No Great Loss

(The Stand)

The next book on my list is The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition.

Here’s the deal. This post is my post on The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition. I have never bought, borrowed, or even seen the abridged version of The Stand, and it never actually occurred to me until now that the first post on that book was supposed to be about the abridged version. I’m sorry for the error, and for not noting in the first post that I wasn’t talking about the abridged version.

However, I’m not sorry enough to actually do a post on the abridged version. I suppose I could hunt one down if I really wanted to, but I don’t. My sense of completionism doesn’t stretch that far, I guess — as far as I’m concerned, I’ve done my due diligence on The Stand by reading the version King wanted released in the first place. I know what things have been cut out of the abridged version, more or less, and I tend to think that King was correct in putting them back in — or at least more correct than the people who took them out. I do not feel a need to read a book that is the same story, but less. If the abridged version is somebody’s favorite, I’d be genuinely interested to find out why, and more power to you. But I’m going to take my stand here and say that, in this particular case, I believe that more is better, I believe that the author had the right of it in the first place, and that the omission of the abridged version of The Stand in this collection of posts is no great loss. So you have the link that redirects to my original post on The Stand — if you want my thoughts on that, do feel free to follow it back there. If I ever do decide to read the abridged version, or if I have more thoughts worth typing up on the unabridged version, I will let you know. But for now, I think it’s time to move on to the next book.