Under the Dome by Stephen King

About a year ago, my friend Kelly came back from a weekend in Miami, and was really excited to tell me about her trip.  "Tina, I spent the whole weekend lying on the bed with the patio doors open reading Duma Key, Stephen King's new book!  It was so good!"  It was December here, and I could think of a few better things to do in Miami than read ANY book inside, much less a Stephen King novel.  It had been years since I had picked up anything that he wrote, but I really do trust Kelly's book taste, so I tried it, and it was great.   I was so glad to have liked it, that I tried some other Stephen King books, and hated them.  So when "Under the Dome" came out, I was wary.  For one thing, the book is so thick I could drop it in the center of my dining room and serve lunch to my friends on it, and that scared me a bit.  I circled around the idea of the book cautiously, looking at it out of the corner of my eye when I was in a bookstore, or reading a review or two online.  Last week, I was in the Barnes and Noble at the Mall of America, and there was a display as high as my head of this book in the store.  I picked one up, and started to read.  I had to move to some chairs, because I couldn't put it down.  Forty-five minutes later, I forced myself to pay for the book and go home.  Three days and four hours of sleep later, I had done it.  I had read all 1,075 pages.  It was worth every minute.  I'll tell you a little bit about it.
An invisible dome clamps down around and over a small town in Maine (surprise, it's Maine!).  Before long, the people on the inside and the people on the outside figure out it's there, and the people on the inside soon realize that the dome isn't going anywhere for a while, if ever.  Things are not looking good for this town in Maine. The rest of the story is about human nature:  how people deal with themselves, with each other, with power, with greed, with fear, with hunger, with hope, with hopelessness, with death, with pets, and all kinds of other things that you normally don't have to think about every minute of every day under normal circumstances.  And, of course, good versus evil.  King peppers the story with catchy adages and with a million bible verses (who knew the bible would come in so handy for the bad guys), and some fun facts like how the chevrolet bowtie was born.  As long as it is, the book is fast paced, and it is imperative that you find out what happens next, page after page.  However, if you are going to Miami soon, I recommend leaving the book at home and reading it when you return.  It wasn't THAT good.