It was those boring assigned classic books, (”Of Mice and Men”, “To Kill a Mocking Bird”, “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”) that got me into reading. I liked and I disliked the analyzing reading lessons, sometimes they were good, sometime the over analyzed a book death.
There was a particular Author named Steven King that I refused to read in school. My first assigned Stephen King was “The Langoliers” and I was not exited when hearing the assigned reading, I remembered the movie being so terrible, and that “Pet Symmetry” movie was also to terrible; who could get away with writing such crap; but I decided I should (or I have to because its assigned) give the book a chance. I read the first 2 chapters during lunch break, and threw the book in the corner of the bathroom on my way back to class. I returned to class told the teacher “Stephen King is a Wank Off, I’m not going to read that book so just give me a zero for the assignment”.
My second assigned Steven King was “Thinner” I read half the book and told the teacher it’s not bad, but it’s not geed ether: I would like to choose another book from the assigned book choices.
I got to college and was assigned “On Writing”, my fist thought of course was “Christ this guy again”. I read the introduction, and in my college student want to be writer vanity cursed Stephen King with my thoughts being “that Wank Off is just talking about himself, he isn’t telling me how to be an instantly successful Writer”.
Six years later and done with school Jan 1 2014. I was on a road trip to visit my dad, and in his car he was listing to the audio book for “Wolves of the Calla”. I said “what are you listening to, it’s fantastic” and since then I have not put Steven King down.
