The sign of a good novel is one that can be re-read every three or four years without losing any of its luster the second, third, fourth, and etc., time around.

It’s been 13 years since Stephen King wrote The Green Mile (initially as a six-part serial novel; later it was compiled into one book), and 10 since it was adapted for the big screen. And The Green Mile was just as entertaining the fourth time it came off my bookshelf as it was the first time I picked up the paperback copy off a grocery store rack and couldn’t stop turning pages until I was finished.

The Green Mile is, without a doubt, the best screenplay adaptation of a Stephen King book that has ever been tackled. And there have been plenty. Starring Tom Hanks, The Green Mile not only followed the book’s narrative very closely, but even included most of the same dialogue. Hanks shined as Paul Edgecomb, the southern prison guard who was the top screw on death row of a Georgia state pen. And Michael Clarke Duncan did an exceptional job as John Coffey — like the drink, only not spelled the same — the condemned murderer who has a special gift from God. All in all, The Green Mile movie was perfectly cast, even though Tom Hanks was the only headliner in the production.

But, like any movie, The Green Mile still falls short of the novel. If you haven’t read the book (and especially if you haven’t seen the movie either), step back in time to 1932 and visit with King to Cold Mountain State Penitentiary. Live that unusually hot summer with guards Paul, Brutal, Harry and Dean, a mouse named Mr. Jingles and the convicted child rapist John Coffey. Learn the mystique behind Coffey, and why the guards supposed to be charged with sending him to his death wind up convinced that Coffey is something other than what the state has accused him of being. You won’t be disappointed. This isn’t a King novel in the same style as Pet Sematary or Salem’s Lot. Rather, it’s a King novel in the style of Hearts in Atlantis: With a definite supernatural subtheme, but not belonging in the “horror” at all, or even the “suspense” genre. While The Stand will forever be King’s best horror/suspense work, in many ways The Green Mile can claim its own spot as the best work of the man who is the best-selling American author in modern times.