In referencing my failure here, I'm not sure just "FAIL" is enough. Add an "EPIC" to the start of that and I think it's a better description of what I'm about to share. I mean, I'm nearly a year late in even posting about how badly I failed on this challenge, so that has to lend enough to the idea of adding "EPIC" to all this.What I'm referring to is the Stephen King Challenge I decided to put upon myself back at the start of 2011. The challenge basically tasked me to read six books by King (twelve for the really brave folks) over the course of the year. Well, as you've probably guessed by now, I did not complete that challenge.
I did manage to finish two books of his; 'Insomnia' and 'On Writing'. Plus, in that year I completed 'A Haunted Heart' which I'm going to count even though it's not written by King, but instead is an biography about his life and times. So that's three, which to me equates an EPIC FAIL.
In saying that, I'd like to point out that I did watch a few movies adapted from his books, and I did buy some of the Dark Tower comics (which I didn't read yet), and I have kept very much up to date with happenings in his world of entertainment. This obviously doesn't count in the reading challenge, but to me is worth mentioning... in my pathetic attempt to help lessen this epic fail. In all honestly though, the main reason why I didn't complete the challenge is that there is far too much out there that I want to read, and I couldn't fixate on just the master of horror's novels. As much as I wanted to continue reading his work, I deviated into political literature, musical biographies and countless other articles that kept me away from him.
I'm honestly okay with the failure though, and am eager as ever to dive into his next book on my list; '11/22/63'. I plan on starting it right after I finish 'Currency Wars' by James Rickards, and maybe 'The Zinn Reader' by Howard Zinn. With the thought that failure is okay as long as you learn something from it, I forge ahead, and what I learned from this failure is to not start too many books at the same time without finishing the last. Perhaps I would not have deviated from my challenge had I done that last year. Ah well, you live you learn, right?
