The novel: Cell-Stephen King
The song: The Vacancy-Handheld

Thanks to the lovely Pop Justice Singles Club, I discovered this gem of a perfect pop song. Shameless, open ended, and correctly labeled "pop with guitars", the sort that slides up right next to bands like Blink 182, smashes the shitty whining-ness of such bands, and kicks up the catchy, fun, dancing around and singing about technology relationships with real relationship wonderful popness of it. So, while the tone of the song has nothing to do with the book, it is a great song and does sorta kinda relates. And that's that.

So, now, as many of you know, Stephen King is my all time favorite author, ever. He doesn't deserve to be grouped along people like Danielle Steel, and is most definitely not just another mainstream horror churning machine with no literary merit. Yes, it took me this long to finally read his newest, Cell, but it was worth the wait. It's been a while since I last read a King book, and there is always something about going back to a favorite author. It's kind of like meeting an old best friend after years of separation, there is that awkward and timidness, and worry bubbling beneath: will I still like him? What if it's been too long? What if all our shared interests went away?

But as the novel went on, and the conversation carried away, there is that old familar sensation of being engulfed in the novel, of, finally, not wanting to put it down, of staying up late just to get to the next page, the next chapter, the next section, the end (I finished this book in two days). Stephen King is still a great a writer as ever, and the familiar tricks and details he uses comes back. The storyline is riveting, as always, but does echoes of The Stand by a lot. Another apocalypse disaster featuring sprawling corpses and attacking zombies, lots of gore, snatches of religion and brilliant characterization...which is fun to read, but in terms of something fresh and new from everyone's favorite horror writer, could have been much different.