phone crazies! are scary

Cell, by Stephen King. I'm torn. It's King's writing...so it's pretty damn good writing, in pacing, style, characterization, etc, as per usual. Trivially, I had fun picking out some scattered references that seem to be there just to let the astute reader know that yes, this is within the same...uh, metaverse that The Dark Tower includes (who wants to listen to my theory about a Beam breaking being involved in Cell?). I loved the first half of the book, with all the mystery and carnage and horror and quickquick pacing, but ultimately didn't really like where it ended up, narrowing in focus and slowing with exposition, and straying just a bit too much into unbelievable in one minor way that bothered me. All the same, I can't really think of any other way King could have gone with it, including the ending, which I'm sure a lot of people won't like. Hell, I don't really like it, as much as I think it was a good ending, all the same. As good an ending as could have come out of that story, anyway. It's like I think the author of the long-running Walking Dead once said, he doesn't really have any plan to end it, he's just going to keep it going as long as he can, as there really isn't any way to satisfactorily end a story of this genre.

-an interesting historical connection between Rome and Norse culture

-an old favorite article of mine about arm stretches that involve lolling around