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I've just finished my reread of the book, so I am ready for the movie to come out! I technically read this in college because a neighboring school had 'fantasy and horror lit' in their summer term and my school had a co-enrollment thingie with them so I could do a term and take that and some other stuff. The school was Cornell, so the idea of having a Cornell term under my belt was appealing. However, a few small problems happened. One: for the fantasy and horror class we had to read a book every three days to stay up with the syllabus. I didn't think that would be a problem. But the horror books were all Stephen King novels and the fantasy books included The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. No, that's not a typo. LOTR and the entire Narnia Chronicles counted as single books. The prof assumed that everyone who'd sign up for the course would already have read them, probably several times, and we'd just be giving ourselves quick refreshes. I hadn't read any of them. Yes, my first read of LOTR was a marathon where I was reading almost every waking moment, even while having lunch. I loved it anyway, somehow, and did absorb it, but the King books not so much.

When I spoke to the prof he was like 'then why are you even here?' I tried explaining that I read those two genres constantly, but he was like 'no, you aren't serious about the genres and shouldn't be here'. Also, I disagreed with his takes on Salem's Lot and he disagreed with what little I had to say about it.

The second problem was that an unexpected death in my family meant that I had to suddenly go to California, and with no wiggle room to make up anything in a summer term, had to take a late-drop on everything in the middle of one of my most intense academic terms. Actually, I was past the late-drop period but they gave me leniency.

Anyway, I have a very weird relationship with King. I tend to really like adaptations of his work, but not his actual novels. (and his book on writing I could go on about for a loooong time.) I tried so hard to get through The Talisman because, pre-strike, that was to be the Duffer's next project. I just could not. Fans I've interacted with say to start with Dark Tower stuff, and one of the dark Tower books has train in the title, but I cannot get through that first book.

Surprisingly, I think Salem's Lot is fantastic. Even though I could barely remember it, something must have stuck with me because when I saw the trailer I immediately put my other reads on hold to re-read it. But, I'll get more into my takes on the book itself when I do one of my reading round-ups. I am glad there is at least one King novel I actually like in it's original form.