I've been meaning to chronicle the books I've been reading for a long time, but I've never really gotten around to it. I think a big part of why I haven't so far is because I just don't feel qualified to evaluate them on a meaningful level compared to something like video games, for which I have incomparable amounts of context. Having said that, though, I've always enjoyed reading and have seldom made it a big priority after high school. Over the past year or so, I've mostly read a bunch of Stephen King, but I have interspersed my King marathon with a couple of other titles as well. I'm going to take this opportunity to get us up to speed and maybe I'll write about each book I read going forward as well.
Although I read a few books here and there before starting my Stephen King marathon, I definitely hold it responsible for rekindling my interest in reading in general. The idea to do it at all came directly from a podcast called Just King Things, which discusses all the works of the author in chronological order. I'm a big fan of this kind of thing in general. I've watched some TV shows I wouldn't have otherwise rewatched if not for podcasts popping up about them, so why not do that for books as well? Also, Stephen King is absurdly relevant culturally. As I've made my way through his catalog, I'm continuously shocked to learn "oh, wow, so he wrote that too, huh?" So far, I've read Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, Rage, Night Shift, and The Stand. After that last one, I had to take a break for a while.
I haven't loved every single book of his I've read, but I've gotten a lot out of a few of them. I liked Carrie a lot more than I expected to—and actually found that I generally preferred it to the movie. Two moments in the book are much more gripping than in the film and those are the climactic encounter Carrie has with her mother and the chilling ending. Since King is popularly known for not knowing how to end his stories, it's interesting that I loved how he ended his first popular work.
'Salem's Lot didn't always hold my attention, but I was surprised to learn that after all these years, I never knew it was a vampire story. It's much less about the vampires and more about the town and its population of stock characters. This will come to define King's work as a whole, I'm coming to find out. Even so, there is something highly readable about this kind of story, even if it's not necessarily what I'd always prefer. The Shining has somewhat more developed characters, which makes sense given Jack Torrance's descent into madness. I watched the Kubrick film as a companion piece and very much enjoyed it too, although they tackle the story from fairly different angles.
Rage is a sophomoric school shooter story that has mercifully become unpublished at King's own request. He wrote it in his teen years and this is clear from the text. There is a sense of morbid wish fulfillment as the protagonist holds his high school class hostage. It's clear King imagined a scenario in which this might happen and then simply wrote to it, with no clear end goal in mind for what it means thematically beyond nihilism.
Night Shift is a massive collection of short stories that I can't even begin to summarize here, but I'll note that it's staggering how many idea fragments King had and how many of them have now been developed into bigger pieces. One of these short stories eventually became The Stand. Another is Children of the Corn. Even among these relatively inconsequential pieces, I found I recognized a lot of them, like Lawnmower Man. Despite not all of these being classics, I found most of them fairly enjoyable. I'm curious to see how I end up feeling about his other short story collections.
I also read The Stand: Complete and Uncut Edition, because it's now the only version you can buy. At a staggering 1200 pages, it was quite the ordeal to get through, especially since I never got to a point where I could say I loved it. At times, I liked it just fine, but at many other points, I was pretty disinterested—occasionally, I didn't like it much at all. I've heard that the story was pitched initially as an American Lord of the Rings. I can't say I agree. It's a weird hodgepodge of elements that don't necessarily work all that well together. It works best in its initial phase as a terrifying pandemic story. Given recent events, I wasn't super thrilled to start the book in the first place, but it effectively captures the mounting dread of a mysterious plague. After this all happens, it seems like King isn't super sure where to go with the story and starts implanting visions into the minds of his characters to get them to travel across the country to ally with The Dark Man or an ancient woman named Mother Abigail. This is the part of the story that's supposed to be like modern fantasy, but it just never really worked for me, especially once the survivors make their way to their destinations and start "rebuilding civilization." No one's motivations make a lot of sense and the story just kind of falls apart in the end.
I'll put together a post of the non-Stephen King stuff I've read in a future update.
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