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 the Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

This post has been a long time coming, and I apologise for that.  I read - or rather, listened to - this book between the 11th and 13th of September this year. 

Sports Memorabilia

I first read it around 2010, and I remember liking it.  There's a lot I didn't get though.  I don't think I knew that Tom Gordon is a real person, for instance, and I didn't realise it took place on the Appalachian Trail.



 I'm currently doing a virtual walk of the Appalachian Trail - you just go here and tell it how many miles you've walked, and it tracks how far along you are - so it was pretty interesting to read about it with a little more knowledge.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is fairly short;  I remember it as being 200-300 pages, and the audiobook is only 6 hours long.  That might be one of the reasons I like it; Stephen King makes it worth the journey, but I have a very short attention span.

Here's an update of the list!

- 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

Cool, I'm 47 books through!  That's  51% !  I'm more than halfway through!  And it only took three years!  I'll be done before the end of the decade at this rate!

The next one is Hearts in Atlantis, which will, hopefully, be another short-ish one.  Six short stories/novellas.  I've not read it before, although one of the stories was also included in Six Stories.

In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 28th Year, Week 5/52

9 books last week, probably because I spent most of it on the Megabus.  10th to the 16th of September.

Four audiobooks, three of which I'd read before; Thud, Snuff and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon.  Map of Bones is the one I'd not read before.

A realisation from Snuff:  Young Sam reminds me a lot of the kid from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.  You're constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to be frightened of goblins or something...and then he just doesn't.

Bin Ich Klein? is the first book in German that I've ever read.  It's aimed at toddlers, which is about my language level.  I liked it!

The Good Study Guide is a pretty useful resource; I read that and Origin of Species to get back into the habit of studying before my course starts on Monday (though I do already have my first assignment...).

I was pretty disappointed by Light of the Fireflies.  It involved reprehensible people doing shitty things in the name of love.  The one voice of reason is raped and murdered.

It also featured someone brushing their teeth with the foam someone else had spat out, which strikes me as one of the most disgusting things imaginable.  It seems even more disgusting than consuming something gross, I suspect because toothpaste is the stuff you clean yourself with.  At least if you eat something disgusting you can clean yourself afterwards.  When the thing you clean yourself with is disgusting then there's no escape.

The language and metaphors were also incredibly clumsy, although, to be fair, it's translated from the Spanish, so perhaps it's not coming across well.

In Which We Discuss Bag of Bones

Bag of Bones was first published in 1998, shortly before my 10th birthday. It has a lot in common with Rebecca, another book I read a few years ago, although it treats the core elements differently.

This is one of the many novels in which the main character is a writer. If I recall correctly, this was the book where I first found out that King’s novels weren’t published in written order, though it might have been Lisey's Story; sometimes, he wrote too prolifically and would stash a few, as the character Mike Noonan does. When I started this project I did consider making the effort to find out the order in which the novels were actually written and to read them in that order, but I came to the conclusion that that would be unreasonably difficult.

The other day I thought about the fact that Shakespeare’s plays begin to have happier, more optimistic endings as he got older. That was one of the reasons I wanted to read an author’s work in chronological order; to see how it changed as they aged. When I did this with Lisa Jewell a few years ago there were a number of changes. What stood out most was her concern about children, after she had her own.

King’s writing is so prolific that I actually find it harder to step back and see trends. It’s like trying to watch a plant growing by staring at it for every hour of the day. There are trends; for instance, Rage and Carrie, both about teenagers, were written when King was younger – although The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, which focuses on a young girl, was published in 1999, when King was 52 and presumably written when he was at least in his 40s. His children make a difference as well; many characters are openly based on King’s family, and he does have a gift for observation.

I remembered Bag of Bones wrong; the first time I read it, it felt like it was a lot more about Sara and a lot less about Maddie. This time, I was waiting for the whole bit with Maddie to get out of the way so we could get to the main story about Sara. I was about three hours from the end – audiobook – when I finally twigged that Maddie was part of the main story.

The audiobook includes an interview with King on the topic of audiobooks. When he first wanted to listen to them, very few unabridged recordings were available, so he would pay his children $18 for each ninety-minute tape recording of a book he wanted to have read. It really is no wonder that King’s two sons, Owen King and Joe Hill, both grew up to be authors.

What is interesting is that relatively few of King’s characters are LGBT, despite the fact that his daughter Naomi is openly gay. Naomi’s life is less open than her brothers’, as she is less of a public figure. Perhaps King also considers her life to be private. I didn't realise, until I read this article, that she's a wheelchair user.  I'm not sure at which point in her life she began using a wheelchair, but it would be interesting to see if King's characters start using them more after that point.  So far, I think it's only been Paul Sheldon in Misery.

The next work of King’s is The Storm of the Century, a TV series for which he wrote the script. I’ve decided that while I will try to watch the series, I won’t try to hunt down the script to read it. I’ll be moving on to The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon – another book I’ve read before.