It's very hard to stick to a writer's carer. It's a long time to learn and you don't make much while you're learning.

Which is why I thought it belonged in GWW.

I rather like On Writing as well, but it was as much for the biographical sections as the ones about writing. I did really like him showing the various drafts of the first few pages of a short story, and why he made the changes that he made.

But I'm hardly objective when it comes to Stephen King - he was a college friend of a couple of my sisters (and my brother-in-law), he grew up in a town next to the one where I grew up (that basically had a post office, a meeting house, gas station and a general store delineating the town as such), and I've met him a few times.

More Harry Potter?

As I remember, not so different from what she said when she ended the series. Leaving the Potterverse for a while, not necessarily forever. I would be curious to see what she would do in a different universe (fantasy or not, genre or not) . Even if she ultimately writes more in that universe, I suspect she will do better if she writes at least a novel (or a novel's worth of short works) outside it before returning.

I'd much rather she did something new, or at the very least something different in the same 'verse.

I'm not objective at all about King. He was my first writer crush. Steve has a copy of On Writing, I'll try it again. I bought it at the airport when it came out, read about 80 pages on the plane and disliked it so much that I left it on the plane for the next person. I'm willing to try it again.

I'm not objective at all about King. He was my first writer crush.

Joins javachick in the King fandom corner.

He was the first writer I sought out when I started reading adult books, after my sister handed me a copy of Carrie when I was 11 years old and said that I might like it. I spent most of the late '70s gobbling up everything he wrote.

Yup, similar experience, minus the sister, Kathy!

I was let down by his use of the same incest theme over and over in the early 90's and stopped reading his books. Then he came out with "Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" and I thought I'd give it a try since I love baseball so much. I only made it through 60 or 70 pages (if that) because I thought the voice of the child narrator was so off that my suspension of disbelief just couldn't handle it. I was bummed because I liked the premise so much.

I STILL think of King almost every time I stop at a stop sign! "California stop" was in one of his books, don't recall which one.

I used to be a detractor. Then I saw "Shawshank Redemption" and had to take it back. I admit it. But I'm not a horror fan really and at one time I aspired to be a snotty intellectual.

Ethical question: I have a lot of eBooks that I've bought on my Kindle. I have also, for my own personal backup, stripped the DRM from all of them, so they are now standard Mobipocket files (basically readable on any device and easily convertible to ePub for the devices that can't).

I would never distribute these books in a widespread, bittorrenty manner. But would it be unethical for to offer them for "lending" in the style of the B&N lending above? I trust Buffistas to actually remove the book after finishing it.

Frankly, the LendMe feature and library books feature are very compelling reasons to switch to a Nook and the B&N ecosystem, and I may be going there with my next eReader. I wish they didn't have the (IMO) tacky LCD screen at the bottom though. I prefer the simplicity of the Kindle look.