I first read them when I was 19, my dad was a fan of the series so I decided to give it a go. How about you guys? Any interesting stories of how you discovered the tower?
P.S Do you think the movie will specify what hand Roland likes to jerk off with?
I picked up The Gunslinger around the time The Drawing of the Three was released by Plume (1989, I think), and was hooked. I read them in real time afterward.
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Listen to them—the children of the night. What music they make!
I remember multiple conversations with a friend of the book in the late 80s, but the book itself was nowhere to be found. He praised the story highly and was frustrated he couldn't find a copy. I kept an eye out for it, constantly checking all the major book stores.
Wikipedia puts out a release date for Drawing of the Three as 1987, but I am certain it wasn't available in our area until a couple of years later, and the original The Gunslinger shortly before that. This was after I graduated. It might have just been a regional thing, because I would see The Gunslinger in the list of previous novels at the front of his books.
Damion Crowley
Who knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you.--R.E.
Lets see, it was 1997-98, I was 15 turning 16 and I was sailing the Caribbean, sometimes I read a book a day; I recall reading Michael Crichton's Sphere on a deserted island, it was an epic day; lost in a wonderful adventure, lost in a wonderful adventure.
By that point only the first four books (Wizard & Glass had just come out) were available and to this day the Gunslinger is my favorite.
I was already a King fan, when I younger my mother had all his classics, I read them all, IT & The Stand being my previous favorites. It was only with TDT series that I started to see how all the books were connected; it was an exciting revelation.
Back then I used to hit up random library's and shoppes for cheap books, I'd fit so many novels in my backpack that it would nearly bust. Those books were not just entertainment, they were sustenance.
I really enjoy intelligent scifi/horror themes, so TDT was right up my alley. It also taught me to see more value in westerns. Sometimes I really miss the old Stephen King, the one that was powered by cocaine and wrote stories just for me (except when he'd start going off about baseball a bit too long). We need a time machine to bring that guy here to pimp-smack his current incarnation.
"This is What You Want... This is What You Get"
I was traveling after college working in orphanages and teaching English in schools around the world. I was in a hostel in 2006 and a dude there said he had picked up a book in Moscow from fellow travelers called the Gunslinger about a wanderer. On the inside cover everyone who'd ever read or carried the book wrote the date they got it and where. The idea was you're supposed to pass it on in a new place to a traveler when you're finished with it. I read it and passed it along - a fun little thing.
About a month later I was in India and went to a yankee book shop and randomly found Drawing of the Three and picked it up. I was really surprised to see it and since it was the next in the series and I needed material to pass the time I got it. Whoa. Was pretty hooked when I finished it. By now I was in Kisumu, Kenya and wouldn't you know it but right on the shelf there sat Wastelands and Wizard and Glass. Seemed like a sign. I had a while in country and finished them, and found The Stand and Hearts in Atlantis later that year in Nairobi. By now I'm starving for the next piece of the series.
Some time passed and I found myself in Budapest, Hungary. Went to their giant mall and found an English book store and stocked up. Got Wolves of the Callah and Song of Susannah. Finished Song on my plane ride home after my months and months of travel. Spent some time reflecting on how cool it was that these books were way points along the way for me. Picked up the final volume stateside and it was a very emotional experience reading it and closing that chapter of my life. Roland's journey and my own had become intertwined in my mind. Passing that final door and waking up where he started, myself reading the last sentence in the same town I'd departed over a year ago. Having learned and changed and seeing for myself that indeed Ka is a wheel.
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After reading my first King book, "The Shining," I knew I wanted to read more and I stumbled across "The Gunslinger." I picked it up from the library and never got around to reading it until I found myself in a bookstore several years later and came across the book again, bought it on an impulse, and before I knew it, I could hardly put it down.
share1991 in the adult section of my local library, I was 13 and I spotted SK's name (of whom I was already a fan) on the spine of a white paperback called The Wastelands. It had a vaguely Sci-fi appearance, and upon pulling it from the shelf, saw the cover illustration (Roland in the foreground, red shirt, looking like Bono(!) and Eddie just behind his left shoulder, the tower looming in the extreme background), and immediately wanted to dive into the story.
Upon finishing this book, I sought out the two previous installments and devoured them, and then waited almost a decade for Wizard And Glass..... Easily my favourite ever book series, fantastically vicious and terribly humane all at once. The only thing that comes even close is the Otherland series by Tad Williams, but DT will always remain the zenith for me