and so did Roland. To meet an end, such an end… I do believe I cried when I read the final pages of the final book and the conclusion was reached - the only way it could have ended, as King said himself.

Books like these, where the characters come to live in your head, are the most memorable. When a story spans decades, and is full of growing life experience, as these are, they seem to exude a certain truth. Some people bemoan the fact that King wrote himself into these stories - but I personally enjoyed it. To him, these people are real, and he makes them live for us, his readers, too.

Now, I think it’s coming around to that time when I need to pick this nice little story up and read it again. And yes, by nice little story I do of course mean massively long epic!

I remember my teacher reading The Hobbit to me in primary school, and I just loved the story of Bilbo, Golem and the dragon. It was one of my first experiences with fantasy, and it was great. When I was about 12, I found an old copy of LOTR on my parent’s bookshelf. It was a battered old copy of my mum’s from her hippy days in the 70’s, and when I realised it was the ’sequel’ to The Hobbit, I thought I’d give it a go.

Now, for those of you who’ve read it, you’ll realise that it is a bit of a heavy book for a 12 year old to read, but I did quite well… until I got about half way through book 2, and realised that about 70 pages were missing!

That was the end of that reading, and it wasn’t until the movies came out that I thought about the story again. Once I saw the first one, and loved it immensely, I decided that I’d wait until I saw all of the movies before I read the book. Which I did.

And oh, was I looking forward to reading it! I bought myself a copy and settled down… and it didn’t disappoint. Now, I will admit that it drags at times, but overall it really is a massive achievement in fiction. In fact, I pretty much avoid fantasy novels, as they mostly seem terribly derivative of this.

My favourite part of the book, I have to say, was the appendix the “Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”. A lot of the book seemed quite emotionally dry, but this added a lovely element to all that went on. After seeing the movies, where a lot of this was integrated into the main story, I felt like I was missing out - but once I got to it I was satisfied. I have to say, as well, that this is one time that I felt that the movie was worthy of the book - and that is a rare thing indeed!

To me, LOTR is like an old friend that I catch up with every few years, just to re-acquaint myself with them and remind myself why I liked them so much in the first place. I think I’ll find my copy and put it into my reading queue once again!

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