When I checked out Hearts in Atlantis, I also got Black House. I had it for a couple of weeks, and couldn't get past the first three pages. Those are incredibly tedious, highly description, plotless passages detailing a small town. There are so many details that it becomes, paradoxically, impossible to imagine.

I finally decided to try to push past that part, and indeed, in a couple of days I got about 150 pages in. However, I still can't exactly say it's gotten "good". There was one part where a murderer teleports from a bathroom stall to his victim that I thought was ridiculous.

I read The Talisman a long time ago, so long ago that I don't remember much about it. I do remember generally not liking it, though, and thinking a lot of things that happened in it seemed arbitrary (It's a fantasy book, so I guess anything is supposed to go).

Oh, well. I don't see myself ever picking up any book Peter Straub wrote on his own, since I don't seem to care for his collaborations with King.