In Which We Discuss Stephen King

First, an update as to where I am with this project right now.


- 15/6/13

Carrie - 1974 -  June 15th 2013
'Salem's Lot - 1975 - June 30th 2013
The Shining - 1977 - July 28th 2013
Rage - 1977 - July 31st 2013
Night Shift - 1978 - August 28th 2013
The Stand - 1978 - March 20th 2014
The Long Walk - 1979 - March 23rd 2014
The Dead Zone - 1979 - June 2014
Firestarter - 1980 - August 16th 2014


- 15/6/13 to 17/8/14 - 9

Roadwork - 1981 - 23rd August 2014
Danse Macabre - 1981 - 7th September 2014
- BONUS: Small World (Tabitha King) - 10th September 2014
Cujo - 1981 - 20th September 2014
The Running Man - 1982- 22nd September 2014
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - 1982 - 30th September 2014
Creepshow - 1982 - 1st October 2014
Different Seasons - 1982  - 24th October 2014

- 17/8/14 to 25/10/14 - 8 (17)

Christine - 1983 
Pet Sematary - 1983
Cycle of the Werewolf - 1983
The Talisman - 1984
Thinner - 1984 

- 25/10/14/14 to 14/07/2015 - 5 (22)

Skeleton Crew - 1985
It - 1986
The Eyes of the Dragon - 1987
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three - 1987
Misery - 1987 

- 14/7/15 to 18/10/2015 - 5 (27)

The Tommyknockers - 1987
Nightmares in the Sky  - 1988
The Dark Half - 1989 

- 18/10/2015 to 22/12/2015 - 3 (30)

Four Past Midnight - 1990
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands - 1991 
Needful Things - 1991
Gerald's Game - 1992
Dolores Claiborne - 1992
Nightmares and Dreamscapes - 1993

- 22/12/2015 to 24/4/2016 - 6 (36)

Insomnia - 1994
Rose Madder - 1995
The Green Mile - 1996
Desperation - 1996
The Regulators - 1996
Six Stories - 1997
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass - 1997
Dark Tower: Little Sisters of Eluria (Legend) - 1998
Bag of Bones - 1998
Storm of the Century - 1998
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - 1999
  
- 24/4/2016 to 14/11/16 - 6 (47)

Hearts in Atlantis - 1999
Blood and Smoke - 1999
"Riding the Bullet" - 2000
On Writing - 2000 
Secret Windows - 2000
The Plant - 2000  
Dreamcatcher - 2001

Black House (with Peter Straub) -2001
Everything's Eventual - 2002
From a Buick 8 - 2002
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla - 2003
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah - 2004

The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower - 2004
Faithful - 2004
- BONUS: 20th Century Ghosts (Joe Hill) - Jan 2005
- BONUS: Josie and Jack (Kelly Braffet)  - Feb 2005
- BONUS: We're All in This Together (Owen King) - 2005

The Colorado Kid - 2005
Cell - 2006
Lisey's Story - 2006
Blaze - 2007
Duma Key - 2008

Just After Sunset - 2008 
Stephen King Goes to the Movies - 2009
Ur - 2009
Under the Dome - 2009
Blockade Billy - 2010

Full Dark, No Stars - 2010
Mile 81 - 2011
11/22/63 - 2011
American Vampire (with Scott Snyder) - 2011
"Throttle" (with Joe Hill) - 2012

The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole - 2012
A Face in the Crowd (with Stewart O'Nan) - 2012
"In the Tall Grass"  (with Joe Hill) - 2012
"GUNS" - 2013
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County - 2013

Joyland - 2013
The Dark Man: An Illustrated Poem - 2013
Doctor Sleep - 2013
Mr. Mercedes - 2014 
Revival - November 2014

Finders Keepers - 2015
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams - 2015
End of Watch - 2016

I realise that I've not written a post since The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and since my copy of Secret Windows arrived today, I should probably get on with that.

Hearts in Atlantis is a series of loosely interconnected stories and novellas set in the sixties, at the time of the Vietnam War.  The titular Hearts in Atlantis is about a college student who becomes addicted to playing Hearts and risks dropping out.  The theme of the collection is failure, and the idea that the baby boomer generation didn't live up to their potential.  There are a few links to The Dark Tower, mostly in the first novella, Low Men in Yellow Coats.

I started writing this post quite a while ago; since then, I've finished Secret Windows, which is a collection of introductions and various other bits of collected writing from Stephen King.  I quite enjoyed it, particularly his thoughts on fantasy.  He pointed out that fantasy stories are about gaining and losing power, except for the bad ones which are about someone who just maintains their power.

I've just started The Plant, and I'm quite disappointed that it's unfinished because I'm enjoying it!

After this project - probably after I've finished my degree - I think my next project will be to read the entirety of the sci-fi masterworks series.  That or the fantasy masterworks.  That way, I'll complete my collections as well.

In Which We Discuss Stephen King and Another Challenge

A few weeks ago, I thought of reading all of Stephen King's novels in the order they were published, like I did with Lisa Jewell's.  It's really interesting to watch an author change over time; Jewell went from being sinle (I think) to being married with children, and her books do reflect that.

King is a little more challenging, for a few reasons.  Firstly, he's written almost a book a year since 1974.  Secondly, he doesn't publish in chronological order.  In one book, a character who's also an author holds on to manuscripts when he writes more than one a year, and submits them to his publisher, sometimes years later, when he lacks other ideas.  I believe that, in the introduction to that one, King admits to doing the same.

A lot of my physical books I intend to buy either as Kobo or Kindle editions, in order to reduce weight.  Last time I moved, I had somewhere between 15-20 boxes of books.  It was insane.  I am never doing that again.  I've reduced the books I'm keeping to one bookcase, and most of those are either sets, which look so nice together - like Gollancz Sci-fi and Fantasy Masterworks, or my Point Horrors - or books which were simply never made available as digital editions, like Marlys Millhiser's The Mirror, or William Sleator's Singularity, both are which are awesome, and which I highly recommend.

I also have a collected edition of books published under Richard Bachman's name, Bachman being King's pseudonym.  I intend to keep those because they include Rage, which King and his publishers are no longer comfortable with republishing.  Rage is about a school shooter, and its similarity to actual school shooters is what makes King so uncomfortable.

I was going to write about how expensive old copies of Rage are to buy, which is still sort of true; new editions of the original run go for over a thousand, while used copies are over £200.  But Rage appears to be included in the Kindle Edition of The Bachman Books - it's not so clear from the description, but the 'look inside' option shows the introduction from the edition I have, and mentions Rage as being included.  The Kindle edition goes for £5.99.  Since I already have a copy, I won't be buying it, but that's still pretty interesting to know.  Plus, £5.99 is a steal for four Stephen King novels in one.

Anyway; I'll be reading in the order published rather than the order written, so here's the list, courtesy of wikipedia.  Books I've read before are bolded - all the rest will be new to me.  I absolutely intend to read other books between these - including trying to get my unread pile down - so this will take a while.

Carrie - 1974
'Salem's Lot - 1975 
The Shining - 1977
Rage - 1977
Night Shift - 1978
The Stand - 1978
The Long Walk - 1979
The Dead Zone - 1979
Firestarter - 1980
Roadwork - 1981
Danse Macabre - 1981
Cujo - 1981
The Running Man - 1982
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - 1982
Creepshow - 1982
Different Seasons - 1982 
Christine - 1983
Pet Sematary - 1983
Cycle of the Werewolf - 1983
The Talisman - 1984
Thinner - 1984
Skeleton Crew - 1985
It - 1986
The Eyes of the Dragon - 1987
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three - 1987
Misery - 1987
The Tommyknockers - 1987
Nightmares in the Sky  - 1988
The Dark Half - 1989
Four Past Midnight - 1990
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands - 1991 
Needful Things - 1991
Gerald's Game - 1992
Dolores Claiborne - 1992
Nightmares & Dreamscapes - 1993
Insomnia - 1994
Rose Madder - 1995
The Green Mile - 1996
Desperation - 1996
The Regulators - 1996
Six Stories - 1997
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass - 1997
Bag of Bones - 1998
Storm of the Century - 1999 
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - 1999
The New Lieutenant's Rap - 1999  
Hearts in Atlantis - 1999
Blood and Smoke - 1999
"Riding the Bullet" - 2000  
On Writing - 2000
Secret Windows - 2000 
The Plant - 2000      
Dreamcatcher - 2001
Black House (with Peter Straub) -2001
Everything's Eventual - 2002
From a Buick 8 - 2002
The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla - 2003  
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah - 2004
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower - 2004
Faithful - 2004
The Colorado Kid - 2005
Cell - 2006
Lisey's Story - 2006
Blaze - 2007
Duma Key - 2008  
Just After Sunset - 2008 
Stephen King Goes to the Movies - 2009
Ur - 2009     
Under the Dome - 2009
Blockade Billy - 2010
Full Dark, No Stars - 2010
Mile 81 - 2011    
11/22/63 - 2011
American Vampire (with Scott Snyder) - 2011
"Throttle" (with Joe Hill) - 2012
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole - 2012 
A Face in the Crowd (with Stewart O'Nan) - 2012
"In the Tall Grass"  (with Joe Hill) - 2012
"GUNS" - 2013
Ghost Brothers of Darkland County - 2013
Joyland - 2013
The Dark Man: An Illustrated Poem - 2013
Doctor Sleep - 2013

...so, I just spent the last half hour or so editing that (with a break to go to the library), and, Jesus Christ, what have I let myself in for?

I cut out a few of the reprints - the Salem's Lot and It 25th anniversary editions, for instance - and The Bachman Books collection, since I'll have read everything in it by the time I get there.  I have Carrie (and I'm already halfway through), I just borrowed Salem's Lot from the library again (the illustrated 25th anniversary edition, thank you very much), The Shining is in my unread pile, Rage is over on that shelf, and Night Shift is only £3.99 in the Kindle Store.  Wish me luck!

In Which We Discuss Beauty

Another repost. Again, I've improved greatly as a writer, and, since this is one of my favourite books, I will probably return to it at some point.

Tying together various fairy tales from through the ages in a way that is completely realistic and believable, 'Beauty' is a work of art.

Sheri S. Tepper has an odd gift of making the fantastic completely logical and believable. Beauty is a human girl, a normal girl, despite being a fairytale character. Nothing in the book seems far fetched or unbelievable, despite the nature of its inspiration.

The book is a good length (at 476 pages in the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks edition), but nothing is stretched out more than it should be. Nor is it overly shortened. The pace is perfect.

As in all of her books, Sheri S. Tepper puts her characters in certain situations that give a lot of things for the reader to think about. Beauty travels to hell at one point; the people there are those who enjoyed horror and pain, and used it for amusement. The people in heaven are those who built beautiful things and tried to make the world better in their own way. That's an interesting definition of good and evil. Since this is set in our own world, the vision of the future that is given is fascinating and scarily plausible.

Yet despite the depth and complexities of the plot, the book is not at all difficult to read. It's the sort of book you'll finish reading, reflect on it for a moment, then turn back to the beginning and start again. All in all, fascinating.

In Which We Discuss My Favourite Book

...it's Jinian Footseer, by Sheri Tepper, closely followed by Billie Lett's Where the Heart Is.

I found Jinian Footseer in a charity shop when I was about eleven or twelve. There wasn't much of a blurb on the back - just a quote from a song in the book. I can't recall the other couplet, but it ended with this;

Eye of the Star
Where Old Gods Are.

Players, take your places. The land itself calls Game!

The reason I need to remember that is because the cover has been loved clean off in the last decade. The tops of a few pages are missing as well, near the beginning. I should really get a new copy, but they're a little tricky to find.

Although the back cover wasn't very informative, it seemed interesting. Intriguing. Jinian, on the cover, looked interesting too, her and the Oracle. I suspect this is where my long-lived desire for ruddy red hair came from.

The book drew me in right from the beginning. It talks about a strange world, and peoples with strange Talents (which I wrote a little more on here). It's a curious mix of medieval adventure and fantasy, but infinitely more readable. It's like a feminine version of Poul Anderson's work, if anyone out that is familiar with that, a little like Three Hearts and Three Lions. I can't pinpoint exactly why - the content isn't obviously similar, and there are a few differences, mostly the masculine/feminine thing I mentioned. That, and Anderon's hero was much more familiar with our modern world, while Jinian is completely separate.  And Tepper doesn't go near Arthurian legends.  But still...

As I get older, I see more things in the book. At one point, for instance, Jinian is touched by a Shadow, and becomes disheartened. The connection between her mind and body is broken, and although she continues moving for a while, out of habit, she can't bring herself out of her slump. Then, at other times, she is struck with a wild sense of activity, with no direction. She suffers from insomnia, too.

I read the book a few years before I suffered through my worst points with manic depression, but Tepper's writing describes the illness perfectly. I'm going to quote a small passage from the book here.

"And now you must decide which pain you will bear. That of being as you were. Or that of being as you are."


I brought myself up to my knees. That was as far as I could get. The hand that had held the teacup appeared again, a full cup in it, the steam rising into my nose. I gulped it, interrupting the gulps with sobs. "Pain of being as I am? I don't understand."


"But of course you do. The pain of curiosity unsatisfied, of ambition unfulfilled. The pain of love unreturned, of devotion undeserved. The pain of friendship rejected, of leadership ridiculed. The pain of loneliness and labor. Silly child. Did you think living was easy?"


Well, I had, of course. Not really easy, perhaps, but easier than this. I guess all children expect life to be easy. It seems easy, just looking at it from the outside. Being half-dead, as I had been for the past while was easier than this.


"It's easier to be dead," she said, seeming to Read me. "Always."


"I think I would rather be alive," I managed to say. "Even if it hurts."

There are other passages I've found meaning in, over the years. I couldn't tell you how many times I've read the book, but there's something new in it every time.

Incidentally, that's why my username is Bartelmy. Bartelmy of the Ban is the non-narrating character speaking in that passage.

When I first read the book, at the age of eleven or twelve, I was concerned only with Jinian's point of view. As I grew older, I began to understand the other characters, to gain sharper insights into them as I became more experienced, more life-full. Suddenly, when I was nineteen or maybe twenty, Bartelmy's viewpoint struck me. Not fully, but enough for me to realise how much myself and my life had changed since I first read the book. I go a little further into my past usernames and their logic here, if anyone's interested. I would like to add that it's not the literal aspect of the mother with which I'm concerned - more a less conventional kind of change, which, though not really motherly, is still part of growing up as a woman. If that makes sense.

Jinian Footseer is part of a trilogy of trilogies, written in the eighties, and scarcely reprinted since then. A few of the other novels, namely those containing Peter's adventures and those continuing Jinian's were mentioned at the end. I looked for them for years - this was before the internet, remember, or at least before I had regular access to it. I looked in charity shops, keeping an eye out for anything by Tepper. I never found anything else of Tepper's second hand, ever. I looked at the library, and it even looked as though Balsall Heath had a copy of Jinian Star-Eye...but, it was lost.

I did find a copy of The True Game, a printing which brings together the three Peter novels, King's Blood Four, Necromancer Nine, and Wizard's Eleven. I was about fifteen then, I think, and since it was a reprint, I was able to order it from Waterstones.  Incidentally, I picked up a lot of Tepper's other novels when they were printed by Gollancz in the early years of the last decade.  The Visitor and Beauty are particularly good, as are Plague of Angels, Grass and the rest of the Arbai Trilogy, and The Gate to Women's Country, and -

Oh, just read them all.  You won't regret it.

Peter's story overlaps with Jinian's near the end of his third book, and the beginning of her first, although the main part of it is set towards the end. The other two books in the Jinian series, Dervish Daughter and Jinian Star-Eye, I found on amazon, when I was nearly nineteen.  They're about £30 together, but I picked them up separately, since I already had the first one.

The final trilogy, the Mavin Manyshaped books, I also found on amazon. However, they were quite expensive - about £30 for the combined edition. You don't want to know how much they are separately. However, a few weeks ago a cheap copy popped up, and my friend bought it for me. It's sitting on my shelf over there, waiting for me to be finished rereading the Jinian novels (I read the Peter series last week). I want to be properly ready before I finally read the entire series.

Incidentally, since Mavin is Peter's mother, her books are, I believe, chronologically before Peter and Jinian's, although she does show up throughout all six of the others. It's possible that her books encompass the whole series, in much the same way that Jinian's and Peter's overlap.

Another interesting element of the series is the fact that, although Peter was conceived first (or at least, written first), and Jinian is, technically, a companion character, she's also fully realised. When she shows up in Peter's novel, she doesn't reveal her whole history, or foreshadow very much of it at all. Nothing's contradicted, but Jinian is a far more subtle and internal person than Peter, and since all of the books are written from the first person viewpoint, one can only know what Peter knows. I will say though, that I wish the first Peter novel had included mention of where he and Jinian first met. I know that it's unlikely he'd remember, or think it at all important, but a tiny mention would have been enough. It would have leant the series even greater depth and entanglement through the various plots, although it's not like it suffers overmuch through the lack of it.

In Which We Discuss Fantasy Masterworks

A list of the books in Gollancz' Fantasy Masterworks series. I've included pictures of the covers of the ones I own.

Number	Name	Author	Owned?
1	The Book of the New Sun, Volume 1; Shadow and Claw	Gene Wolfe	---
2	Time and the Gods	Lord Dunsany	---
3	The Worm Ourobouros	E. R. Eddison	---
4	Tales of the Dying Earth	Jack Vance	---
5	Little, Big	John Crowley
6	The Chronicles of Amber	Roger Zelazny
7	Viriconium	M. John Harrison	---
8	The Conan Chronicles, Volume 1: The People of the Black Circle	Robert E. Howard	---
9	The Land of Laughs	Jonathan Carroll	---
10	The Compleat Enchanter: The Magical Misadventures of Harold Shea	L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt	---
11	Lud-in-the-Mist	Hope Mirrlees
12	The Book of the New Sun, Volume 2: Sword and Citadel	Gene Wolfe	---
13	Fevre Dream	George R. R. Martin	---
14	Beauty	Sheri S. Tepper
15	The King of Elfland's Daughter	Lord Dunsany
16	The Conan Chronicles, Volume 2: The Hour of the Dragon	Robert E. Howard	---
17	Elric	Michael Moorcock	---
18	The First Book of Lankhmar	Fritz Leiber	---
19	Riddle-Master	Patricia A. McKillip	---
20	Time and Again	Jack Finney	---
21	Mistress of Mistresses	E.R. Eddison	---
22	Gloriana or the Unfulfill'd Queen	Michael Moorcock
23	The Well of the Unicorn	Fletcher Pratt	---
24	The Second Book of Lankhmar	Fritz Leiber	---
25	Voice of Our Shadow	Jonathan Carroll	---
26	The Emperor of Dreams	Clark Ashton Smith
27	Lyonesse I: Suldrun's Garden	Jack Vance	---
28	Peace	Gene Wolfe	---
29	The Dragon Waiting	John M. Ford	---
20	Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe	Michael Moorcock	---
31	Black Gods and Scarlet Dreams	C.L. Moore	---
32	The Broken Sword	Poul Anderson
33	The House on the Borderland and Other Novels	William Hope Hodgson	---
34	The Drawing of the Dark	Tim Powers	---
35	Lyonesse II and III: The Green Pearl and Madouc	Jack Vance	---
36	The History of Runestaff	Michael Moorcock	---
37	A Voyage to Arcturus	David Lindsay	---
38	Darker Than You Think	Jack Williamson
39	The Mabinogion	Evangeline Walton	---
40	Three Hearts & Three Lions	Poul Anderson
41	Grendel	John Gardner
42	The Iron Dragon's Daughter	Michael Swanwick	---
43	WAS	Geoff Ryman
44	Song of Kali	Dan Simmons
45	Replay	Ken Grimwood
46	Sea Kings of Mars and Other Worldly Stories	Leigh Brackett	---
47	The Anubis Gates	Tim Powers	---
48	The Forgotten Beasts of Eld	Patricia A. McKillip	---
49	Something Wicked This Way Comes	Ray Bradbury	---
50	The Mark of the Beast and Other Fantastical Tales	Rudyard Kipling	---

In Which We Discuss Fantasy

I love Gollancz SF and Fantasy Masterworks series.

For those unfamiliar with them, the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series are great fantasy and sci-fi novels, reprinted by Gollancz in covers that look really, really pretty on a shelf together. Each one has a number - I think they initially released one every month or so, although they seem to have stopped at just over sixty for both - and comes in pretty colours which complement each other.

What I really like about the series is that it's encouraged me to read books that I might not have picked up otherwise. My logic is that I like most of the books in the series, so there's a pretty good chance that I'll like the rest of them.

I picked up my first, Hope Mirrlees' Lud-in-the-Mist in a charity shop a few years back. I got Sheri Tepper's Beauty in Waterstones, mostly because I'm a big fan of Tepper, ever since I found a copy of Jinian Footseer in another charity shop years ago. Those are both in the Fantasy series, numbers 11 and 14 respectively. I decided then to try to get the rest, since I enjoyed both of those.

Then I picked up another Tepper, Grass, in the SF series, and decided to collect those. I usually think of myself as more of a sci-fi than a fantasy fan, but I seem to have much more of those.

I'm going to list down the novels in two tables, in another post, so I can keep track of what I've got, and which ones I need.

Initially, I began this post to talk about Jack Williamson's Darker than you Think. I love the title - whenever I read it, I imagine David Bowie in Labyrinth. You know that line where he says "it's further than you think"? Well, exactly the same tone.

Random trivia; my middle name is Jareth.

Anyway, the book's got a pretty interesting take on werewolves and vampires, and other mythical creatures. It's a little hard to explain, but the explanation is essentially mathematical, and links to probability and telepathy. It's fascinating. But far too short.

Anyway, off to make tables.

In Which We Discuss Books I Want

I want to work on completing my collections of graphic novels this year, mostly Sandman and Misfile. I also want to fill in more of my sci-fi and fantasy masterworks.

When I get home, I need to rearrange my bedroom so I can fit in two or three more bookcases. That should be enough. Hopefully. I have seven at the minute.

I may just possibly have too many books.