Over the last few years, I’ve read a number of books that were suggested to me by Steven King, by reference to them in various of his books. The most memorable of these were “Bartleby the Scrivener” and “Rebecca”, which were both mentioned in “Bag of Bones”.

I just finished reading “Shardik”, which is mentioned in one of the volumes “The Dark Tower” series.

It was a work of will to finish it. It was plodding and heavy reading, with a very good story, but told slowly and with many lengthy pauses between anything of consequence happening. It’s the story of a religion, centering around an enormous bear, and much of it is told in artificially archaic scripture-like language.

This was something of a surprise, coming from Richard Adams, who also wrote “Watership Down”, which I greatly enjoyed both times I’ve read it.

So, on the whole, I don’t much recommend it.