Well, with the third season of Buffy finished I decided it was a good time to kick off the reading aspect of this uber-marathon. So when I woke up today — around midnight because of my bizarre sleeping schedule at the moment — I started reading the third book in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series: The Waste Lands. And now, around 3 in the afternoon, I’m done. That was without a doubt the fastest I’ve ever read a novel in my life. It’s not the fastest in terms of time read because I took 15 hours to read the book, but I’m pretty sure I read The Road in less time, just spread over a longer period of time.

But the marathon process behooved quick turnover so I read and I read and I read. And it was a damn good read. The pace was quick, and the story was filled with bizarre twists. The most entertaining thing about the series though is the inexplicable connections between the two worlds. From the soulful singing of the old folk song “Hey Jude” in Mid-World, to the mystically haunted locations strewn about our world that seem to have indelible connections to Roland’s world that has moved on. The next two books are both 700 pages so they’ll be a little more arduous and might have to be split over multiple days but I won’t find out until I’ve watched a couple more seasons of Buffy/Angel.