I'm a more recent Stephen King convert. The first King novel I read was Under the Dome, and then fell in love with his writing in 11-22-63. I recently read The Stand for the first time, and am now hooked. So when I saw that he put out a new novel I didn't even read the summary I just hit the buy button. 

Its the start of May and I have now completed my 9th book. So far I am a little ahead of my schedule to reach my goal of 25 novels by the end of the year. My latest read was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss. Without giving a full synopsis the novel is about a young boy Kvothe (pictured above) and his journey from being a traveling performer to a member of the University. 

When I think about all of the books I have read in the past few years, I find it hard to find another book that I was more in love with from start to finish then Stephen King's 11-22-63. I am a sucker for a good time travel book, but what's funny is time travel is more a means of transportation and what really matters in this book is the destination.

If you asked me in High School or even my first few years of college if I enjoyed reading, the answer would be absolutely not. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy a good story, I could just never see why I would take time away from playing video games to sit down and read a book. Well that all changed for me with audio books (thanks Audible.com) which has allowed me to read more then I ever thought possible.

When it comes to which books I choose to purchase I pretty much go right off of customer reviews. Unlike movies and video games which I try to keep a keen eye on what is going on, I just don't follow books near as close. However even if I don't follow books as close I would have to try to purposefully avoid seeing that the book The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo was one of the most popular novels in the past few years. So without reading one review I purchased this book (in audio form) from Audible.com around 6 months ago. Like many books I started it, got bored of it, and decided to come back to it a while later.

I have never read a Stephen King book; outside of The Bible I have never even tried to read anything over a 1,000 pages. However neither of these things stopped me when I undertook the 1000+ page (34 1/2 hour audio book) thriller from Stephen King that looks at life in a small town after a dome is placed around the town lines. The book opens up at a snails pace introducing all of the characters, slowly building up their back stories and then continues once the dome covers this town. I have to admit I started this book around six months ago, got a few hours in and gave up. Read a few other books and decided to come back to it and give it a go. So I listened through the first few hours of the book twice, but the second time I got hooked. Once the introductions are taken care of and the dome comes down the book takes off. I am a big fan of movies/books that are based upon Apocalyptic settings. If you read my review of One Second After a book about a town after an EMP you can see that Under the Dome was going up against pretty stiff competition. What is so engaging about this book is the human instinct that overtakes the whole town. Literally the town of Chesters Mill goes from a small hick town to a Nazi regime in the matter of days.