The King Long Read

All caught up...

2016-09-21T18:00:00.000+01:00

My first thought was to title this post "Done and done", but let's not kid ourselves. I'm caught up is all. I half expected to go online after finishing End of Watch and see announcements for another dozen books.
But no. Not yet.

So, yeah, what to say after reading Stephen King's complete bibliography and taking about six years to do it?

It has been a wild ride. I know I've made it up to be something more than it really is. But 55 novels and 10 short story collections is quite a bit to get through. To really get a grip on it all, I think I'll need to go back and read the whole of this blog. Bit I'm not quite ready for that. A while ago I read some of the early posts and couldn't help cringing. All youthful (ha!) ambition and exuberance, throwing opinions all over the place like I had even a clue what I was talking about. Not that I know anything now. At least now I know that I don't know shit. But that's OK. This is the internet. Giving a voice to those with nothing to say.

Enough of that.

So, what's next? Comics. Lots of comics. I've a few series to catch up on: Ta-Nehisi Coates's Black Panther, Kim & Kim, Animosity, The Revisionist, Civil War II: Kingpin. With most of those, I'm only an issue behind as it was only in the last couple of weeks that I completely abandoned everyone but Uncle Steve.
Past that, I've got a Marvel Unlimited subscription to properly dig into. I got it last year sometime, ostensibly for my son's benefit, but I was always going to give it some hammer.
After that, I'll be taking a step ladder to my "to read" pile and see what's what. In the short term, I'll be heading into F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. My lovely friend Amanda and I talked about starting our own little book club a few years ago following our visit to North Carolina. We did read Walker Percy's The Moviegoer and almost got going on The Last Gentlemen, but didn't manage to keep it up. Now seems as good a time as any and the idea of maintaining closer contact with a friend is a massive boon.

I'm not sure whether to keep on blogging. Posting about other books and doing the whole journal thing seems to go against the purpose of this blog. It was/is a specific accompaniment to reading Stephen King. Aside from recording and collecting any thoughts or reactions, it's main purpose was to maintain momentum and encourage progress. I don't know. We'll see. In the end, I had no idea of the blog's audience. The stats on the blogger account page suggest someone's looking at the posts, but I couldn't say whether it's more than bots dropping on search terms. I've never encouraged discussion, mainly because I haven't given much value to my opinion, so there hasn't been much reader interaction. All my own fault. But it has served its purpose well enough for me. I got to the end.
Maybe I'll just read books and keep my opinions to myself. Maybe I'll write bits and bobs in an attempt to see whether my brain still works. Yeah, we'll see.

Before I go, I'll give one note of thanks to Laura. She keeps a blog at http://devouringtexts.blogspot.com where she has not only been reading all of Stephen King, she also reads and reviews (like proper reviews!) zillions of other books. And engages with her readers in a warm and lovely way. Go read her blog.

Here's the full list of books that I've trawled through:

Novels

Carrie (1974)
'Salem's Lot (1975)
The Shining (1977)
The Stand(1978)
The Dead Zone (1979)
Firestarter (1980)
Cujo (1981)
Christine (1983)
Pet Sematary (1983)
Cycle of the Werewolf(1983)
The Talisman (1984; with Peter Straub)
It (1986)
The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)
Misery (1987)
The Tommyknockers(1987)
The Dark Half (1989)
Needful Things (1991)
Gerald's Game (1992)
Dolores Claiborne (1992)
Insomnia (1994)
Rose Madder (1995)
The Green Mile (1996)
Desperation (1996)
Bag of Bones (1998)
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)
The Plant (2000; unfinished)
Dreamcatcher (2001)
Black House(2001; with Peter Straub)
From a Buick 8 (2002)
The Colorado Kid(2005)
Cell (2006)
Lisey's Story (2006)
Duma Key (2008)
Under the Dome (2009)
11/22/63 (2011)
Joyland (2013)
Doctor Sleep (2013)
Mr. Mercedes (2014)
Revival (2014)
Finders Keepers (2015)
End of Watch (2016)

The Dark Tower series
The Gunslinger (1982)
The Drawing of the Three (1987)
The Waste Lands (1991)
Wizard and Glass (1997)
Wolves of the Calla (2003)
Song of Susannah (2004)
The Dark Tower (2004)
The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)

Richard Bachman novels
Rage (1977)
The Long Walk (1979)
Roadwork (1981)
The Running Man (1982)
Thinner (1984)
The Regulators (1996)
Blaze (2007)

Short fiction collections
Night Shift (1978)
Different Seasons (1982)
Skeleton Crew (1985)
Four past Midnight (1990)
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993)
Hearts in Atlantis (1999)
Everything's Eventual (2002)
Just After Sunset (2008)
Full Dark, No Stars (2010)
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015)

End of Watch: 19th - 20th September 2016

2016-09-21T17:30:00.000+01:00

Two days! That's all it took my to blast through this book. I'll put it down to a combination of being on the finishing straight of this reading mission as much as the book's pace and readability.
I checked out somewhat on the supernatural elements, almost lamenting their inclusion. But I was happily along for another ride with Bill, Holly and Jerome.

The book didn't fill me with joy, but then neither did a good percentage of King's other books.
I think it's fair to say that there are elements of the detective story genre that King struggled to adopt and his usually tremendous depiction of youth didn't work at all. The modern, especially technological, references stuck out like turds in a swimming pool, but rather than pick apart what I did and didn't like, I'll just say that it wasn't a waste of time and I didn't spend any of the time I was reading thinking that King could have better spent his time writing something in his usual mould, rather than this detective trilogy (as one goodreads reviewer said).

And that's that. One more summary post, and I'm done.

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: 11th - 18th September 2016

2016-09-21T17:00:00.000+01:00

I've never been wholly taken by Stephen King's short stories. His novellas, sure. Some of his most affecting work, for me, has been found in his slimmer volumes. But, while there's some good stuff in here, nothing life changing. God, what a dick I am to be so flippant and throwaway. But, at this stage of the proceedings, I'll have to cop to not having given the book much of my critical acumen (I know, I know, I've barely done that for any of the books). I just charged through, inhaling the stories and maybe giving each a "that was alright" or "not so bothered for that one."
My standouts were:
Premium Harmony, Bad Little Kid, Afterlife, UR (even better second time), Herman Wouk is Still Alive and Obits.

Finders Keepers: 2nd - 11th September 2016

2016-09-11T21:04:00.001+01:00

I dunno. It was alright. It was a page turner, but the criticisms are easy pickings. As with Mr Mercedes, the villain is way too much of a caricature. Obviously not on the same level as Brady Hartsfield, but he's cut from a similarly perverse cloth.

King's up to date references are still pretty poor. Putting Snow Patrol and cool into the same sentence is a clanging bum note.

I'd been looking forward to seeing how the relationship between the three main characters had evolved, but it was resigned to a subplot that I struggled to care too much about.

The end of the book has me looking forward to the next instalment, but the fact that End of Watch will bring me right up to date on King's work and the opportunity to go to work on my 'to read' pile, may be doing a lot of the heavy lifting on that anticipation.

Revival: 27th August - 2nd September 2016

2016-09-02T16:47:00.001+01:00

Yes! I liked this one a lot. I think more for the style than anything else. King writes kids so well, it was hard not to be brimful of joy with the earlier sections of this book. It was only the end that turned me off a bit. But it's not a new thing for King to build things up beautifully to a damp squib climax.

Still, I galloped through the pages and will definitely put Revival on my good pile. If I had one. Maybe I will at the end.

Only three books to go. Wow.

Mr. Mercedes: 19th - 27th August 2016

2016-08-27T21:45:00.001+01:00

I came out of it having really liked Mr Mercedes. For a good part of the first half, it was hard to escape the sense of King wearing the disguise of crime writer. He knows his stuff, so the conventions and whatever else (I'm wholly aware that I don't really know what I'm talking about when it comes to the minutiae of genre and have rambled at some length about my literary and critical ignorance, so you'll just have to take these comments in the same throwaway vein as the rest of this blog) are all there, but so are the cracks. The disguise is ill-fitting at times. As in, he knows what's expected in a crime novel, but when he does it, it just feels formulaic. Maybe I'm projecting this, imposing my stylistic expectations on the book and being wrong footed by any step outside my comfort zone.

Anyway, when it really came to it, it was hard not to get pulled into the plot and into the characters' lives.

It only took me just over a week, so there's that to say for it.

I'm certainly looking forward to Finders Keepers.

But first, there's Revival.

Doctor Sleep: 7th - 18th August 2016

2016-08-18T21:15:00.001+01:00

Lovely stuff. Another one I got through comparatively rapidly. For me, that is.

One of the things that highlights how well I got into a book, is how much other stuff I read at the same time. For this and Joyland, I remained faithful. With The Wind Through The Keyhole, meanwhile, I read both Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Dan Rhodes' The Little Whte Car. I read those books in particular as I was about to go to Paris for the week and both wanted to get into the vibe and also as I'd made two previous attempts to read Tropic of Cancer and thought maybe this time I'd get through it and be able to be that little bit more pretentious while I was over there. It didn't help. That said, while it was nothing but a tongue-in-cheek goal for me, it clearly isn't for many literary tourists to Paris. Back to sort of the point; for all but the overall conceit of The Little White Car, its being set in Paris is completely incidental and barely features in the book. I knew that beforehand, but I love Dan Rhodes so much, I'll grab even the most tenuous reasons to read his stuff. So should you.

Anyway, back to Doctor Sleep. I'm going to come clean and say that I'm not the biggest fan of The Shining. I'd have to go back and read my thoughts from my latest reading to see whether I was still trying to shoehorn my opinion into the common mould, weighing the book against its popular reception and its relationship to the Kubrick film. At this point, I think I'll claim the inability to remain objective and admit a massive critical weakness.

With Doctor Sleep, however, its perfectly possible to read it without any of the kind of obfuscation that hampers The Shining for me. Evidently, as I bashed through it and really enjoyed it.

Joyland: 5th - 6th July 2016

2016-08-18T21:14:00.001+01:00

I liked Joyland a lot: as evidenced by my reading it in a few hours over a couple of days. It brought the film Adventureland to mind early on, but really only as a reference for the vibe of the place. Which was quite helpful for an Englishman with experience of only either big theme parks or the grim travelling fairs that turn up on village park and fields, that I wouldn't take my kids to for love nor money.

Other than that, it's a tight little book that has definitely left me looking forward to the crime trilogy, that I'll be starting with Mr. Mercedes as soon as I've caught up with these posts. It's partly the desire to get on with reading that these posts are so flimsy and shit. The other part is that I can't be bothered to pretend that I know a thing about reviewing. Commenting on how well the plot unfolds, how well the characters and motivations are painted would be a half-cocked wet fart. Most of the reviews on Goodreads, in fact in actual publications or on websites tend to make me want to boil my head. So I don't bother reviewing. I just talk anti-critical bollocks instead. But you already knew that. Don't worry, we're nearly done. Only a handful of books to go...

A Face in the Crowd, In the Tall Grass, Guns - One day in July

2016-08-18T21:13:00.001+01:00

I'm not entirely sure when I read these three stories other than it was all in one day in July.

Not much to say about them, I'm afraid. Obviously Guns is an essay rather than a story but, just like always, it's Uncle Steve telling it how it is. So it's worth a read. As are the other two. I think that's my main takeaway: they're all worth a read.

Oh wait, just remembered In The Tall Grass was co-written with Joe Hill. That reminds me, I need to get a hold of his new novel, The Fireman, cos I've rated everything he's done so far. From Horns to NOS4R2 to Locke and Key. Cool. I've also got a few of comics waiting for me to read them. Bonus!

OK, I'm done. Bye.

The Wind Through The Keyhole - A Dark Tower Novel: 30th June - 4thAugust 2016

2016-08-18T17:42:00.001+01:00

I went into this one in two minds. On the one hand, I don't consider myself a true convert to the cult of the Dark Tower. On the other, I'm an open-minded soul and there were points of the Dark Tower odyssey where I couldn't help but be caught up by the undertow of the characters and their fates.

In the end, the story within the story was the one that got me and the rest became almost incidental. Part of this may have been the fact that, in the grander scheme, the fate of Roland's ka-tet has already been sealed. A cynical, dick point of view, I know.

All things considered, I think it has its place. It stands up both on its own and as a slight return to the Dark Tower.

11/22/63: 6th Jun - 29th Jun 2016

2016-06-29T11:44:00.000+01:00

Awesome.

King has knocked out nothing but bangers for a while now and 11/22/63 was an absolute joy to read. One of those books you think about when you're not reading it and compelling enough to curtail the endless iPhone/iPad distraction. I also didn't read anything else concurrently. High praise indeed.

Not only was the book great, it features an uncharacteristically solid ending. Not the usual 'fuck it, let's tie this shit up and call it a day'. Perfectly bittersweet.

UR & Mile 81: 3rd June 2016

2016-06-23T14:26:00.000+01:00

I liked both of these stories.

The Dark Tower tie in of UR was a nice touch. Not much to say otherwise. Nothing amazing, but worth the time and money.

Mile 81 was a lovely dose of horror that King does so well.

Full Dark, No Stars: 10th May - 2nd Jun 2016

2016-06-02T11:45:00.000+01:00

I've left this a bit late. I finished the book brimful of enthusiasm. I relished in the bleakness of the novellas. 1922 was my least favourite, but it's a solid collection and was a pleasure to read.
Big Driver was my favourite, because who doesn't like a good revenge story.

Overall, the book again fits into the mound of the sort of King I want to read. I'm torn as to whether this is more a case of it being the thing he does well/best or just my selfish wish that he write the thing I like.

Either way, Full Dark, No Stars is some good shit.

Blockade Billy/Morality: 9th May 2016

2016-05-10T16:30:00.000+01:00

Lovely couple of stories. Good, not great (I've a feeling I've totally overused that phrase in this blog, but it fits.)

It felt good to blast through them after thundering my way through Under the Dome.

I don't know much about baseball. Certainly, I've never fathomed the scoring, but I know enough of the basics to have kept Blockade Billy from flying straight over my head.

That's it really. Full Dark, No Stars is next.

Under the Dome: 6th Apr - 8th May 2016

2016-05-10T16:00:00.000+01:00

I'm just going to come straight out with it. I loved this book and, still warm with the glow of belting through it a fair old pace and finishing it yesterday, I'm going to declare it my favourite book of King's so far.

A small part of me feels inclined to answer the obvious criticisms that can be levelled against it, but I'm not in the mood for negativity. Instead, I'll just briefly ramble about what I liked about it.

I loved the scale; both the big (the length of the book, the expansive cast of characters) and the small (the enclosed, pressure cooker setting). For me, this is the King I envisioned when I decided to read his from beginning to end. Rich characters you can't help but love or hate. You inwardly cheer when they triumph and even shed a tear at their demise. And when a bad guy gets his comeuppance...it's a fist in the air moment. I know they're often painted in broad strokes, and stereotypes are used to save dozens of pages of additional character exposition, but they work for the story and pacing.

Yes the ending is a bit silly, but I don't care. I'm not going to write off 900 pages of thrilling journey to moan about the destination.

In the early days of this reading project, in each blog post I would ask myself whether the book had scared me at all. In a lot of cases, it was really a question of whether it had successfully suspended my disbelief enough to render the supernatural elements in any way affecting. With Under the Dome, the nature and cause of the dome weren't important. It's the people we have to be scared of. In this respect, the book was terrifying.

I said before reading the book that I planned to watch the TV series. I watched the pilot last night with my wife. I'm doing my best to avoid being a massive cock and constantly pointing out divergences between the book and series. I know it's too soon and the natural inclination to make these comparisons will be hard to suppress, but I'm going to do my best. There are already enough differences in the pilot to encourage me to just sit back and watch the show on its own merits.

Under the Dome - starting out

2016-04-06T15:30:00.000+01:00

Under the Dome is quite a big deal to me. I haven't read it before, so have no emotional attachment to the story and characters. Instead, the book functions as something of a milestone, a monolith and a line in the sand. It was the first book King published following my decision to start this chronological reading of his works. My mother-in-law bought me the book the following Christmas and there it has sat, calling me from a shelf, a box and, latterly, the top shelf of a wardrobe for the last six years (I might sort out some bookshelves again one day.) I also bought a copy of the book for someone who binge read it soon after and they loved it. Vicarious enjoyment bears weight.

I've heard good things, I've heard bad, but nothing has dampened my anticipation and longing to read this book. It's a hefty thing and I want to get lost in it. When I finish it, I'm going to plough straight into the tv series. I'll probably watch the Simpsons movie again too. I'm going Under the Dome it's going to be awesome. It is.

Just After Sunset: 23rd Mar - 5th Apr 2016

2016-04-06T15:20:00.000+01:00

A week. That's not bad. I know it wasn't a huge book, and it was a short story collection, but still. On past form, a week's pretty good for me. It helped that I enjoyed the stories. They, for the most part, hooked me and took me.

The stand out stories for me were The Gingerbread Girl, Rest Stop, Stationary Bike, The Cat from Hell, Mute and A Very Tight Place. Good shit, overall.

Duma Key: 7th Feb - 22nd Mar 2016

2016-04-06T15:10:00.000+01:00

Totally forgot to write a bit about this book when I finished it. Way too keen to get on to the next one.
So, two weeks after finishing it, what can I say about Duma Key?

I liked it a lot. The first two thirds especially. I was well into the pacing. Usually a brick of a novel from King can take a bit of getting going, but I didn't find that with this. I dug the character development and believed in Edgar and Wireman's friendship.

Parts of the last third lost me a bit. I had a picture of the crew of the Flying Dutchman from the second Pirates of the Caribbean film which, while undeniably creepy if it was stood in front of you in the flesh in a dark room, just became cartoonish. This is only because my boring, rational mind automatically rejects the supernatural, but still, it took the edge off.

It didn't take the edge off my enjoyment of reading King on top form, though.

Blaze: 4th - 6th Feb 2016

2016-02-09T12:30:00.000+00:00

Not bad. Not great. Not the tearjerker King introduced it as, but definitely to be filed under the 'sad story' category. I haven't got much more to say about it. It was easy to blast my way through it in a matter of hours, both in length and style/readability.

Lisey's Story: 18th Oct 2015 - 4th Feb 2016

2016-02-05T09:22:00.000+00:00

I didn't know a thing about Lisey's Story coming in to it. I posted a photo of the book on Instagram and a chap from Norway commented that it's his favourite Stephen King book. High regard indeed. So I went in with high expectations. Unfortunately, I didn't dig it at all. Sad face.

Aside from my usual habit of taking months to read a book, instead picking up comics and other books, I struggled to get behind all the smucking and booling. The smucking, in particular, just got on my tits. I wouldn't go as far as cringing, but I wasn't far off.
As usual, I picked up speed towards the end and hammered the last quarter of the book in a couple of days. Once again, I had the same rueful feeling that I hadn't given enough of my self to the reading, but at the same time, it just never grabbed me. I liked Lisey, but didn't give much of shit about Scott. The Dooley character was interesting, and more could have been given to the cat and mouse dynamic, but that's not the story King wanted to tell.
I've since read that Lisey's Story is one of King's own favourites. Feels like I've missed something.

Cell : 15th Sep - 17th Oct 2015

2015-10-22T15:30:00.000+01:00

I'm in two minds about Cell. On the one hand, I just didn't get on board with the overall conceit of a brain rebooting pulse that turns mobile phone users into 'zombies'. It's a shallow metaphor for the benign influence of mobile phones - and, considering our ever increasing enslavement to the smartphone - wholly accurate, but I'm not sure it's strong enough to hold up 400-500 pages. Telepathy loses my attention a bit too.

On the other, I welcomed a return to the familiar King territor of a band of survivors embarking on an adventure and taking on the bad guy (without all the trappings of The Dark Tower - I still have some unresolved feelings about the series, that i'll be working through. Don't worry, it's less weird than it sounds.)

I know how soft and cosseted it makes me sound to find comfort - and relief? in the familiar and formulaic, instead of hankering for King's ongoing creative evolution and waving the flag for his writing whatever he feels like writing, but in order to keep up what little momentum I have in this mission, I was happy for a 'standard-King'.

Lisey's Story is next. I didn't know a thing about it, but I've recently heard good things.

The Colorado Kid - 10th - 14th Sep 2015

2015-09-16T20:58:00.001+01:00

I really should have read this in one go as it's a short mystery novel. As it happened, I had a busy weekend flying to Atlanta, driving to Tennessee, running a half marathon before driving back and flying home.

The Colorado Kid was a cool little book that has acted as both a palate cleanser and a springboard to get cracking and power on through the back nine of the bibliography. It's becoming too common a final word in these posts but, we'll see.

Reaching the Dark Tower - Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower: Apr- Sep 15

2015-09-16T20:22:00.001+01:00

So, I went and finished the Dark Tower series. I haven't got the energy to write about the two books individually, and I'm not one for lengthy criticism, so I'll just close out the series with a few thoughts.

It's King's self-professed magnum opus. It didn't hit me the way I'd expected or maybe hoped. Overall, I could say I wouldn't have really minded missing the whole thing out. At the same time, there were sections that really got me, specifically the evolution of Jake and Roland's relationship and the death of one of the characters was like a knife. I read the section while walking home from work and after a couple of great wracking sobs burst out of me, I had to put the book away until I got in the house.

The biggest thing for me, though, was that I didn't care how things turned out. Apart from the particularly moving passages, the rest was just a story passing by.

Now, I read with interest the introductions to the books where King says that he received letters from people who were dissatisfied with the way he ended one book and other plot decisions he made. Who are these dickweasels that take it upon themselves to write to an author and tell them they shouldn't have written this or that? Your options as a reader are limited to read or don't. That's it. It's not for you. It's mere coincidence if you like it. Jesus.

My final thought is that I'm inclined to find the audiobook series and give it all another go. We'll see.

Wolves of the Calla - The Dark Tower V : Feb - Apr 15

2015-04-27T15:51:00.000+01:00

This big bugger didn't take me all that long, all things considered. I finally managed to find some reading discipline and forced my way through.
I suppose using the word 'forced' there says a lot. I wasn't rushing to pick the book up every night, desperate to see what would happen next, but soldiered through it.
I'm still not a Dark Tower convert, but still holding on that everything will fall into place and the scales will fall from my eyes. Or not. Either way, there are worse ways to spend your time.

From a Buick 8: 22nd Jan - 2nd Feb 2015

2015-02-02T20:05:00.001+00:00

That's better. 400 and a few pages in little over a week.

I'll kick off by saying I liked From a Buick 8 a lot. It isn't a brilliant book, but I had a good time reading it. It had the feeling of coming home to me. Coming home to the style of Stephen King that I fell in love with all those years whenever when. Eminently readable, head far from up its own arse but still able to grab you by the throat, punch you in the gut or compel you to lay the book down and smile with a faraway look and say "shit, he nailed it."

The Stephen King I love always feels real, even though his stories take you further and further into the unreal. He's someone whose stories can be read without an overt, critical dissection of the themes and subtexts because there's enough satisfaction in just reading the fucking thing. The subtexts and themes come through and sink in without being mined in fear of having missed something because the book was so dry or listless.

As I said, the book isn't brilliant. Nowhere near his best, but it got me revved up. (I actually got a couple of sentences on before I came back to apologise for that pun). There were bits I had to force myself to keep reading (the autopsy being one) because the dread was rising.

Long story short, fun and satisfying.