Slow Read: OUTLANDER

We’re nearing the end of our Outlander Slow Read, but we also needed a minute to talk about everything else on our nightstands. Fall is Laura’s favorite reading season, partly because the big, weighty books land this time of year and the awards lists start rolling in.We started with what we’ve been reading. (Sarah is head over heels for Kingsolver’s Partita, which feels like a writer with nothing left to prove showing you exactly how good she is anyway. Laura is 12% in and not hooked, so I’m working on her.) We talked into the literary controversies of 2026. We covered AI in publishing, Rachel Cusk’s Life of M and the Natalie Portman of it all.We closed with Sarah’s son Griffin, who is 500 pages into It and ready to quit. Laura explained why it’s her all-time favorite, so I’ll be delivering a pep talk and reporting back.Book club is this week, and we’ll announce our next Slow Read before Thanksgiving. It starts in January and is open to everyone. Head to slowread.substack.com to nominate what we read next!Books We MentionedWhat we’re reading* Partita by Barbara Kingsolver* Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver* So Big by Edna Ferber* Giant by Edna Ferber* Peck & Peck by Bonnie Garmus* Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus* Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel* Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel* The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel* Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler* Under Story by Chloe Benjamin* Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert* John of John by Douglas Stuart* Mestra by Madeline Miller* Circe by Madeline Miller* An Elderly Lady Is Up to No Good by Helene Tursten* Hollywood Ending by John GreenThe controversies* Life of M by Rachel Cusk* Outline by Rachel Cusk* The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger* The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus* Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott* Famesick by Lena Dunham* The Odyssey, translated by Emily Wilson* The Tell by Amy Griffin* How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan* Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi AdeyemiAdaptations and Stephen King* Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders* East of Eden by John Steinbeck* Carrie by Stephen King* It by Stephen King* The Stand by Stephen King* Outlander by Diana GabaldonThank you Jessie Benkert, Heather Jones, Tracie Omit, Christie T, Erin Feeney, and many others for tuning into our live video! Join me for my next live video in the app. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit slowread.substack.comThe OUTLANDER adventure begins!In this first episode of our Slow Read of Diana Gabaldon’s OUTLANDER, Sarah & Laura discuss their first impressions of the novel, make guesses about where it’s going to go from here, and, of course, dissect the book chapter by chapter.FIND THE FULL READING SCHEDULE HEREReminder that you can watch the video version of our conversation on Substack HEREWe’d love for you to join us in the comments on Substack or in the Slow Read chat. (Remember no spoilers beyond the sections we’re discussing!!)Looking forward to spending the next few months with you through the stones!

We hopped on live in the middle of a Tuesday to officially kick off Season Two and hundreds of you showed ready to talk summer reading and get excited about Outlander.Laura and I had two very different reading summers. We talked about that and which books we both really loved or really didn’t. We talked about the books of the summer (looking at you Yesteryear!). We talked about the fall lineup of new releases which is insane. Also, we talked about what you need to know to tackle Outlander with us. Outlander is broken into seven parts, and we’re doing eight episodes because we split one of them. Our first episode, covering Part One, drops Monday, August 31st. Part One is about seventy pages. If you want to stay with us, have it read by the 31st.The Slow Read Outlander season is members only this time. Bookmark slowread.substack.com for the reading schedule, the meeting schedule, the Zoom links, and replays of anything you miss. The printable bookmark is here.If you’re a slow reader who’s sitting Outlander out, we’re not going anywhere — we’ve got other episodes and goodies sprinkled through the fall. But if you want in on these episodes, come join us. We don’t know yet whether we’re going to love this book. We do know we’re going to have fun.Every book we mentionedOverview* American Hagwon — Min Jin Lee* Partita — Barbara Kingsolver* Peck & Peck — Bonnie Garmus* The Art of Fighting: The Transformative Power of Conflict — Priya Parker* Exit Party — Emily St. John Mandel* Under Story — Chloe Benjamin* Big Little Truths — Liane Moriarty* The Pirate Queen — Ariel LawhonThe big three of the summer* Yesteryear — Caro Claire Burke* The Calamity Club — Kathryn Stockett* The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion — Beth BrowerLiterary fiction* Land — Maggie O’Farrell* Whistler — Ann Patchett* The Things We Never Say — Elizabeth Strout* North Woods — Daniel Mason* Country People — Daniel MasonNonfiction* How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University — Theo Baker* This Land Is Your Land: A Road Trip Through U.S. History — Beverly Gage* G-Man: J. Edgar Hoover and the Making of the American Century — Beverly Gage* Famesick: A Memoir — Lena DunhamEverything else* Mad Mabel — Sally Hepworth* Dear Monica Lewinsky — Julia Langbein* Kitten — Stacey Yu* June Baby — Shannon Garvey* Girl’s Girl — Sonia Feldman* The Shampoo Effect — Jenny Jackson* The Great Wherever — Shannon SandersWhat we’re slow reading* Outlander — Diana Gabaldon* The Stand — Stephen King* War and Peace — Leo TolstoyNext Up: Our first Outlander episode covering Part One drops Monday, August 31st. It’s about 70 pages — read it however slow reading works for you. The reading schedule and printable bookmark are both waiting for you at slowread.substack.com.Thank you Stacey Loscalzo Reads, Jessie Benkert, Juli Clarner, Denise, Readingroberts, and many others for tuning in! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe

We finished The Stand. Six months in Boulder, and we made it out alive — well, most of us did.And now we get to tell you what we’ve been dying to announce: our next Slow Read is Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander.Here’s the part you need to hear first, because it changes things. Unlike The Stand, which we gave away free to everyone, the entire Outlander read this fall lives behind the paywall. Every main episode breaking down the chapters, every book club meeting, every unhinged side quest — members only. If you want to take this journey with us, now’s the time to join.The Stand episodes, we had to edit ourselves — pull whole sections, watch what we said, because the internet is the internet. Outlander has one of the most intense, passionate fandoms out there (they call Diana herself, like a deity — we’ll get into it). Behind the paywall, it’s just us and you. No torching on Twitter, no walking on eggshells. Our true feelings, full unhinged selves, the way a book club is supposed to be.A few reasons we are genuinely thrilled about this one:It’s Outlander. It’s been everywhere for a decade, the TV show just wrapped, and it sits right in the cultural water — but it’s also double-intimidating: a 50-million-copy series with nine books, novellas, graphic novels, a whole universe. Reading the first one together means you finally get to be conversant in this giant piece of pop culture, without committing to all 10,000 pages alone.Diana herself is a delight. Marine biology and zoology degrees, a PhD, a side hustle writing Scrooge McDuck comics, and she wrote Outlander on a lark as practice — never thinking anyone would read it. “Science and art are two sides of the same coin,” she says. “What they both rest on is the ability to draw patterns out of chaos.” We fell a little in love.And this time, both of us are going in blind. With The Stand, Laura knew the big picture and led the way. For Outlander, neither of us has read it — so we’re discovering it right alongside you. People say it’s intense. Possibly even slightly traumatizing. (Laura says that’s a selling point.)Here’s what to do: Join as a paid member now, and you get everything. Spend the rest of the summer catching up on our side quests from the first half of the year — the one we did on death is, no exaggeration, some of our best work. Plus, we’ll have a couple fun summer episodes for you. Then our whole Outlander adventure officially kicks off August 3rd, when we release the reading schedule. Book club meetings, watch-alongs, all the bonuses — it’s all included once you’re in.We’re all going to need a good, healthy, entertaining distraction this fall. Let this be it.Happy summer reading, y’all — see you in Scotland. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to SLOW READ, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle.Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura TremaineWe are currently reading The Stand by Stephen King (unabridged version)You can find our full Reading Schedule hereJoin the SLOW READ community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & LauraWe have come to the end of our journey with The Stand by Stephen King. In this episode, we dissect what it all meant and what we’ll remember about this experience. Make sure to subscribe on Substack for our next SLOW READ!Mentioned:Wolf HallWar and PeaceDon QuixoteBrothers KaramazovBlazing Eye Sees AllSister Helen Prejean / Dead Man Walking The Circle That Doesn’t CloseLaura: We are here today at the end of The Stand by Stephen King to close the circle.Sarah: But I think it’s a lie. Why did he say the circle closes? That’s not what happens at the end of this book.Laura: That’s true. That’s totally true. But it starts with “the circle opens.” That’s the opening. So he has to close it.Sarah: Or is it just that the circle continues? That would have been a more accurate title for this epilogue. Just saying.Laura: I do have to say that I purposely, when I made our reading schedule for The Stand — we knew we wanted to do it for six months, like January to June, which we did — I planned it to close our circle here the same week the book opens, which is the second week of June. Just because I liked that symmetry.Sarah: I love it. I love a symmetry.Laura: We have a few little pages to get through, but before we do that — we will be continuing the slow read. We have picked our next book.Sarah: I picked it and I forced it on Laura. That’s the truth.Laura: We’re going to tell you all about that next week, where you’ll hear the reveal. If you cannot wait another second to find out the book, our paid members learned last week during our book club meeting. So you can go watch the replay of that if you just can’t stand it another second. But today we’re going to tackle “dusk of a summer evening” and the circle closing — which is a lie, because it doesn’t actually close.Sarah: It doesn’t actually close, but there are things to say about how King ended this whole thing. Because if you do any sort of Reddit search, any sort of Googling about The Stand, what people want to talk about is the end.Laura: Pretty much. Whether it was a true stand, or a letdown for some people, or if it’s what people expected. There’s a lot of that.The Split Epilogue: An Epilogue for the Good GuysSarah: We get this kind of split epilogue, right? So we get “dusk of a summer evening.” The people we get to see from the Free Zone contingent — the good side — are Stu and Franny and Peter.Laura: I’m sorry, three people. Babies are people too. On their journey back to Maine, they stop at Mother Abigail’s house.Sarah: I don’t know if that path makes sense, for the record. Geographically I’m always like, where are you guys going? What are we doing? But whatever, it’s fine.Laura: Maybe there’s something about the way you’d have to travel by foot. I’ve always thought this is weird. I’m going through all this area of the country, including Nebraska, this summer on my RV road trip with my family. So maybe I can report back to us. But they do stop at Mother Abigail’s house. They’re on the porch, the baby’s playing, and they’re talking about what happened in the Free Zone and what they think is going to happen next. It’s a little epilogue for the good guys, really. Did it feel true to you?Sarah: Yeah. I think it’s true that the Free Zone would not stay together as this tight, cohesive unit. As people came together — I love this line — “all these people make me nervous as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.” That’s something my grandpa would say. My grandpa always said, I want to live in the middle of 400 acres with a fence around it that says no trespassing. So to a certain contingent, living with other people is never going to be on the menu. From their perspective, the circle has closed, the threat is gone, so the need to stay close together for safety isn’t as intense. It makes sense that people would start to dissipate.Laura: I do think it’s an interesting choice that he follows the people leaving instead of staying in the Free Zone to say what happens next. Although you’re getting reporting from them on what the next phase looked like before they left. So he’s trying to get the best of both worlds.Sarah: I think he’s also addressing a natural question. If this really happened — but for the dreams about Mother Abigail drawing everyone to Boulder, or the contingent that went to Vegas — after a catastrophic pandemic like this, these little communities would be sprouting up all over. They wouldn’t all gather into one place. That’s the storytelling aspect, that it’s not very normal. So he’s addressing: okay, but in reality, people would dissipate. There’d be a lot of people like Franny who are homesick for their region, for their part of the country, who want to go back.Sarah: At their last Free Zone meeting they’re ready to have a sheriff, ready to get guns — and the progression of “when we don’t have one enemy, we have many enemies” seems pretty psychologically right to me.Do People Ever Learn Anything?Laura: He’s making the point over and over again in this ending — even in the darker parts — that the more things change, the more they stay the same. People are gonna people. Do you think people ever learn anything? That’s the question he’s posing.Sarah: I do. And look, there’s a way to look back over this book, and over the whole of human history, and say people are gonna people — they can be cruel, they can be violent. But the side of the coin I’m on is: yes, and the human species has made enormous, dramatic progress over the past 500 years. From the dark, peasant-and-serf-driven structure of society where how you’re born is how you die, the end — to an enormous ability to chart your own path and create peace and prosperity for the majority of people. The statistics on the children pulled out of poverty just in the last 30, 50 years are incredible. So I get what he’s saying, but I disagree to a certain extent that this is just an endless cycle, because we’ve made enormous progress. There’s no point in human history — unless you’re a crazy person who has this vision of the ‘50s that’s not accurate — where you’d want to go back in time. I don’t want to go back. First of all, I have a Type 1 diabetic child. The technology sucked just 10 years ago. I’m always going forward in time.Laura: There’s no doubt there’s an evolution, which means we are learning as a species. We’re learning and adapting and changing. I kind of think a better question — instead of “do you think we ever learn anything” — a bigger question that feels more complicated to me is: do we think people are inherently good?Are People Inherently Good?Sarah: Well, we know what Stephen King thinks.Laura: Do we?Sarah: Well, actually, I don’t, because I think I probably sit with him. I don’t think you can categorize all people. I think there’s a small percentage that are cruel and evil and violent and dark — and some, yes, it’s a product of their circumstances and trauma, and some I think maybe there’s something else going on, and it’s just kind of baked. He dances around this nicely with the dark man. I don’t think there’s a “dark man baby,” you know what I mean? That’s the philosophical debate — would you go back and kill Hitler as a baby? Do people spring forth fully formed? I’m not naive. I understand there are cruel, violent, terrible people out there. And on the other end of the spectrum, there are people who are just naturally nice and good — and a lot of them teach preschool, you know what I mean? They’re organized a little differently. And then there’s this messy middle, where you’re deciding day to day, moment to moment, in these sliding-door moments. You… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to SLOW READ, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle.Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura TremaineWe are currently reading The Stand by Stephen King (unabridged version)You can find our full Reading Schedule hereJoin the SLOW READ community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & LauraREMINDER: Our final book club meeting discussing The Stand will be THURSDAY, JUNE 11 at 6pm PT / 8pm CT / 9pm ET and we’ll be announcing our next SLOW READ! You don’t want to miss it. Mentioned in this episode:* The Shining by Stephen King * Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel* The Crocodile Hunter * “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” (”…if the fates allow”) * Noah Kahan, “Maine” * Steel Magnolias The Stand, or The Walk?Laura: How are you feeling?Sarah: Well, it’s giving Sopranos. You know how in The Sopranos it was the penultimate episode that usually contained the most action? I feel like that show set up that structure — although apparently not, because The Stand has been around a lot longer. The main action, especially a majority of the violence, the falling out between Randall Flagg and members of the Free Zone, the nuclear bomb — all of that happened in our last section. So now we’re getting that real finale. We’re caring for the characters we really loved. We’re seeing where they ended up. We’re tying up some loose ends.Laura: I felt like these last chapters post-nuclear-bomb were so arduous. I felt like King is personally trying to remind us that this whole thing is about the journey and not the destination, which is such an annoying message. I was just like, we are still walking. It should have been called The Walk, not The Stand. Honestly, the whole book is just about journeying.Sarah: Well, I will say this. It’s not standing still, that’s for sure. But there’s a moment near the end where Stu says they’ll have to stand a watch for him. So it really felt like this conclusion of the book was more a philosophy: it’s not that you have to walk forever, but that you do have to stand watch. Maybe the stand wasn’t some sort of high-noon final battle between good and evil, which is what I expected when I started the book. It’s more like standing watch — standing watch for our worst instincts, standing watch for the ways in which humans can perpetuate great cruelty and harm on each other. We’re standing sentry, keeping an eye out. And even though I’m an Enneagram One and I love a black-and-white conclusion, I thought this was truer, wiser. I really liked it.Laura: It also seems to be saying that nothing is ever really over. It might be over for you individually, if you come to the end of your story, but life just keeps on keeping on. I have always quibbled a teeny tiny bit with how we spend these last chapters with just Stu and Tom — and even primarily Stu. We’re in Stu’s mind mostly. It’s no longer an ensemble cast. We started all the way back in Arnette, Texas, at the gas station — Stu is our first point man — and then we also end with so much Stu. I love Stu as a character. It’s just, oh, he wasn’t the one I was the most attached to. How did you feel about Stu being the final stand?Sarah: I loved it. I thought it wasn’t just Stu — it was the combination of Stu, Tom, and Kojak, who I believe is the real hero of this novel. I really liked the way King put the strengths and weaknesses of these three creatures together. It didn’t feel arduous to me. I was excited to see the ways in which they were stripped away and rebuilt. I liked that Nick kept appearing. I liked that we were worried about Franny. And I liked the changing threat — that we went from the heat of the desert and the nuclear fallout to this incredible winter hellscape. And Tom is such a great addition to every scene he’s in. The way they were facing very openly “we might not make it” felt like real learning, as opposed to how people were orienting themselves when Captain Trips first started wreaking havoc.Kojak, the Real HeroLaura: Let’s do a chapter breakdown, because if you’re a regular Stephen King reader, you recognize in this section in particular that he brings out his favorites — which is to say dogs, cars. He loves a car explanation.Sarah: I did feel like there was a little too much detail about what type of car you need to get started, the manual and the automatic. I was like, buddy.Laura: No, this is one of his things. Dogs, cars, ghosts in dreams, recurring themes, and of course abandoned hotels, even if they’re just the Holiday Inn. These pop up in so many of Stephen King’s stories. It’s such a King universe that we’re in. There’s no mistaking what we’re reading.Sarah: How do you feel about Kojak just being such a convenient hero? Kojak can do everything. He can hunt, he can bring the blankets up from the washout, he can go find Tom in the snow. Kojak is a dog of all trades.Laura: Here’s my question, because you’re the Stephen King expert. Does he often use dogs the same way he uses children or people of different abilities — to say, well, they have different skills because they are different?Sarah: Yes. And so that’s what that felt like to me. This is not a run-of-the-mill dog. It’s a special dog. Laura: In the same way that he uses children, there’s an innocence to animals, dogs in particular, that feels like they’re tapped into a god, a universe, a different plane. If you’re a dog lover, you don’t even necessarily deny that. That’s why it’s a convenient tool to use a dog.Sarah: I just want to say, though, that it’s a special dog — because if it was my dog, I would have to eat her by the fire. She would be of absolutely no use. She’s currently snoring underneath my chair. She would not be able to bring me a rabbit or firewood or much else.Laura: Same.Sarah: I’ve never owned that type of dog, but I’ve known dogs like that — super capable, very smart, communicative. I read recently that domesticated dogs have existed longer than agriculture. So I think it could happen.Laura: Definitely could happen. If you’ve ever watched a working dog — a herding dog, certain hunting dogs — they are very capable. I like Kojak. More Kojak. I’m here for it. It didn’t bother me, but also I’m a dog lover. I wonder, if you’re not an animal person, if you’re like, come on with the dog. We’ll have to hear from our community about that.Chapter 74: Tom Shows UpLaura: In Chapter 74, Stu is still broken-legged, starving, and starting to get sick. He heave-hoes himself up out of the washout when he hears the boom and needs to see with his own eyes what’s going on. To me, this is the arduous part — not the plot points. Do we need two pages of him crawling up?Sarah: I didn’t think we needed that part. I get it, he needed to get up there. I was just so happy that once he got up there, Tom showed up.Sarah: Okay, but here’s the immediate thing I thought. You have read this book before. You knew this was going to happen. And still you had all those complaints about them sending Tom.Laura: My complaints about why they sent Tom are separate from Tom ending up being the savior. They sent Tom because Stephen King needed him to save Stu. I still think they took advantage of someone. And here’s the plot weakness: why does he approach Stu when he was very clearly instructed during the hypnosis to stay away from people?Laura: I think King’s implication is that they have to go the same way because they have to take tunnels — unless they’re going to crawl up and down the Rockies. So everybody’s taking the same path because they have to cross through these tunnels.Laura: I don’t mind a plot point of convenience. I get it, they need to be all on the same road. It just needs to make sense. And I like this ending because I love Tom — he’s one of my favorite characters. I just don’t want Tom to be taken advantage of in the first place.Sarah: I feel like this is Stephen King saying he’s not taken advantage of. Look how incredibly capable he is. He is… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to SLOW READ, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle.Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura TremaineWe are currently reading The Stand by Stephen King (unabridged version)You can find our full Reading Schedule hereJoin the SLOW READ community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & LauraMentioned in this episode:* Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging by Sebastian Junger * 1984 by George Orwell * Paradise Lost by John Milton* Carrie by Stephen King We StoodSarah: We have been reading Stephen King’s epic The Stand, and I think we’ve come to the part where we stood. Did we stand?Laura: I think we’re still standing.Sarah: Are we standing?Laura: I think we stood. I think we did it. We are wobbling in our woo!Sarah: We would love for you to join us for our final book club meetings for The Stand. There’s obviously going to be a lot to say as we wrap up this epic novel. All of those are coming up in June. You need to check our Substack for details of our book club meetings, our final episodes, and maybe some announcements for what we’re doing next. All of that is going to be on Substack. You can join us there at slowreadbookclub.com and we’re going to have side quest conversations for you. Tomorrow our side quest will be on summer reading and summer plans. We can’t wait to talk about that with you.Laura: Yep. If you join us at the Slow Read Substack, you will get all of our side quests that we’ve been covering through this time. And they have been wide ranging, friends.Sarah: They really have. Sometimes they go along with the book. Sometimes they don’t.Laura: They don’t. But they are excellent conversations with Sarah and I, only for our Substack members. Over on Slow Read, go to slowreadbookclub.com for all of that and more.Sarah: And more.“Is That It?” — First Reactions to the EndingSarah: We’re going to talk about chapter 72 and 73, and I deserve an award for not texting you the second I finished the section. It was hard. If I had finished this section before we saw each other in person for the first time in 12 years, I wouldn’t have been able to resist. I didn’t really plan to not read it until after, but I’m glad it worked out that way or I would not have been able to keep my mouth shut.Laura: Because you would have wanted to talk about it.Sarah: It’s so talkable. We stood. Of course I want to talk about it. I’m curious what you think reading it for the first time. Did you feel like dun dun dun? Did you feel the music swell in your head?Laura: Yeah, I definitely did. I wanted to just bare minimum text the wide-eyed emoji, but I didn’t — again, because I deserve an award. And my husband, who had been doing a good job kind of keeping pace with us, sped ahead and finished the book, so he’s been saying some cryptic stuff. It got me all keyed up. But yeah, it kind of snuck up on me, but not really. By the time you get to chapter 73, by the time you’re in Larry’s head, you’re like, okay, we’re here, we’re gonna stand. But then it’s over kind of quickly, and so you’re just like, what just happened?Sarah: I know. That’s what I kind of wanted to ask slow readers — if you’re like, “is that it?” Nicholas was definitely that reaction. Those were the cryptic comments he was making. It was very much, “Is that it, Vang?”Laura: Is that how you felt when you read it the first time?Sarah: Definitely. I was kind of just reading, bopping along, and didn’t realize that was it. I mean, there’s still a little bit more to go, but I feel like it’s a lesson in — it’s in the journey, not the destination.Laura: Yes, but I like the destination. Okay, now we’re getting too close to chapter 73. Let’s back up. Let’s do chapter 72.Chapter 72: The Walk and the Question of FateLaura: So, chapter 72, we pick back up with our traveling party — Stu, Larry, Glenn, Ralph, and Kojak, the true star of the traveling party — as they continue their grueling walk across the United States. They’re averaging like… I really appreciated the mileage chart. I thought that was very helpful, as a person who travels a lot and plans itineraries.Sarah: I was with them in their analysis around the campfire of like, why are we doing it this way? They know why they’re doing it. Mother Abigail told them: walk with just the clothes on your back. You can’t take food. You can’t take packs. You have to survive this hundreds — 400-mile walk, or whatever it is, 500-mile walk. But I sort of was with them when they’re like, we know why we’re doing this, but why are we doing this? And like, can we cheat a little bit?Laura: I really liked this conversation they’re having about why are we doing this at the beginning of chapter 72, and we get to your theory that you’ve brought up over and over again. They’re having a conversation mainly about the wear and tear on their bodies at first, and then Glenn says: “And 50 years of confirmed agnosticism, it seems to be my fate to follow an old black woman’s God into the jaws of death. If that’s my fate, then that’s my fate. End of story. But I’d rather walk than ride, and when you get right down to it, walking takes longer — consequently I live longer by a few days anyway.” So I thought, here we are, here’s your theme. Is it just fate? Is this story just one long journey of fate?Sarah: Well, I have been talking about this for six months. But I don’t know that that is a direct correlation to them having to do it bare, you know? No food, nothing. Now, I mean, they really talk about how fasting clears the mind. I liked all that. And there’s been a walking theme as much as there’s been a fate theme through this book. Remember? Stu walked out — he walked off his fear of the hospital. Trashcan Man walked himself into delirium. Nadine’s walking. Everybody’s walking all the time. Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. So it does feel like a sort of preparation for the mind, body, and spirit, if you will, for what’s to come. But it also feels like an unnecessary burden to have to figure out your survival. Like they’re eating chips out of people’s cars with dead people.Laura: I’m into it.Sarah: I’m into it.Laura: Because there is a grounding that happens when you are viscerally aware of your own body and its survival. These men would not have had the bravery necessary in chapter 73 if they’d just taken a car.Sarah: No doubt in my mind.Laura: Because they had to know what they’re made of.Sarah: You’ve got to know what you’re made of. You’ve got to know how far you can push your body, how far you can push your mind. And really, I think this physical experience strips away that dichotomy. You know, the closest analogy I can find in my own life is labor. I had three nine-pound babies with not a drop of drugs. I gave birth to two at home — and sort of knowing that I had to get myself through it, like me and my body and a midwife. I’m not a free birther, please don’t message me. But it’s exactly what they describe. It’s so clarifying in a way that’s not intellectual, that’s not, “I’m walking through these steps.” You do something like that, and that dichotomy of my mind, my body — it just goes away. It’s like people when they talk about running marathons, or extreme marathoners, like pushing your body but really yourself, all of you, to the brink. In this way, I think it prepares you to do some really hard shit.Laura: And these guys, they all know it. They’re on the way to do some really hard shit.Sarah: Yeah. And there’s lots of metaphors or references. I like your birth metaphor, but then there’s biblical stuff throughout, even more so in chapter 73. So there’s walking in the wilderness, there’s people taking pilgrimages. I mean, it feels like a human experience, kind of like what you’re describing — we put ourselves through this.Laura: At the end of the day, they had to put the steps in front of them. They had to make the miles. They had to get over aches and pains and hunger. They were instructed, but then they chose. Y… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe

The 6th annual Stephen King Summer Book Club kicks off next week and I want you to be a part of it!Stephen King Summer is part of Laura’s Secret Stuff Substack and when you sign up for it, you’ll get the Stephen King Summer Book Club + all her other Secret Stuff content AND the full Stephen King Summer archives.JOIN STEPHEN KING SUMMERFor Stephen King Summer 2026, we’re reading:HOLLYThe Life of ChuckCUJOand we’ll do watch alongs each month in addition to our zoom book club meetings. I would love to see some Slow Readers over on Secret Stuff this summer! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to SLOW READ, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle.Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura TremaineWe are currently reading The Stand by Stephen King (unabridged version)You can find our full Reading Schedule hereJoin the SLOW READ community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & LauraMentioned in this episode:* Michael Pollan on the Ezra Klein Show * Rosemary’s Baby (1968 film) * The Sopranos The Announcement Before We BeginLaura: Hello, I’m Laura Tremaine.Sarah: And I’m Sarah Stewart Holland.Laura: This is Slow Read, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle. And we are in the final chapters of The Stand by Stephen King.Sarah: If you have been reading along with us since January, lordy, things are finally happening. And if you are binging and catching up with us, well, welcome.Laura: There is a lot to discuss, including whether or not Randall Flagg is a bride’s dream come true.Sarah: He is not.Laura: Spoiler for the whole episode. He is not.Sarah: Now, we would love for you to join us for our last couple of book club meetings for The Stand. Our May meeting is next week. And then we’ll have a big final meeting in June to process the end of The Stand and our whole slow reading experience together. You will want to be there for these meetings because they’re going to be very satisfying to discuss this novel after being with these characters for six months — and each other for that matter. And we’ll be revealing what our next Slow Read is going to be. It’s a big one. It’s a big announcement.Laura: These book club meetings are for our Substack paying members only. And when you join us over there at the Slow Read Substack, you will get not only our book club Zooms with me and Sarah, but you’ll also get a host of other goodies, like all of our Side Quests where we share our personal stories about our dreams, death, parenthood, love triangles. Don’t you want to hear us talk about those things that are tangentially related to The Stand that we have been discussing for the last five, six months? Join us over on slowreadbookclub.com. That’s on Substack.The Balance of Good and Evil (Before We Even Get to Chapter 65)Laura: Okay, Sarah. Chapters 65 through 71. Wow.Sarah: It’s weird because Stephen King has spent the whole book setting up how powerful Randall Flagg is. And then the closer they get, he’s starting to poke holes in that power — which felt like a lot of what this section was. But it hasn’t really lessened my trepidation for our boys as they get closer to Vegas. You know what I mean?Laura: A lot of things I think are happening. He is poking holes in how all-powerful he is, but it feels like sort of the yin and yang to what he also did with Mother Abagail.Sarah: Yeah.Laura: So there’s a real balancing happening in this part of the book, which for me was a little jarring — to go from all of these hundreds of pages spending in the Free Zone with these characters that we love and how they’re setting up their community and all this, and then now to spend the last couple sections in Vegas. I’m like, this is a decidedly different vibe. And I agree with you. It doesn’t make him any less scary.Sarah: But that’s because we know from life experience — not to mention our own literary tastes — that just because he’s not all-powerful doesn’t make him any less terrifying. It’s almost he’s almost more terrifying now that he’s feeling a little desperate.Laura: Right, because he’s backed into a corner. People backed into a corner are dangerous, for sure.Sarah: There’s a lot that happened in this section that sort of brought up so many questions that we have been teetering on the edge of in terms of: what is good and evil? What is all-powerfulness? Who is Mother Abagail and Randall Flagg, like — are they, if they’re not exactly God and the devil, are they angels, demons? And there’s just a lot of questions about those characters, but then also about our community characters in terms of like, nobody is all bad or all good.Laura: He feels all bad to me, but the bad is complicated. Well, he does. He might be all bad — but I guess I meant the community people as they’re starting to have doubts.Sarah: Yeah, I mean, I think that’s what opens up the most interesting moments, especially with Lloyd and Nadine and everyone not operating out of a place of pure fear. Because the holes that King pokes in Randall Flagg’s power break the spell just enough that people in Vegas can start to assess their own decision-making. In the same way that Mother Abagail disappearing freed people up to take leadership roles and make some decisions in the Free Zone — it’s a very similar situation, I think.Laura: Yeah, that’s what I was feeling in the balance of it all. When Mother Abagail goes on her walk to the woods, it’s kind of disappointing, but you still have this human nature thing of like, all right, we’ll buck up, we got to come together and do it in her absence. But when we start to see the failings or the humanness of Randall Flagg — “disappointing” is not a word that covers it. It feels like terrifying. Like, oh no. Because we know men like this who start to lose their grip on power — if it slips even a little bit, they get very erratic and dangerous.Sarah: Well, and the reasoning of the people around him — they’re like, oh no. I did so many things, I made so many decisions, based on the premise that he is protecting us. These people have made some moral and ethical sacrifices on the premise that he was gonna keep them safe. And he couldn’t even keep them safe from Trashcan Man. But I’m skipping ahead — let’s start with chapter 65.Chapter 65: Randall Flagg in the DesertLaura: Chapter 65 opens with Randall Flagg out in the desert. He’s just cooking a rabbit and thinking. This is, I think, not the first time we’re in Randall Flagg’s head, but it’s the first time this whole section where we’re getting a bit more of a fuller picture of how he thinks. And it is substantially more human than we’ve experienced him.Sarah: He’s frustrated with himself and his powers. It’s almost like he has also taken his powers for granted. He cannot see who the third spy is. He cannot figure that out. He’s baffled that Harold Lauder attempted to betray him in the end by shooting at Nadine. He’s having trouble levitating, which is this —Laura: Oh, my God.Sarah: Well, considering what happens to poor Nadine, I don’t think so.Laura: He comes through in the end, as the case may be.Sarah: Oh, my God. I was so freaked out at the beginning of this chapter — how he would look at the wolves and they would fight. We’re going through a lot of the diminishment of his powers, but King is still like, don’t forget this dude is scary. He would just look at the wolves around him and they would start to bite each other and fight each other, and I thought, oh, that’s just such creepy dark imagery. That he is just like violence personified and a mere glance can bring it out in these creatures. I was very freaked out by that.Laura: Yeah, he’s so creepy in this part. But to me it was giving more demon than devil.Sarah: Yeah, and I thought it was so interesting how he talked about how he couldn’t remember his life or experiences before the super flu. He was no longer strictly a man if he had ever been one. He was like an onion slowly peeling away one layer at a time — only it was the trappings of humanity that seemed to be peeling away. Organized reflection, memory, possibly even free will, if there ever had been such a thing. He can only remember the events since the super flu. He was losing himself is how it’s described. So to me that’s so interesting. That feels like something that would happen as his power grew — but maybe there was something in his power and connection and ability to control other humans that was really linked to his own human experiences.Laura: Well, and he also says — this is skippi… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to SLOW READ, where we tackle the books you’ve always wanted to read at a pace you can handle.Hosted by Sarah Stewart Holland and Laura TremaineWe are currently reading The Stand by Stephen King (unabridged version)You can find our full Reading Schedule hereJoin the SLOW READ community on Substack for bonus episodes, book club meetings, and Side Quests with Sarah & LauraIf you prefer to read instead of listen, below is a cleaned up transcript of the episode as well as links to all the books and Substacks we mentioned in this episode…and several fun bonus links and videos!Mentioned in this episode:* The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien* The Tune of Things: Is Consciousness God? (Christian Wilman in Harper’s, 2025)* Moby Dick by Herman Melville* The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne* Paradise Lost by John Milton* “Top of the World” by The Chicks (Official Video)* Stand By Me (1986 film) — IMDbThe Writing in This SectionSarah: Laura, after a very long time in the free zone, we are back with Randall Flagg and his crew, which have been varying levels of infiltrated by the committee spies. How did you feel about this section?Laura: I thought these particular chapters were some of the best written of the whole entire book. I have two standout sections that I consider the best in terms of incredible sentences and just the craft of it — this is one of them. Not a ton of wild imagination necessarily, but the sentences in this section, I was like, oh, that’s so well written. How he looped back several different things, and then the section many hundreds of pages ago with Glenn Bateman — that one felt really well written too, really poetic. But this section feels different. Like he was in a flow state, Mr. King, when he did this part.Sarah: I totally agree. I thought it was really engaging. And I also want to say — in this section as a whole, King makes a ton of literary references. He references Edgar Allan Poe, he references Lord of the Rings. I looked up the law book that Judge Ferris is reading, the one King mentions multiple times, and that’s a real book — it’s literally about racial social justice. I looked at it and was like, okay, he is doing some things. King is doing some things. This is pre-Black Lives Matter as a movement, but obviously these conversations were being had. We’re coming out of the 60s, back in the 70s when this was first written — it makes sense.Laura: And back to the writing style changing — I feel like that’s also part of the fact that we’re now in Vegas, and we haven’t been there for hundreds and hundreds of pages, and the writing is just different. It almost feels like these little sections — Judge Ferris, Dana, and then Harold — could almost be novellas with just a little more structure put in. They’re so well done. But it’s a really different tone from the time we’ve been spending in the free zone, which is a little folksy, a little quote-unquote normal novel stuff. This is really different, and that feels intentional. The Vegas parts have a different flavor. And I also like that he’s making the connection that not everyone in Vegas is evil. People are people. It’s not black and white.Chapter 61: Poor Judge FerrisSarah: Well, let’s start with chapter 61, because poor Judge Ferris doesn’t actually make it to Vegas.Laura: God bless him. Bless his heart.Sarah: There’s a lot going on in this chapter — the plot happens, but also King is pulling together a lot of things. So we find Judge Ferris making his cross-country trip, and we know that Randall Flagg has sent patrols to stop him, to kill him — but please, please, please protect his head, because I’m going to send it back to the free zone and freak them all the way out. Some very specific instructions.At first I’m like, why are we taking this beloved character and sending him directly to his death? But there are two moments where I start to see the pieces coming together.The first is Judge Ferris is in a hotel room and a crow taps on his window. And Judge Ferris realizes this crow is Randall Flagg. He pulls a gun — and what I thought the most affecting part was, the crow slash Randall Flagg kind of panics. Oh no, if he shoots me, that’s it. Luckily for the crow slash Randall Flagg, the safety’s on. But Stephen King is giving us this insight to realize he is not immortal. He’s very powerful, but he can take on these other forms, and that means he’s vulnerable the way those forms are vulnerable. Which I thought was really interesting.Laura: Well, I also thought it was interesting because we haven’t encountered much supernaturalness for many hundreds of pages. It’s been kind of practical for a while.Sarah: What are you talking about? Are you forgetting the drive-in scene where he took over the speakers and was speaking to Nadine?Laura: Yes, but it’s all Randall Flagg–based. The percentage of supernaturalness in this story is on the lower side than I think most people might expect from Stephen King. This has been more of a practical, post-apocalyptic novel.Sarah: We’ve just spent a lot of time in committee meetings and town meetings. Even when Mother Abigail’s healing Franny, it is a moment among a lot of secretarial work.Laura: Yeah. I was like, bring it, Crow. I was ready for something like this to happen.Sarah: But there’s also — not just that the crow gives us insight into Flagg’s vulnerabilities — the whole time I was thinking, why are you so worried about him? Why are you so paranoid about Judge Ferris making it all the way to Vegas? You know he’s a spy, you hunt him out immediately. There is sort of a “thou dost protest too much” situation. Why are you sending parties all over the United States to stop this one guy?Laura: Don’t you think this is the first real glimpse we have that Randall Flagg is scared?Sarah: Yes. Exactly. I think that’s what this whole section is about — he is paranoid, he is not all-powerful. For one thing, he has to depend on animals to be in a lot of places at once, which is a vulnerability we’re learning. And then he has to depend on these dum-dums like Bobby Terry — what a name — to institute his orders, and they’re ding-dongs who can’t do it. The one instruction was: don’t shoot him in the head. And Bobby Terry kills Judge Ferris so dramatically and terribly that he’s unidentifiable. So even if they sent the head back to the free zone, they’d be like, who dis, we don’t know.Laura: I feel like there are parallels here — not just to our current moment of a wannabe all-powerful dictator, but to past moments too. There’s a lot of bravado in that type of person, but there’s an underlying fear. And also, the people surrounding them doing their bidding are statistically often dum-dums.Sarah: Well, that’s definitely Dana’s observation in the next chapter — that there are more ding-dongs in Vegas than there are in the Free Zone.Laura: Yeah, but they work harder.Sarah: They work harder. Then Bobby Terry screws up, and Randall Flagg transforms into some — I couldn’t quite put it together. Beast, man, crow?Laura: All I know is there are teeth involved. That part I picked up on. There were teeth, and he died in a very gruesome manner. I wasn’t sure — maybe weasel-y, animal-y?Sarah: Did you have to get a map out and be like, wait, the sentries are in Oregon? How do we get from the Rockies to Vegas?Laura: I was so confused.Sarah: He’s going up and around, obviously. Listen, I’m a big national parks person, so my baseline geography of the mountain ranges and the middle west to far west is probably a little better than most.Laura: It must be, because I literally was like, Oregon, where are we? What’s going on? I just think everybody — including Randall Flagg, because apparently he materializes like a ghost — is moving around awful quick in this story without airplanes or helicopters, and sometimes just on bicycles.Sarah: Okay, I didn’t want to nitpick this because I complained earlier in the book about why they were all using bikes. But now that we are into cars, li… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit slowread.substack.com/subscribe