Much has been said about me completing the BBC Top 100 reads, especially when I spend a large chunk of my time complaining how tiresome it gets to try and complete a novel you don't really like or enjoy. However it is worth trawling through the rubbish to catch the occasional gem that otherwise I would not have even considered. The Stand by Stephen King was one such book. It weighs in at a hefty 1325 pages and took me forever to get started, but once I did I was hooked. Its a tale of how a government experiment of creating a virus is accidentally released into the outside world with devastating consequences. More sci-fi than horror, although the many characters at the outset of the novel are a little confusing, the storyline soon calms down to reflect a select few that have to use every skill they've ever learnt to survive. If you read one book this summer than read this one.
