I always feel that I cant listen to serious literature on audible since I fear I miss a lot if my thoughts wander away. Sometimes I lay in bed and listen to a book and after few minutes I was half asleep and couldnt remember what I just listened to. Sometimes I have to rewind several chapters. 
Since I have my free monthly book I listened to the latest Jussi-Adler Olsen mostly while taking the train.
Speaking of literature on Audible.
I got under half way through Blood Meridian and couldnāt keep going.
The violence felt pretty bleak.
Also. The description of the First Nations folks didnāt quite strike me right. Obviously a product of the time it was written AND supposed to describe the actions of racists, but I still felt the lack of a first nations perspective seemed to leave the story lacking
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I totally get that. My favorite practice for audiobooks is to listen to my favorite books on audiobook. Positions you to do the exact opposite of your description and really deep dive into whatever sections grab your attention, I think in part because you donāt need to pay attention to the surface structure anymore.
I hear you about that.
If you havenāt yet listened to them yet, No Country for Old Men and The Road are masterpieces on audiobook.
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Everyone is different and experiences books differently, I think a lot depends on the reader or production values of the audible book, but reading a book makes it easy to go your own pace and re-read passages until the make sense. I prefer listening to books when Iām hiking or driving. If I listen to music while hiking I tend to go too fast and pass out a little bit. The re-recorded Disc World books are very good even compared to reading them.
The End of the World as We Know It: Tales of Stephen Kingās The Stand will feature short stories from writers such as Caroline Kepnes, Michael Kortya, Josh Malerman, Paul Tremblay, S.A. Cosby, and Wayne Brady.
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Iāll try the first. Loved the road reading it. But not sure I want to do it again.
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I understand. Its bleakness is beyond the pale. I would not be surprised however if your experience shifts with the audiobook versions simply because the narrator is a 10/10. He helps me get real meditative with the stories in a way that helps me process rather than feel overwhelmed by the darkness.
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Speaking of other versions.
Iām still mad at the movie. Fantastic adaptation right up until the last minute
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What was so bad about it for you?
@RiskyFlush, Iām reading Bag of Bones now, only about 20% into it. Thanks to your sharing of the first page a couple of months ago 
You were right about the love story being so powerful. The way Mike reflects on Jo and his lifetime of memories with her, it just cuts so deep.
āGrief is like a drunken houseguest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug.ā
Iāll have to find it, but somewhere in the last 30 or so pages that Iāve read, he says something about the secrets of marriage that completely clicked with me, too. Iāve never read books where an author could articulate feelings that I didnāt even know I had within me until I read them on the page.
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BOB is so good.
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Cheers!!! A delight whenever this happens. I am so curious to hear your reflections after the last page. I think the ending is among Kingās very best.
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I just finished The Stand a few days ago, my first read.
Found it quite entertaining for a book where not much happens over 1200 pages, the initial outbreak was really well done but it stretched on for so long i think cutting some of that out could have helped with pacing, or gave us more time with the final confrontation. I believe there are lots of people who hated the ending but I didnāt mind it, think Iād even say I liked it.
Could have used more Trashcan Man POVs in the 2nd half and maybe just more Vegas stuff in general.
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Was it the original or uncut edition? I remember King saying it had to be condensed on first release because the book binding was insufficient to keep that big a book together (a flaw Robert Jordan quickly discovered with the original printing for Wheel of Time books).
Are you going to watch either TV adaptation? I really liked the latest one. It was adapted by Stephen Kingās son Owen, who also came up with a new ending. Really good stuff.
Imo Kingās other son Joe Hill is at least equal to his father in talent. 20th Century Ghosts is my favorite short story collection of all time. The first story especially lets you know this is going to be a wild collection.
And you may recognize another of the short stories that was adapted into an acclaimed horror film.
Their other kid Naomi is a role model for me in other ways. They are non binary and a minister of a Unitarian faith.
The Road Movie
the beetle. The whole point of the book is finding humanity in the face of complete despair. Showing there actually is reason for hope via the beetle was such a wtf moment for me
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it was the extended edition. I wonder what the original had removed, Iād guess that a lot of it was the stuff pre Boulder focusing on the outbreak. I think that was like 500 pages of material. I did start watching the Stand tv show from a couple years ago and through a couple episodes itās not bad. I donāt love the flashback storytelling thing but that isnāt a big deal.
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Iām pretty sure that original did not include the whole scene with Trashy and The Kid making their way West.
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I liked that encounter, The Kid could have made quite a character if heād lasted a little longer. Found these differences. Someone on Reddit went into way more detail but these seem like the big differences.
- Overall the timeframe is updated from the late 1970s to the mid-90s. This is mostly reflected in changes to dates, brand names, and cultural references.
- An extended sequence of conflict between Frannie and her mother early in the book
- Some scenes between Larry and his mother
- Several stand-alone episodes and vignettes during the plague
- Trashcan Manās journey across the desert including his meeting and dealings with The Kid (a nasty character completely excised from the original)
- A DIY surgery scene among the group from which Dayna split off
- Various extensions of the military sub-plot including scenes of atrocities demonstrating the breakdown of the institution
- Some changes at the beginning and end that more explicitly tie the book in to what became the extended King universe
I hear you. That didnāt hit me the same way. I read the book in one sitting at a bookstore with my brother doing the same besides me. This was in our teenage years, long before his history of violence toward women (including me) compelled me to cut off contact with him. But at the time, the bleak vision of The Road resonated powerfully with my experiences growing up in a cult that promised the apocalypse of The Road would happen within my lifetime.
Hereās the final paragraph from the book:
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not to be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
When I read the book, I felt a strange optimism at the final page. Not because it indicates the world will live on, but because it compels us to treasure what makes life precious, even if we know it will one day come to an end. Iām paraphrasing philosopher Shelly Kagan, but he was debating noted Christian philosophy William Lane Craig on āobjective morality without Godā when he said listen, the fact that humans can write poetry, do math, love and hate, live and die, is in itself special and unique. If that doesnāt on its own fill a person with awe, heās not sure what would ever convince a person that we are special beyond āGodā saying so.
The beetle didnāt strike me as a sign that life will continue. It was just one more reason for The Boy to cherish what remains and what has already passed. The beetle will die too, as everything else on the planet seems destined to do.
And yet there is the possibility of such varied forms of life that could survive and have done so through each seeming apocalypse before us. I didnāt feel let down by the possibility humanity probably wonāt make it through this cataclysm, but beetles and other insects might make it. The beetle is as much a sign of the end as that the end doesnāt really matter. The beetle isnāt going to sing our songs or tell our stories and record what led to the end of humanity. We are faced with a cosmic insignificance and the certainty we will be forgotten.
Our purpose despite it all is to carry the fire because when we meet our end, thatās the most we could have done.
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