In which I take a walk to the Dark Tower

Ok, so why haven't I done this the past few days? I'm not really sure. My outside excuse is that I was just too tired. I'm not sure that's the whole story, though. Part of it is finding private time, but maybe part of it was reading that Stephen King book. The last of the Dark Tower series. Some days, I'd rather read than write, but that wasn't my motivation this time. King tends to make me want to write rather than read. But I needed to finish it quickly to get it back to the next person in line. (Possible spoilers follow--read at your own risk--though I try not to be too specific about any plot points.)

The ending drove me nuts. I've read it before. I realized I'd read that entire story before, though it was a much short version, and it was written by someone else. In the coda, he said don't write him if you didn't like the ending, that it was tough. It's not that I didn't like the ending (not sure that I did, really, mind you, but it was... inevitable...) but that I had read it almost just like that before somewhere. I'm talking about the very end, the last couple of pages, not all the stuff leading up to that.

What did I think of the book? Pretty much what I think of most of his books. I think, too, that I should've read Insomnia first, given how much emphasis was placed on it. How did I feel about all the references to his writing and him as a character? Um... well... If you're a King fan, forgive me, but I thought that he was was rather, um, full of himself. I understand he is trying to work out his feelings about that accident he was in, but I really don't like reading people's therapy. If you're going to write books for therapy, at least have the decency to disguise the fact and not subject us to obvious sessions on the couch.

I guess, too, that once I hit those last couple of pages, it was pretty clear all the rest was... how do I put this? Not at all inevitable. That it was the rest of the story, not the ending, that should have been different. And by that, I mean the entire series, not just the last book. The whole time I was reading the series, I kept thinking it was going to be something different than it was. I kept thinking it was going to be the story I'd read that had the same ending. Is that bizzare or what? I mean, all through it, the characters that wove in and out of his life, the situations they encountered, all seemed... wrong for the story. And maybe that's because I kept trying to make it this other story, the one I'd read. It started the same, with someone persuing someone across a desert and seeking a tower of some sort. And it ended the same, too. (No, I'll not write spoilers at the moment. It's only just out after all.) But none of the middle was the same at all. It was... simpler. More bleak and stark. Wonder if Mr King would be interested in that- that it wasn't his end that was wrong, but his middle. I doubt it. Thing is, I think the story I read was a King story, so the whole thing has left me mightily confused....

Ok, I've gone five minutes over. I need to get that book out of my head. I'm thinking about it too much. It wasn't real, in the weird way I've described above, but I can't help thinking about what it really was. I guess that sort of obsession is why I haven't read Inkheart yet, though it's sort of the opposite. Inkheart feels like it will be too real-- She understands the booklover's mind and how to play with it. And I'm afraid to read it...