Hi,
I think my first SK novel was either Christine or Misery, but I was perhaps 11 years old, and I can't really remember, I know I read those two, and It that year. I read The Gunslinger, started Drawing of the Three, and didn't like it.
But I've read (or re-read) at least one SK novel every year since then. I'm 26 now, and down to exactly 10 unread SK novels/non-fiction/collections to go from the main (broadly commercial) body of work. Audio-books finally got me through the last three (including Wind Through the Keyhole) Dark Tower books, after I listened to my first audiobook about a month ago (The Martian).
I'll run out of SK books in a month or two, because I've come to love audiobooks, and can listen to them 10 hours a day thru work (in fact, they've made work much less depressing).
I'll be quite sad when only re-reading (by listening) to On Writing is left, and maybe digging out some old magazines or novella prints I missed(got the major audio-book ones already), and it was realizing this today that made me realize. Stephen King, in a postion only really matched by The Simpsons, has been such a part of my life for so damn long that. . . I think we need a word for the kind of love I feel for the worlds in the Tower, for the demi-god of those worlds himself, the world-lens I've added to my bag because of him and his works, and the little family I so vividly imagine the Kings to be. I love it all, and I'm running out, and, like a certain character from the Left Behind series, I'll have to decide how best to ration the cookies (books) left to me -- eat them now? or portion them out?
I just finished listening to Bag of Bones today, and it made me realize, listening to books is vastly different from reading them, so maybe I can re-do everything I missed the auido to, and read what I have only listened to so far (about 10 books), but even then, only a few years of new left, and. . . .It's a pretty sad thing really. I never really thought about it when there seemed to be so much left, and I read so slowly (or infrequently anyway), wanting to read other authors as well.
But then, listening to Bag of Bones after 5 years or more showed me how much more pronounced the dream-like quality of his work can become, when you have that weird deja vous of a barely remembered book (two which you have, most importantly, forgotten the ending, but not the beginning) and it feels very much like the real-world "I could swear this already happened, and nothing will surprise me, but why can I not remember what comes next?"
That, and how much King is, for all his tendencies to pulpy fiction, very much a reader's writer, something he says in his often comments to the "Constant Reader" in his Forwards and Afterwards, but something that doesn't really hit home, until you read the first story of Hearts in Atlantis and thing so hard on how that story feels like it mostly exists to sort out the ending to Lord of the Flies, or until you start feeling how each story serves the beam, once that has really fallen into your mind and heart, or how Bag of Bones visits so heavily on the theme of morality in writing itself, in ghost stories, in revenge, and in a simple man (albeit a wealthy one) in a simple not-quite-town (albeit, with all the horrors one that has been around since at least the 20's would have) --- how frankly the supernatural can stand-in to really show us the boogeymen of our lives (an alcoholic father, who is often a good man, The Shining) and how just a touch of, the touch, can show us some dark and wonderful truths about humanity -- or just the simple terror of that bully many of us had, the one that grouped up on us one day, and we really, truly, feared for our lives "Hey f%$-boy," (and so and so on, in my case, actually being gay, but knowing they didn't even know that, and yet, not actually believing that fact).
As someone who made Literature my business for several years, I still cringe at his need for stricter editing from time to time, but Stephen King's stories have always been my single greatest lens for trying to understand other people, and (beautifully) that lens has changed with every book I've read. The only thing I would wish on it is that I had actually kept up with the Dark Tower, instead of leaving it for the back 9, and having to remember so many connections and things in retrospect. But then again, it makes me want to read a lot of books over again. I think It and The Stand will benefit most of all. And since I do not (as a rule) re-read books. . .Those two are about two decades in my past, they deserve another go around.
This has gotten long. Sorry.
Hello.
I think my first SK novel was either Christine or Misery, but I was perhaps 11 years old, and I can't really remember, I know I read those two, and It that year. I read The Gunslinger, started Drawing of the Three, and didn't like it.
But I've read (or re-read) at least one SK novel every year since then. I'm 26 now, and down to exactly 10 unread SK novels/non-fiction/collections to go from the main (broadly commercial) body of work. Audio-books finally got me through the last three (including Wind Through the Keyhole) Dark Tower books, after I listened to my first audiobook about a month ago (The Martian).
I'll run out of SK books in a month or two, because I've come to love audiobooks, and can listen to them 10 hours a day thru work (in fact, they've made work much less depressing).
I'll be quite sad when only re-reading (by listening) to On Writing is left, and maybe digging out some old magazines or novella prints I missed(got the major audio-book ones already), and it was realizing this today that made me realize. Stephen King, in a postion only really matched by The Simpsons, has been such a part of my life for so damn long that. . . I think we need a word for the kind of love I feel for the worlds in the Tower, for the demi-god of those worlds himself, the world-lens I've added to my bag because of him and his works, and the little family I so vividly imagine the Kings to be. I love it all, and I'm running out, and, like a certain character from the Left Behind series, I'll have to decide how best to ration the cookies (books) left to me -- eat them now? or portion them out?
I just finished listening to Bag of Bones today, and it made me realize, listening to books is vastly different from reading them, so maybe I can re-do everything I missed the auido to, and read what I have only listened to so far (about 10 books), but even then, only a few years of new left, and. . . .It's a pretty sad thing really. I never really thought about it when there seemed to be so much left, and I read so slowly (or infrequently anyway), wanting to read other authors as well.
But then, listening to Bag of Bones after 5 years or more showed me how much more pronounced the dream-like quality of his work can become, when you have that weird deja vous of a barely remembered book (two which you have, most importantly, forgotten the ending, but not the beginning) and it feels very much like the real-world "I could swear this already happened, and nothing will surprise me, but why can I not remember what comes next?"
That, and how much King is, for all his tendencies to pulpy fiction, very much a reader's writer, something he says in his often comments to the "Constant Reader" in his Forwards and Afterwards, but something that doesn't really hit home, until you read the first story of Hearts in Atlantis and thing so hard on how that story feels like it mostly exists to sort out the ending to Lord of the Flies, or until you start feeling how each story serves the beam, once that has really fallen into your mind and heart, or how Bag of Bones visits so heavily on the theme of morality in writing itself, in ghost stories, in revenge, and in a simple man (albeit a wealthy one) in a simple not-quite-town (albeit, with all the horrors one that has been around since at least the 20's would have) --- how frankly the supernatural can stand-in to really show us the boogeymen of our lives (an alcoholic father, who is often a good man, The Shining) and how just a touch of, the touch, can show us some dark and wonderful truths about humanity -- or just the simple terror of that bully many of us had, the one that grouped up on us one day, and we really, truly, feared for our lives "Hey f%$-boy," (and so and so on, in my case, actually being gay, but knowing they didn't even know that, and yet, not actually believing that fact).
As someone who made Literature my business for several years, I still cringe at his need for stricter editing from time to time, but Stephen King's stories have always been my single greatest lens for trying to understand other people, and (beautifully) that lens has changed with every book I've read. The only thing I would wish on it is that I had actually kept up with the Dark Tower, instead of leaving it for the back 9, and having to remember so many connections and things in retrospect. But then again, it makes me want to read a lot of books over again. I think It and The Stand will benefit most of all. And since I do not (as a rule) re-read books. . .Those two are about two decades in my past, they deserve another go around.
This has gotten long. Sorry.
Hello.
