Re-Reading King: The How and the Why

The How and the Why

I’ve been thinking of doing this for a while now. Been wanting to do it. Hell, I’ve been needing to do it. But other obligations have made it so that I didn’t feel like I could commit to doing it.

Those obligations are gone now. So, I’m going to do it. I’m going to re-read Stephen King.

I don’t know how long it will take. I don’t have a timetable in mind. I’m going to take my time. I’m going to meander. As King has so often tried to teach us – in The Colorado Kid, for example, and perhaps in the entire Dark Tower series – sometimes it’s better to concentrate on the journey, and quit worrying so much about the final destination.* The only thing I have resembling a plan is to start with his first book, Carrie, and read them in order of publication.**

I want to do this because Stephen King is my favorite author. Without him, there would be no October Country. There wouldn’t be the couple of hundred book reviews I’ve written and published, because I may not be as avid a reader if it wasn’t for his books. The ten short stories I’ve published so far wouldn’t exist; nor would the novels I’ve started and stopped and finished and abandoned over time.

I also want to do this because there’s a surprisingly large portion of his catalog that I’ve only read once. That seems unacceptable considering he’s my favorite author. There are plenty that I’ve read multiple times – Pet Sematary and The Shining and Bag of Bones and even the mammoth It – but there are so many more that I’ve only touched once, and I can’t wait to revisit them. Will Duma Key still be as good as I think it is? Is Rose Madder really that bad? Will Bag of Bones still be my favorite when it’s all said and done?

We’ll see.

I’ve debated on whether to write about these, whether or not they really belonged here on October Country. And the answer is: of course they do. This blog is a map – an incomplete one, perhaps, but a map nonetheless – of my reading. My writeups won’t be traditional reviews. They may not make a lot of sense outside of my own personal context. I don’t know if anyone will read them. I hope people do read them, and I’d love for each post to have tons of comments from people sharing their own thoughts and feelings on the book. But this may be too personal a project to elicit much response. This is mostly me trying to get my arms around my feelings about this one writer’s huge body of work.

Hell, it’s mostly me just reading a bunch of books I like and grooving on them. You’re more than welcome to come along for the ride if you so wish.

Now, as King himself said in his foreward to Night Shift:

There’s something I want to show you, something I want you to touch. It’s in a room not too far from here – in fact, it’s almost as close as the next page.

Shall we go?

Re-Reading King: The Index

* It’s a good lesson, too, because if King’s works have a weak point, it’s often the ending.

** I’ll break away from this when it comes to any new releases. Revival is coming out in November 2014, and seeing how I’m starting this in August 2014, I seriously doubt I’ll be caught up to it by November. I also don’t know how the Dark Tower series is going to fit into this. The next time I read those, I want to read them back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back. So I don’t know if I’ll do this when I reach The Gunslinger in its place in the timeline, or just tackle those somewhere else down the road. When I know, you’ll know.