I just can't

When the pandemic started, someone whose reading recs I usually totally appreciate and who is usually spot on suggested reading Stephen King's _The Stand_. I hesitated and put it on hold at the library, I was number a zillion to do that.

And I finally got it.

And like every single Stephen King book I've started or read, I hate it. Just hate.

Part of it, I'll fully fess up, is that the book is 70s era and it shows. Just that undercurrent of wrongness in characterizations. But also, King. I read _Carrie_, which I hated. I read _Pet Sematary_ which I hated even more (but which scared me). I read at least a few books of the Dark Tower series. I hated them all. I started many more and ditched them. _Misery_, _The Dead Zone_ and _Thinner_ I finished. _IT_ and _Salem's Lot_ I didn't.

All his books, no matter when they are set, feel like something out of the 70s. This is not a good thing.

I'd consign him as a crappy pop author and never bother again only. Only _The Langoliers_, which in my opinion is a perfect, flawless gem of a story. It scared me. It stayed with me. I will not re-read it because I fear the two weeks of lack of sleep that happened last time.

So, in the words of every jerk breaking off a relationship everywhere... It's not him, it's me.

For whatever reason, he's just not an author whose works I am going to enjoy.

Where does that leave me with _The Stand_? I'm 25% through and I'm done with it. There are too many good books that I want to read to bother with this one. I'll check out the wiki page to see what happens, but I am not going to plow through at least 800 more pages to prove that I can do it.

Just the fact that I am 25% in and Randall Flagg has not shown up yet, ie the plot has not really started makes me confident that I'm wasting my time.