Even before Facebook and social media made political discussions a rage filled collision of unresearched but volatile memes, I've hated them.

I've occasionally convinced someone to back down from a particularly tactless method of conversation, or had them admit that their sources were unreliable,and I've even had people fray at my own methodology and language, and question my own sources, but I don't believe I've ever truly changed anyone's worldview, and I don't believe anyone has fully altered mine. So why bother.

After the contentious election of 2000, I was living in Burlington, Vermont, a very left-wing, very political city. I agreed with the politics but didn't have the passion to do more than shake my head at the television.

In the summer of 2001, I moved back to Boston, and back in with a family that included someone who was heavily invested in protesting. I started making signs, driving people to protests and hoping I had enough money on me to post bail if it came to that, and writing really terrible politically based poetry that was entirely too clever (by which I mean it imagined itself clever...it wasn't) to be taken seriously.

Dark days. Ah, Discordia.

My proximity to protesting didn't last long, though. I couldn't handle the vitriol, even regarding issues I agreed with. My close friend who protested, while definitely in agreement with her fellow protesters, seemed to be more attracted to the theatre of protests rather than their ability to change anything. In that way, at least, they weren't delusional.

The human antagonists in Insomnia are right wing protesters. And they believe in the theater of violence. It is disconcerting to read how far these fictional characters are willing to go, and to realize how similar they are to people I encountered at protests.

At my worst, I have my own violent thoughts about people I find morally reprehensible, but the imagined violence is always preceded by an imagined trial where they are found guilty of a crime worthy of their punishment. I am never the imaginary judge at this imaginary trial. I am never on the imaginary jury. I am neither an imaginary lawyer or witness. I imagine the machines of this imagined justice will do its work without me, and I'll just get imagined satisfaction seeing the imagined outcome of the imagined scenario. My imaginary hands are free of the imaginary blood.

It is when people believe they must make their imagined scenarios happen in reality that things go horribly awry. Hands of God, Director of Fate, Justice's Bullet. These are dangerous titles to imagine for yourself or a colleague or enemy.

Much of Insomnia hovers around abortion rights. And how willing a particular fictional faction of pro-lifers are to murder adults and children to protect the idea of unborn fetuses. 

It's a tough subject. One I didn't imagine King would handle well. He's not known for subtlety. And while he's not subtle here, I think he's more realist than in any other book I've read so far.

The connection to The Dark Tower is that the human antagonist doesn't see himself as a servant of God, but as a servant of The Crimson King who might be Randall Flagg or Walter or someone higher up the chain, we're not really sure at this point. We also learn about the bags that surround people and work as a sort of Video Game Health Meter. We'll be seeing these alluded to later on. 

Stray Observations:

--I read this several months before making this post (I've post-dated it) and have forgotten what I intended for this Stray Observations section

--Presumably, a character or two from this book will show up later on in the chronology, but I have just a few hundred more pages to go, and have seen no mention of any of them

--given the roles vampires play in The Dark Tower (not Dracula vampires, but vampiric creatures), it's interesting to see the protagonists portrayed as also being a  type of vampire

--you can tell this book was written by someone who has experienced long bouts of insomnia themself

--we are 6,549 pages closer to the crumbing Dark Tower, O Discordia

​1.​ The Case Of Velvet Claws. Hearts In Atlantis is chock full of book references, as the main character has his coming of age moments via literature recommendations from an old man who moves in upstairs. This is the Perry Mason book that Bobby Garfield is reading at the beginning of the book before he meets Ted Brautigan. 

​2. Ring Around The Sun is the book in Bobby's hands when he first meets Brautigan, who informs him that it's a great book, before offering him a job to read the newspaper to him on a daily basis. I haven't read any Simak, but this will be the first one I do once I"m done with my own Dark Tower chronology read through.

​3. Lord Of The Flies is the classic book that Brautigan recommends and that Bobby falls in love with. The moral play of the kids on the island factors into many of his decisions as the story progresses, and even other characters later in the book are noted to have read or be reading it.

​4. The Midwich Cukoos is the basis for the classic movie The Village Of The Damned, which Bobby and Brautigan go to see together in theaters. 

​5. But Brautigan claims that Wyndham's best book is The Kraken Wakes. I don't intend on  repeating many authors, or having too many books in the same genre back-to-back, but since both of these are mentioned, I thought I'd include them He also mentions that Day Of The Triffids is very good but that this book is better.

​6. Cosmic Engineers marks three sci-fi books in a row from the recommendation of a fictional Breaker from The Dark Tower series. King, himself, also recommends this book in On Writing.

​7. Roman Hat Mystery is a closed-room mystery,and the first of the Ellery Queen books. Bobby Garfield sees it on a library cart, and debates picking it up and reading it. The period mystery is a nice break from the sci-fi books, I hope.

​8. The Inheritors is another novel by The Lord Of The Flies author, this one about prehistoric man, and the extinction of the Neanderthals. This is the book that Bobby Garfield picks up in place of The Roman Hat Mystery.

​9. The Complete Stories Of Flannery O'Connor is the first book mentioned by Carol Gerber, Bobby's young love interest. She mentions that she should be in her dorm reading one of these stories instead of going to see a movie with another student.

​10. I debated putting The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien on this list, as it's one of my all-time favorite books. But If I Die In A Combat Zone is one of the many phrases that shows up in the second section, so I thought this book might be a slightly better fit.

​11. As has become evident, much of the latter portion of Hearts In Atlantis is about the Vietnam War. This was the first twentieth century war that Americans were willing to admit being ambivalent about. (We way over-romanticize our involvement in World War II considering how long we waited to get involved.) Jerry Lembke is a Vietnam vet and a sociologist who attempts to dis-spell some of the false narratives that have sprung up about the Vietnam era in the past forty years. I thought a non-fiction book might be a nice change of pace here.

​12. I'm not a big Hemingway fan, but The Sun Also Rises gets name checked as one of the books recommended to one of the characters.

​13. Finally moving into The Wind Through The Keyhole, here's the story of a changeling, which is awfully similar to The Skin Man that Roland is sent after in the story-within-a story, and which Tim Ross is afraid of encountering in the story-within-a-story-within-a-story.

​14. Wild Seed is another book that deals with the changeling trope. I'm always looking for an excuse to put Octavia Butler on a reading list, and this fits real nicely here.

​15. Our story-within-a-story-within-a-story features a young boy whose father dies, and he and his mother are thrust into an adventure when she remarries. Queen Sugar is about a mother and daughter in a similar situation.

​16. Tim from our s-w-a-s-w-a-s is on a quest that blurs the lines of fantasy and reality, and takes him along various literature references along the way. Grant Morrison and Sean Murphy's Joe The Barbarian is a more modern take on that trope, in graphic novel form. The story is great, and the art is lovely.

​17. During his journey, Tim encounters creatures that I visualized as very similar to Swamp Thing. Alan Moore has the most famous run on the series, but in 2012 Scott Snyder began his run, which isn't better than Moore's from a storytelling perspective but Yanick Pacquette's art is mesmerisingly good, so I recommend checking that out instead.

​18. Has it been mentioned at all that Roland is supposedly descended fromhis world's version of King Arthur And His Knights Of The Round Table? That seems important. And Maerlyn keeps getting name-dropped over the course of the series, but this is the first time we meet Maerlyn by his name, so nows as good a time as any to brush up on Arthurian legends.

​19. The ka-tet's journey to the tower is along the Bear-Turtle Beam, which gets referenced with some frequency both in the main series, and in It. Mainly, it's the turtle who gets the headlines, but they do have to defeat Shardik The Bear in The Waste Lands. But in the s-w-a-s-w-a-s, Tim is journeying along the Eagle-Lion Beam. He meets Maerlyn in the form of a tyger, and believes him to be one of The Beam's guardians, but Maerlyn points out that the guardian of this beam is Aslan, sooo...Narnia is a part of The Dark Tower, too.

​20. When one of the characters in Insomnia starts to lose his shit, he starts quoting a bunch of Bible verses. We don't have time to read The Bible for this chronology but Mark Russell and Shannon Wheeler's God Is Disappointed In You is a great modern, illustrated cliff-note version. Well worth your time.

​21. The aforementioned Bible quoter is fixated on a powerful female historian named Susan Day, who is fictional. I think Hannah Arendt is one of her real world contemporaries, as this book would definitely piss off Ed Deepnau. And, really, in this horrible time in American history, it never hurts to read up on how The Origins Of Totalitarianism threatens.

​22. Closing off this list, although I'm only 100 pages into Insomnia right now, is Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, which is the book Deepnau is reading when Ralph approaches him after a significant event in the book. Tom Robbins is one of my favorite writers from when I was in high school.

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

In my Goodreads review, I noted how conflicted I am by this book. This set of intertwining short stories shifts focus, shifts narrators, and shifts timeframes. Something Stephen King is usually very good at, but which I found clunky in this collection. I think the first and final stories are excellent but the journey between them is lackluster. But the first story did inspire me to start the companion series of blog entries:  A Masochist's Journey To The Dark Tower For People Who Hate Stephen King. I imagine if you're still reading these entries, though, you're probably somewhere with me riding on this Stephen King bandwagon.

1. Low Men In Yellow Coats

I'm a reader.

You know this. You're reading a series about me reading.

I've enjoyed books since I was young. I'm happy to talk with you about which ones I liked and which ones I didn't.

My step-grandfather on my father's side encouraged me toward books that were better than what I'd found on my own. Upgraded from Garfield to Calvin & Hobbes. From Jay Leno's "Headlines" series to E.E.Cummings's poetry. 

The first story in this collection is about an old man who influences a young New England boy to read better books. 

Its also about the Low Men who we will encounter more and more often during the final stretch of the Dark Tower chronology.

It's a 5 out of 5 star story for me. 

*****

2. Hearts In Atlantis

I went away to school. I played Hearts.

My high school years occurred during and after the Persian Gulf War. An unpopular war. A war much of our country was against.

I still couldn't care about this section of the book. It dragged. I had to force myself to finish it.

It's 2 out of 5 stars for this story.

**

3. Blind Willie

I am not a veteran. I am infrequently blind.

Despite its connection to Low Men In Yellow Coats and the return of a character who is probably Randall Flagg, I was not excited to read this story, either.

2 out of 5 stars again.

**

4. Why We're In Vietnam

I am still not a veteran. I'm not a TV activist lawyer. I'm not an alcoholic.

There are many stories about Vietnam that are important to me. Particularly those by Tim O'Brien. But growing up in the 80s and 90s, Vietnam was THE era of discussion that led nostalgia culture. So many TV shows. So many movies. So many books.

There are people who love to read about eras. Become experts on World War 2, or Civil War era America, or The Roman Empire.

I'm not one of them. I did feel a bit more for the characters in this section than the previous two, so I'll say it's 3 out of 5 stars.

***

​5. Heavenly Shades Of Night Are Falling

I've gone back to the place where I grew up. I've reunioned with old flames. I've attended funerals of those I was only passingly close to.

This story is a solid coda to the book.

It reminds me of nostalgia. But in a good way.

4 out of 5 stars.

****

Stray observations:

--I could die happily never reading another Baby Boomer's remembrance of Vietnam.

--I, initially, skipped over entire swaths of the second and third stories, but felt guilty, and went back and read them. I wish I hadn't.

--While I like reading this book at this place in the chronology, it is interesting that this is the first way we will encounter The Low Men, and it will be quite a bit before the characters become directly connected to The Dark Tower. But I suppose it's not as long a separation as the chasm between Salem's Lot an when Salem's Lot becomes relevant to the larger story.

--Think of ice cream. Think of cigarettes. Think of anything except that we are 5,762 pages across this crumbling beam. Don't let the Low Men suspect that you're here.

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

I believe I'm over halfway through my reading of the expanded Stephen King Dark Tower universe. I'm certainly at the halfway of the official books, as I've read The Gunslinger, The Drawing Of The Three, The Waste Lands, and Wizard And Glass, which leaves Wind Through The Keyhole, Wolves Of Callah, Song Of Susannah, and The Dark Tower.

Maybe you are envious of this project but you don't really like Stephen King's writing style. You can still have a similar experience. King's work is loaded with allusions and references. I don't feel they often overtake the narrative (though the final chunk of Wizard And Glass is a bit too on-the-nose Wizard Of Oz for me), but they're there. I've taken somehwat lazy notes during the first half of this journey, and I present you with a list of books that approximate the Dark Tower chronology experience. You can also consider this a For Further Reading List, if you ever do decide to read through the Stephen King chronology. Though, really, you'd be better off getting a time machine, and reading these first, so that you catch all the references during the Dark Tower.

​10. Paradise: While we're at it, why not have a story that features a Black woman with mental illness that's actually written by a Black woman. I haven't yet read a Toni Morrison book that I wouldn't recommend but this seems the most appropriate in reference to The Drawing Of The Three.

​11. Shardik: From the author of the most violent children's book about small, fuzzy, animals comes the tale of a hunter who believes a giant bear is actually a god. This hugely factors into the beginning of The Waste Lands. I kept thinking the reference had something to do with Watership Down, and that my memory was going. Like a bear. Like a bear who was once a god.

If you are a teenager then you are romance.  You are sex. You are a body. Maybe heart. Maybe brain. But definitely body. 

You may say yourself alone. You may dress yourself independent. Wear books. Say video games. Build happy solitude like medieval armor.

But if you boy, you at fourteen are want girls. Even if you also want boys. Even if you grow up all boys and know at fourteen only boys, you will want story girls. You will want fictional flutter heart girls. Because boys at fourteen think every girl Juliet. Because boys at fourteen all body. All romance. All sex. Every fourteen boy loves nonreciprocal girl. Maybe classmate. Maybe neighbor. Maybe older woman. Probably fictional. Maybe book girl, maybe TV sweetheart. Maybe Princess fucken Leia. But girl. Even if woman, fourteen boy thinks of as girl.

Girl doesn't actually exist. Or is not who fourteen boy imagined. Either way doesn't love him heart sex. Boy moves on. Maybe not until fifteen. Maybe not until twenty. Maybe thirty. Maybe him die fourteen at age seventy-nine. Those boys live ugly. Those boys troll computers and women. Stalker boys. Creeper boys. Cult boys. Men's Rights Activists. Republican politicians. Gross boys old men. Hearts broken by their dumb eyes. Can't see difference between teenage romance and real life. Always think themselves hero. Fourteen boys always protagonists of their own dull stories. Fourteen boys insufferable. Never adorable. Don't believe any writer any storyteller who says fourteen boys men. Men can lie. But men Know when they are lying. Fourteen boys think every lie true.

At the heart and the body of Wizard and Glass is fourteen boy. Is love. Is romance. Is death and heroes and trust and manhood and magic and all those things that fourteen boys color in the background of romance because they are so afraid of romance. Afraid because friends say romance is girl thing. And fourteen boys fear being girl things. Because stupid. Gendering anything stupid. Romance languages give nouns gender. English killed that overt declaration of gender. Keeps gender in shhhhhhh background. Because stupid.

Roland gunslinger in this section is teenage boy. Moves to strange new world. Adolescence.  Bring friends. Everyone changing. World moving on. New temporary home is ancient. Everything about themselves is a lie created by their fathers. Roland finds intrigue. Roland finds danger. Roland finds love.  World crashes down around him like world always crashes around fourteen year old gunslinger bodies.

Adult Roland we've known for so much of this list. No love. Only heartbreak. Only him fourteen in the back of his solitude. Not hate women. Not fear women. Not think less women. Roland stupid. Roland flawed. But Roland not misogynist, though of course misogyny courses through Roland like the blood in all humans it is. Now this story why Roland so lonely. So gunslinger. So eyes and cold caliber. So wet shells. So dark tower always at horizon.


​Stray observations: 

--Despite it being referenced in the title of the book and on the cover, I'd forgotten about the crystal ball mythology in The Dark Tower.

--My reading chronology offers a bunch of breaks from the ka-tet that still fit in The Dark Tower journey. This five hundred page flashback focus on Roland is a fun journey, but it made me wish Susannah, Eddie, and Jake had sequences like this. Then I remembered that they all do have their own sequences in other books, they just don't stand out as starkly as this one.

--We are 5,239 pages closer to the tower than when we began, say thankya.

When I was still in elementary school I was fascinated with both impressions and riddles. There was some Apple IIC computer game that contained some very basic math-themed riddles. I don't remember much about it other than that I was determined to get 100% of them right. And without an internet or a set of encyclopedias to help me, I merely went through the series over and over again until I succeeded.

The impressions were another thing entirely. As far back as I can remember I was a mimic. I remember being about five or six when an uncle (technically a sixth or seventh cousin via marriage probably) taught me to do Woody Woodpecker. I could also do Mickey Mouse and Goofy, and when Roger Rabbit came out when I was in fifth grade I made sure the voice was in my repertoire. But the voices were pretty much for me, my family, and my close friends, who were also dorks.

In sixth grade, I had written a story for class that read like a script, and my English teacher asked me to read it to the class. So I read it. With the voices.

I don't remember how the class as a whole reacted, other than, as I went to take my seat, a girl who I had a crush on said "You don't sound like anyone but you."

When Good Morning Vietnam came out, I really wanted to be Robin Williams as Adrian Cronauer...except not in a war...or even in the army. I believed that impression was the height of comedy. So when I first read about Blaine The Mono in The Waste Lands, and saw that this riddle-happy impressionist was viewed as psychotic, I thought...maybe I should ease down on the celebrity impersonations. I didn't remove them entirely from my life, but they became less frequent, and I tried to only use them when a particular character was brought up by someone else, and when I had a punchline that I was at least 75% sure would get somewhere between a chuckle and a meltdown.

Very few of us ever want to be reading a story, and see our behavior reflected in the villain. Having never murdered anyone, not finding myself rubbing my hands together while plotting someone's failure, or making dolls out of the hair of my enemies, I didn't imagine how any of my behaviors could lead me to being seen as a villain. But at fourteen or fifteen, I was seeing myself as maybe others saw me, an attention-seeker, trying to impress people by being like someone they probably already liked and were comfortable with. It was a negative behavior. And while I might have ignored a friend or teacher who told me this, perhaps imagining they were jealous of my "talent", I knew Stephen King had never met me, and had nothing to gain by declaring this behavior as annoying and a red flag of villainy. I wondered how many other people would hear my Roger Rabbit, and think "this annoying fraud is going to lead me to nothing but unhappiness."

I imagine many adult men around my age have felt something similar since the rise in awareness about misogyny, sexual assault, homophobia, and racism. We read a story about someone who has clearly Fucked Up And Hurt Someone, and thought "Oh shit. I said something like that to someone once." or "Didn't I fill an entire Livejournal with posts about someone I loved putting me 'in the friend zone' before I knew how creepy and entitled the concept of 'the friend zone' was?" or "Oh, my edgy humor when I was twenty was just punching down for validation. Why didn't anyone tell---Oh, hmmm...Why didn't I listen when people politely hinted that I was Fucking Up?"

Reading The Waste Lands now, thankfully, felt quite different. I didn't see myself as anyone in the book. I recalled being in similar situations (but with less of a Western apocalyptic theme) but I didn't identify with anyone in the second half of the book, the way I had the first time I read it. When I got to Blane The Mono's appearance, I was instantly annoyed. As much at who I think I used to be, as I was annoyed at the type of people who I now see behaving that way.

Stray observations:

--I had forgotten how many literary references echo throughout The Dark Tower. I remembered the major ones: Wizard Of Oz, Harry Potter, The Waste Land. But I had forgotten about the small references, such as the bear being named Shardik or the people of Lud acting out Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery"

--I want a billy-bumbler

--the second section of the book brings us 192 pages further, tick-tock, tick-tock bringing us to 4,567 pages as we barrel towards Topeka

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

The entries about It have been the hardest to write so far, though it's certainly not the hardest book to read. I read this portion while on vacation, and flew through it. 

Anyone who writes for more than ten years will have something embarrassingly out-of-touch in their writing. I'm not talking about the ambiguous use of the word soul or a tendency to overuse a thesaurus, I mean very little writing, no matter the quality of the writer, survives the politicization of time.

When the movie version of It came out, every review, article, and blog post I read mentioned a scene near the end of the book where the lone female character is, essentially, gangbanged by the boys in the group.

It's her idea, her decision, her agency. But it's still really out of left field, and disconnected from much of what happens in the book. But then, what makes the book so riveting is that weird situations and unlikely resolutions are constantly bombarding the reader. They make sense as you read them, but probably aren't how you would imagine the characters would work their way out of the situations.

Still, I dreaded getting to that part of the book.

But why?

Kids fuck too early. And they always have.

Kids fuck for weird reasons. And they always have.

More importantly, the scene is Very Unsexy, Uncomfortable, and is Incredibly Short. Like most first, young, sex. Nothing about it is erotic. It's never meant to trivialize or romanticize the events around it. It's one of many bizarre, seemingly unnecessary things a group of traumatized kids do to try and get over their trauma. It feels like a thing that frightened, idiot kids would do. And, in the realm of Stephen King books, it's not that uncommon. I seem to remember a very unsexy dream sequence between a high schooler and his speech pathologist in Needful Things. And, I remember a scene in another book where a boy gets an inappropriate erection while trapped with a girl he likes, and she offers to help him with it,and when he says yes, she punches him in the balls. But I can't remember if that's a Stephen King book.

This post has already devoted more time to the incident than the book did.

I dwell on it because I saw it saturate The Internet when the movie came out. People really glad that it didn't make the movie script. And, yea, I'm sure Stephen King and Andrés Muschietti really didn't want to film a sequence of adolescent sex. But, also, this book was over a thousand pages long, they had to cut a tremendous amount of stuff, and this brief scene should have been the first to go, not just because it's gross and awkward but because it ultimately means nothing to the plot or character development.

It also gets cut because it's not even a sex scene, it's a heart scene. It's about believing love will help solve trauma. And there are plenty of better,  more believable, and more filmable examples in this last section of the book.

A book about overcoming a monster with love isn't usually my thing. I don't like monster books, and I don't like any book where love conquers _blank_, unless it's love conquers the government because I've reached the age where I would  root for baby-chimp-murdering teacher who failed students who smelled badly, provided (s)he beat an American politician to death somewhere in the book. Maybe this will be one of my horribly dated pieces of writing for including that. I hope it will be because the 2010s become historically known as the worst time ever in American politics, and everything is about to get much better real soon. Excuse me if I don't hold my breath, though.

Where was I?

Right, beating monsters with love instead of science or religion or history (but including all of those just in case the love doesn't work out) isn't usually my thing, but King really makes it work here.  I look forward to reading this book again in 28ish years, when people upload their brainwave feelings about how fortunate it is that the Live Holographic Rendering Of It being broadcast on The Moon leaves out the extremely inappropriate parts about using a bicycle without a helmet.

Stray Observations:

--I remembered almost none of the last third of the book

--Wait, that's it? That's all we get of the Turtle? Maaaaaaan, that doesn't tie into The Dark Tower much at all!

--But Pennywise is totally related to a monster or two that we'll meet later

--I should have written this entry closer to my completion of the book. I'm about two weeks out now, and have so much more recent Tower stuff in my brain, that I barely remember what I had originally intended to write

--we're 4,879 pages into this chronology, and it's turtles most of the way down

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

​The last entry focused mainly on memories and false memories. That continued to plague me throughout the whole reading experience. I expected it. It was to a much higher degree than I expected, but I knew going in that I wasn't going to accurately remember a book I read when I was twelve. What I wasn't expecting was that the reactions I had would be similar. 

If you ask most people who Stephen King is, they will tell you he is a horror writer from Maine. This is somewhat true. But when I think "horror", I think Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday The Thirteenth, Cabin In The Woods. I think of movies where a group of flawed mostly idiots are meticulously murdered in horrible fashions. I think of jumping in movie theater seats and spilling popcorn. I think of sleeping with a nightlight on. I think of bad writing with horrible effects. I don't think much of Stephen King.

We are thirteen sections into this chronology, and there hasn't been a lot of horror. 

The Stand (entries 1-3) is an apocalyptic story about the dangers of science and religion. People die horribly from a plague, and then from simple human shittiness (which was also a huge factor in the plague). It tends to be categorized as "post-apocalyptic fiction", even though much of the book is the step of the apocalypse and the apocalyptic act. Imagine if 60% of The Matrix was Keanu Reeves working his office job , and he didn't choose a pill until fifteen minutes before the end of the film. Imagine if Mad Max was mostly about the structure of the Australian highway patrol until a biker gang shows up 2/3rds of the way through the film. Imagine if Planet Of The Apes spent most of the first movie being about scientific trials on primates instead of...wait...they made that movie, didn't they? Nevermind. The point is, it's arguably not post-apocalyptic, but it's definitely not horror.

The Eyes Of The Dragon (section 4) is straight up European castle fantasy. It's an bedtime bedtime story, which may explain how difficult it was for me to stay awake while reading it.

The Little Sisters Of Eluria (section 5) and The Gunslinger (section 7) are both western motif fantasy. Yea, there are vampires in one, and a wizard in the other, but its really a coming of age story about a badass kid becoming a loner adult in a properly post-apocalyptic world.

Everything's Eventual (section 6) is a coming of age tale with a sci-fi twist. Not "Twilight Zone" or "Black Mirror", more a really intriguing 90s TV sci-fi show with no effects budget (so, I guess, "The Dead Zone").

The Shining (section 8) is the first sort-of horror. But it's not the mummy or the serial killer tracking anyone down. It's a sort of haunted house story, only you don't see anybody die. It's like a ghost hunters TV show where a bunch of people stay overnight in a haunted house, and jump at shadows. They always feel the threat, but bodies aren't being racked up over the course of their stay. So, it's horrifying, but not Scream Queen Horror.

The Drawing Of The Three (section 9) and "Jake: Fear In A Handful Of Dust" (section 10) are, like all of the books in the chronology, speculative fiction, but I'm not sure which subgenre to put them in. They're technically post-apocalyptic because Roland's world has suffered an apocalypse, but huge swaths of the book take place in New York City at times when it was still thriving. It's about addiction, and trauma, and mental illness, but it doesn't present a monster with needles for hands, and the mental illness doesn't turn the person into a subhuman monster, but into a pain in the ass. All of the monsters in the book were humans without powers. And while plenty of people died tragically (and a couple horrifically) in the books, their deaths weren't the driving point of the book.

Salem's Lot (section 11) is a vampire book. The first proper horror book.  But it didn't feel monster movie horror to me. It's the way "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" is vampirey, and therefore horror, but also not very horrifying, even with all the death. I'm occasionally afraid for the characters, and sad at some deaths, but it's not Jump Out Of Your Seat Horror.

Which brings us to It (sections 12-14). It is horror. Yes, at it's core it's about a town's willingness to overlook tragedies when it's not convenient for them. It's about ignoring children's trauma. It's about the inaccuracies of memory. But it's also about a terrifying supernatural creature who sometimes looks like a clown who Murders Children for reasons that aren't truly explained. Because a full explanation would rob the villain of some of its terror.

I don't get scared by books. Movies can frighten me while they're on, but once they're over, I'm more likely to dwell on plot holes than I am to worry that the villain is hiding under my bed or dangling from my ceiling. It had the same effect.

Part of this is that, once the initial death scene takes place, so much of the book is making you care for the main characters. And unlike most horror movies/stories, we don't watch them get methodically picked off throughout the course of the book. We are constantly experiencing new characters just to see them die, while, due to the way time in the book is set up, we Know that most of the main characters are going to live until, at least, just about the end. But you're still terrified for them.

I think that having this be the first horror book I ever read is why I don't enjoy most horror books. For me, this book didn't invert tropes I was familiar with. So when I read a book with tropes, I thought it was garbage because I'd already read something that didn't waste its time setting up the The Rules for the Scream franchise. Also, unlike most horror, the villain doesn't have a set appearance or a set way to kill. Pennywise is happy to slice your fingers off through a picture, turn into a werewolf and chase you through a house, possess children or family members to beat you to death, fight you on the fucken astral plane like it was the goddamned Shadow King, pull your arm off, turn into a massive ugly statue and smush you, or whatever would get the job done. And, unlike Freddy Krueger, it doesn't wait for you to fall asleep, it is happy to kill you in broad daylight in front of a huge crowd of people.

Pennywise is terrifying because Pennywise doesn't give a fuck who sees it murder people because most people can't see it, or else forget about it as soon as it was out of sight. It's obviously part Weeping Angel. And also part Racnoss.

Of course, being a Stephen King book, It is not satisfied with being a Horror Genre book, non-horror related trauma plays as much of a role as the monster.

Much of the second and third section of It deals with the terrible things that happen to kids before they can properly cope, and then how, as grownups, we still can't cope with the things that happened to us when we're young. But instead of having Pennywise serve as a metaphor for the trauma, he is an additional trauma to the variety of things the kids never truly overcome: parental abuse, racism, anti-semitism, monstrously overprotective parents, speech impediments, body issues, and not knowing when to shut the fuck up.

Stray observations:

--it took me several weeks to decide whether or not to post this because it just didn't seem as necessary to me as previous posts

--it took me forever to get through this book,not because of its length or quality but because I was working on other projects

--I was worried, since I hadn't read It for twenty-eightish years that I wouldn't connect with it as much, but I still do really like this book

--if you've read this far, you've grown 4,372 pages older

The little boy in the drain. The clown. The tearing of the arm from the body. The paper boat. The cover of the book with the arm stretching out of the sewer. Spiders. "This is battery acid, you slime." The deadlights. I remember these. Sure. Thirty years later. twenty after the TV movie. The slit wrists in the warm bathtub. The balloons. We all float down here. The barrens. The dam. I remember.

I remember picking up the book in an airport. On the way to Florida for, maybe the first time. Colored pencils and a surreal coloring book. Not the first time. Second, maybe. I remember my mother asking if I was sure It was the book I wanted. Maybe thinking Lord Of The Rings or Chronicles Of Narnia or something that wouldn't make the woman at the register say "You know this isn't a kid's book, right?" Something that wouldn't have my fifth grade teacher call her and ask if she knew I was reading this book. It had sex things!
I don't remember why I wanted it. Just the year before I'd asked to see Gremlins because I thought Gizmo was cute. But I'd spent the whole second half of the film hiding behind the movie theater seat. What do you hide behind when you're reading a book?

I remember the book being divided up into a part where they were kids, and a part where they were adults. Only that isn't precisely true. Or even mostly true.

I remember the horror and the fights in the sewer and the blood in the sink that none of the adults could see. But I don't remember the abusive father. I don't remember the overprotective mother. I don't remember the indifferent parents. I don't remember the father who didn't walk to talk to his son about the town's horrible racist past. I remember a series of phone calls but not who made them. I don't remember that once the child murder happens, the book spends a great deal of time dissecting a hate crime.

How do I not remember the beginning of the book focuses on a man who is beaten due to his sexuality (though ultimately killed by a demon thing that doesn't mind killing people of any sexual orientation)? How do I not remember that the book isn't just about a demon thing that will eventually tie into The Dark Tower, but is also about how a place Hates. How a city is homophobic. How a city is racist. How a city is misogynist. And how a city ignores all those parts of itself?

Because memory is selective. You forget the things you don't want to remember. Which is what this book is about.

It's been almost thirty years since I read this book. Which is about how long it takes between Pennywise's appearance. I am the age of the protagonists as adults now. As, the first time I read this book, I was around the age of the protagonists when they were children.

I have forgotten what made this story good because I only remembered it as the first horror book I ever read. I wasn't too young to understand why I liked it then, but I was too young to hold on to the memory of why I liked it. Isn't that what aging is? Forgetting the nuances, but remembering the trauma?

Michelle saw me reading It during a study break. She was reading whatever book we were supposed to be reading for English, which I had already finished. She came over to ask me where I got the book. I don't remember if we'd ever voluntarily talked before. I remember I had a crush on her. I remember being thrilled she had a reason to talk to me. She wanted to read the book, too. I let her borrow it the next day while I read something from another class.

At the end of the class, Miss Markarian asked to talk to me. Michelle told her I was reading a book I shouldn't be. That it had sexy parts that my parents would not approve of. She was going to have to call my parents. I might be in trouble. I thought Miss Markarian liked me? I thought Michelle liked me. What was this bullshit?

I know the phone call happened because I remember my father telling my mother one of my teachers was on the phone. But that's all. I don't think my parents ever talked to me about it. I know I didn't get in trouble, but I also don't think they bothered to tell me that my teacher called. Given some further interactions between my mother and some of my teachers, she might have even told Miss Markarian to Fuck Off. Probably told her to be happy I was reading.

I don't remember my parents being progressive but they must have been.

Fine fine fine. Memory. But what does this have to do with The Dark Tower?

The turtle. The voice of the turtle. The turtle is mentioned repeatedly in the first section of the book. And if you haven't read any of The Dark Tower books (which I hadn't in 1988), then you probably keep wondering what the fuck the turtle is. It doesn't seem to be the monster of the book. You don't see it. None of the characters talk about it. It's just part of the narration that occasionally there is something about a turtle. Including See the turtle of enormous girth/on its back it holds the earth. Which is familiar, if you've read the first half of The Waste Lands. Roland says it. The Turtle is one of the twelve guardians of The Dark Tower. If that was the only connection, I promise, I wouldn't have put it on this list. And I know this is a long ass book. But I promise, more will come up that connects It to The Dark Tower.

-- this first section of It is only 165 pages but that brings us up to 4,055 pages since the beginning of the chronology

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

This may have been the first time I've ever read this book. I mentioned in my original post that I stopped reading it when I was younger because Anne Rice and the '90s had ruined vampire stories for me. But I said that "I didn't pick it back up until I was reading Wolves Of Callah over a decade later, and they referenced one of the characters from 'salem's Lot, so I put that book down and went back and actually read 'salem's Lot." Now I'm not so sure that I did. I think the ending I remember is from the flashbacks in Wolves of Callah and maybe Song Of Susannah? I had no idea who would live and who would die (apart from the character who resurfaces in the later books). I didn't remember almost any of the major characters or plot points. Happily, much like at the end of the previous book, when I was finished, I felt like it was my favorite book so far. And it's only the second of King's books ever published. One of the few that's older than me.  

​When interviewed about his role in Glitter: Ancient Vampires Love High School Girls With No Personalities, Robert Pattison was asked if he weren't in the movie, whether he would have enjoyed it. He said he "would have mindlessly hated it." 

It's easy to hate vampire stories, since there have been thirty years of bad television shows and movies where vampires all live sunny California for some reason, and prey on high school girls. At least, that's my assumption. Apart from "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" and "Angel", I haven't devoted any time to vampire shows. And I think "Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Motion Picture" and "Once Bitten" were the last vampire movies that didn't bore me to sleep.

I read enough of Twilight to mindlessly hate it. It gave me flashbacks of the Anne Rice endless vampire saga, which I started to read in high school, and which completely lost my interest by the second book. Vampires are boring.

A good vampire story isn't about the guilty ancient dude (always a dude as the protagonist, female vampires are almost exclusively minor characters) torn by his past but needing to  feed on the living in order to survive. Good vampire stories are about the people trying to either kill or escape from the vampires. Which is why 'Salem's Lot is one of the best.

In The Shining, the first third of the book was about a failing marriage, and taking a job in order to survive. It was a people story. The horror aspect slowly crept in, but even then, the book isn't about the haunted hotel, it's about the family that falls apart in it. In 'Salem's Lot, the vampires a ridiculous possibility that can't possibly be the real problem until they are.

And when the vampires do come into play, they themselves aren't actually the frightening part of the book. The collapse of a small town, where a person must come to terms with the impossible as everyone around him disappears, is the scary part. Yea, yea, blood, garlic, inviting them in, crosses, holy water, they're all there, but they aren't why you read the story.  They're not why King wrote the story.

"Alone. Yes, that's the key word, the most awful word in the English tongue. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is only a poor synonym."  I'm sure someone else besides Anne Rice has written a story about how being a vampire is lonely and isolating and boo hoo hoo. They might even be entertaining. But unless you, yourself, are an ancient being who feasts on the flesh of yadda yadda yadda, it's much easier to identify with a human who feels alone because everything they know about life seems to be wrong. Vampires don't exist. There is no boogeyman in your closet. The people you love don't come back as monsters. How lonely would you feel if you had the horrible proof that vampires were alive and massacring the town you lived in? You knew no one would believe your incredulous story, and every time someone does believe you, they're turned. I find that possibility much more relatable, even though none of my dead friends have ever knocked on my window or bitten my neck deep enough to draw blood.

There's a scene coming up in It (my reading is ahead of my posting right now), where the writer character (of which there are many in Stephen King books, including 'Salems Lot), exasperated by an overly-intellectual creative writing course, asks " Why does a story have to be socio-anything? Politics...culture...history...aren't those natural ingredients in any story if it's told well? I mean...can't you guys just let a story be a story?"

Thus, I present you with this line from "just a story" about vampires in which King muses "The evil still went on, but now it went on in the hard, soulless glare of neon tubing, of hundred watt bulbs by the billions. Generals planned strategic air strikes beneath the no-nonsense glow of alternating current, and it was all out of control, like a kid's soapbox racer going downhill with no brakes: I was following orders. Yes, that was true, patently true. We were all soldiers, simply following what was written on our walking papers. But where were those orders coming from, ultimately? Take me to your leader. But where is his office? I was just following orders. The people elected me. But who elected the people?"

I'll take that kind of vampire story philosophy over Anne Rice's "Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult." any night.

Stray observations:

--I just remembered a time when I was  camp counselor and I was bitten on the neck enough to draw blood. I did get sick for a day, but a couple of state mandated shots seems to have staved off the vampirism. Though I do love rare red meat. And I do tend towards nocturnalism. Hmmmmm....

--Father Callahan is a fairly minor player in this story, but he has the most interesting journey. I'm glad he's the character who we will eventually get to spend more time with. 

--3,890 pages toward the tower. Where has everyone else gone?

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books.

I reached a weird stumbling point in continuity, where I got about 250 pages into what I intended to be the eleventh book, It, and realized it was in the wrong place. I tried to barrel through it anyway, as I was enjoying it, but I had a weird mental block, and finally gave up to read the next book on my list: The Waste Lands. And it was while reading Waste Lands that I had a realization. Waste Lands, as an independent book, shouldn't exist. The first half of the book "Jake: Fear In A Handful Of Dust" really belongs at the end of The Drawing Of The Three. The second part, "Lud: A Heap Of Broken Images" is really the beginning of Wizard And Glass, so, for the chronology, I'm going to pretend that's the way it went down. So I recommend picking up Waste Lands right after finishing The Drawing Of The Three, but putting it down at the conclusion of "Jake: Fear In A Handful of Dust", and THEN reading Salem's Lot and It. I wouldn't normally suggest splitting up a book, but in this case, it makes for a much more satisfying narrative. ​

I am two men. In 1999, I lived on Cape Cod. As a responsible adult, I remembered to put my new insurance sticker on my license plate, and my car was never towed. I drove to Florida, where I lived for several years, selling fudge, and living with my boss's parents, until I got my own place. After five years, I decided to take my stories about selling fudge at the various renaissance and folk fairs, and become a writer who made money. I moved as far south as I could get, into The Keys. It wasn't quite like retiring. I still did three or four faires a year, and made and supplied the fudge, and later cupcakes, that my employees sold at the faires that I chose not to go to. I also opened a roadside alligator-focused restaurant.  By 2012, my partner and I still ran the restaurant, but I sold off the fudge/faire business to the son of the original owner. I should have been happy, but something always nagged me. Every time I heard the words "poetry slam", I would start to get heart palpitations. I refused to set foot in a comic book store.  I wrote a series of cultishly popular humorous memoirs under the name Scott Woods, infuriating a librarian in Columbus who I never met. I should have been happy, and I was happy, but there was also a feeling like some part of my life had gone awry.

What went awry was in 1999, I forgot to put my insurance sticker on my license plate, my car got towed with a full trunk of fudge. It took me a week to get the car back, at which point, I'd missed the first two days of the faire I was supposed to work, so I moved in with a friend in Quincy, and became a weekly regular at a poetry slam in Boston. I sold the car. I moved to Vermont. I moved back to Boston. I moved to Arizona. I moved back to Boston. My mother moved to Florida. I got a job in a comic book store. I got into an altercation with the owner when he suspended me for making a phone call to my father the week his wife died. I quit. I went to Florida, but only for a week to visit my mother. I got a job at a different comic book store. I continued to do poetry slam, years after it held any appeal to me. It was just a thing I was used to. And since I also tended bar at a poetry slam venue, it was just easier to keep going and collect money, even though it no longer made me happy.

Don't we all have these moments where we imagine our timeline should have diverged, and there is another version of ourselves living a life we feel we'd appreciate more?

But if that's true of us, then what about the people we impacted in the life we were currently living? There live would surely also be doubled. And ripple. And expand. And a cow farts in a flamethrower factory, and our wonderful life has to deal with the weird rise of President Harvey Weinstein. What a horrible, unimaginable world.

In "Jake: Fear In A Handful Of Dust" we deal with the doubling of The Gunslinger's world. In The Gunslinger, he encountered the boy, Jake, at a way station. Jake was from a New York, where he'd been hit by a car and somehow ended up in Roland's world. And, eventually, Roland let him die. In The Drawing Of The Three, we briefly encountered Jake again, as Roland ended up possessing the man who killed Jake, and thus, Jake lived. And thus, Jake never went to the way station. And, thus, The Gunslinger never met him. This paradox is slowly driving Roland crazy. And, in New York, it's also driving the not-dead-Jake crazy, as he remembers not only dying, but existing in another world that can't be real.

It's a nice balance to "The Lady In The Shadow" and "The Pusher" portions of The Drawing Of The Three, where a character with dual personalities induced by two traumas, committed by the same person who killed Jake, confronts her own duality and becomes an incredibly strong individual whose able to access and  shift between the strengths of her previously split personalities.

In that world where I am a cultishly popular writer living in The Florida Keys, I read this directly after The Drawing Of The Three, and didn't have a stray observations list. Lucky for you (and the real Scott Woods), in this world, I did read them out of order which allowed me to notice:

-- This book largely sets up It.

--This book introduces the concept of the Twelve Guardians Of The Beam, and The Beam is going to show up in almost every book left in the chronology.

--"See the Turtle of enormous girth, on his back he holds the Earth" probably isn't meant to imply that Terry Pratchett's Discworld series exists within this universe, but it does set up the references to "the Turtle" in It, a reference that starts early in the book, and, without this book prefacing it, doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense.

--Jake buys a book called Charlie The Choo-Choo, which now exists and can be bought in our world, but is one of Stephen King's creations (and its entire story is contained in this section of the book). The appearance of the book here, combined with Eddie Kaspbrack's encounters with the dying railroads of Derry, foreshadow a major portion of "Lud: A Heap Of Broken Images" and Wizard And Glass. 

--Jake's encounter with the haunted mansion is also a nice appetizer for the haunted house aspects of 'Salem's Lot, but it's an unimpressive callback, if you read 'Salem's Lot first. 

--for extra credit, you would read all of L Frank Baum's Oz books, and Richard Adams's Watership Down​ before you read this

--we are now 3, 240 pages along the path of Shardik The Bear

Maybe everything you know about addiction is sterile. Maybe, like me, you grew up with addicts whose drug or vice of choice later killed them. Maybe you've read articles or books, or seen two-dimensional movies about "junkies".  Maybe you think Robert Palmer was correct in announcing he was "addicted to love", and you've written your own stories about how being in love is like being addicted to heroin.

We're all wrong sometimes.

After a terrifying prologue where Roland, the protagonist from The Gunslinger, has The Worst Day At The Beach Ever, Stephen King brings the story to 1980s New York, and begins one of the greatest fictional works on addiction that I've read. It's neither romanticized, nor condemned. It's just a story about crime and addiction. 

While the mob, and the police portions of the story are intriguing, and probably thoroughly researched (or else he just pilfered from the best crime movies and tv shows), there is no doubt that he Knows addiction. 

If you can read The Prisoner part of the book, and honestly believe you are "addicted to playing Candy Crush", please Never Talk To Me.

Can you love a person who saved you if you know that the act of saving you was necessary for them to save themselves?

Can you love a person who takes you away from everything you've ever known, even if everything you've ever  known was toxic?

Should you try and save a person you don't love merely because they once saved you?

This section shouldn't work. Stephen King has proven repeatedly that he doesn't understand how to write women or people of color. The idea of a white dude in the 1980s writing about a woman of color having Dissociative Identity Disorder in such a way that part of her is a rich, refined political activist, and the other is an angry delusional woman who speaks like a racist parody of a Black Woman is troubling. It will probably bother you right up to the point where her speech is explained. It may still bother you after that point. I don't know your life. But I was relieved and satisfied by the way the story explained it, in a manner that Stephen King books do not always relieve or satisfy me with their justifications.

This section, too, is a story of addiction and crime, but told in a very different fashion,from a very different perspective. I was surprised how much I enjoyed it.

Can you love someone you can never trust?

Can you love someone who seems to be two different people?

Is there love at first sight?

Can you love two people who hate each other?

What if they are in the same body?

If you need another person to feel whole, are you a person worth loving?

Did-a-chuck?

A friend of several of my friends has a tragic addiction story. After a particular trauma, they ended up in the hospital with a not so promising chance of survival. The family came for support. The friends who had tried to keep them clean came for support. The acquaintances who wished they'd been better at seeing the impending trauma came for support. It was a community effort of people supporting the victim and each other.

Then the person who supplied the instruments of trauma came for support, and a wise friend of the victim chased them out of the hospital before the family of the victim murdered him.

It takes a strong person to protect The Pusher, be it a drug dealer, a loanshark, a domestic abuser. The Pusher is the person who sets someone else on a path of ruin. Be it someone who knowingly destroys the life of someone who loves them, or a complete stranger who just enjoys hurting people. Often, the person who does this is given a tragic backstory to explain their behavior.  I appreciate that King does not waste time on The Pusher in this book. He is not to be pitied, or explained. He is a terrible part of life who has repeatedly hurt people Roland cares about. And he is dealt with.

Remember in middle or high school when you had to read a book that had been made into a movie? How you could get The Cliff Notes and watch the movie and fake your way through 80% of the class discussion? That shit won't fly here.

Creepy twin girls? Not in the book. Elevator full of blood? Not in the book. All Work And No Play Make Homer Go Something Something? Not in the book. Hedge maze? Nope. Jack Nicholson axing his way through the bathroom door? Not so much. 

If you've seen the movie, but not read the book, you may wonder at the wasps  in the above picture. Read the book. 

The Shining is not the Oh Shit Jack Nicholson Is A Scary Trucker Fucker Horror Story you might expect. In fact, the best parts of the book focus on a young couple doing their best to stay together when divorce seems like the healthiest option. It's about last chances, and staying together for a child. It's about how even when you conquer your biggest failings, they will always be a part of your life that you can't forget or forgive yourself for. It's about being human. And not in that Watch These Poor Humans Get Slaughtered way that you expect from horror.

I read this, originally, when I was in high school, and had zero memory of how much of the story takes place before they even get to the hotel. I didn't remember any part of the book taking place outside the hotel, at all. And while the crux of the book is being isolated in a hotel in winter, there are quite a few scenes where you, the reader, are let loose from the hotel, assured that there still exists a world outside the frozen wasteland of The Overlook.

I devoured the beginning of this book, and began to be less and less invested as The Overlook overtook the narrative. I didn't want to watch the supernatural unravel the family, as they were doing such  good job unraveling on their own. But when the slow unraveling gave way to The Great Unraveling, I was back to devouring it.  

Stray observations:

--The first time I read this, I was on break from school, and my family was staying at a hotel in Maine. It added a nice extra creepy layer to the experience, even though we were far from the only people in the hotel, and my father doesn't know how to play roque.

--I also saw the movie for the first time in high school, but don't remember it too clearly. As it was part of a Nicholsonfest where we also watched One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and The Witches Of Eastwick.

--The only time I rewatched the movie was in 2009, when I was heavily tripping. Going into the movie, I was afraid of having some horrible mental breakdown during the more horrific scenes, but I ended up spending the entirety of the movie mesmerized by how cool the carpets were in The Overlook Hotel. I didn't interact with the plot at all.

--I read just about all of the 679 pages of this book on the trip back and forth to work, or at night while cooking. That brings the total of pages read for this project  to 2,570. That's over Two Bibles, and this journey is way less likely to turn you into a preachy jerkface.

In September, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books. ​

Part 4 involved reading one of my least favorite Stephen King books, The Eyes Of The Dragon, which, sadly, I did not gain an appreciation for as I've aged. I hoped that The Gunslinger, the book that starts the official Dark Tower series, was as appealing to me as it was when I first read it. Short answer: No, BUT I enjoyed parts of it even more than I remembered. So, The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.

 I haven't seen the movie. I don't know that I ever want to see the movie But I will probably see the movie. 

Stephen King movies are not known for their excellence. Even so, the reviews for The Gunslinger movie were pretty terrible. The movie that's been inside my head since I first read it was so good that I don't want to have to reconcile it.

I don't think the first section of the book,  "The Gunslinger", has aged particularly well in either my memory or in the world of pop culture. The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. is still a great opening line. And the scenes that focus on Roland and his journey through the desert still resonate.  The man with the raven scenes are great, but the focus of the first section, the flashback to Roland's time in Tull is a little grueling to read.

Like in The Stand, King's use of Christianity is clumsy and hard to read. I think, if King and I ever had a conversation, we'd agree on how we see Christianity, but I hate reading about it from his perspective. And that made the climax of the Tull flashback very difficult to read, as well as the final section, "The Gunslinger And The Man In Black".

But "The Way Station", "The Oracle And The Mountains", and "The Slow Mutants" is Stephen King at his best.  A Westernish fantasy tale (not scifi, this is straight post-apocalyptic fantasy) about coming of age in a dystopian society. Roland in a timeless barony that resembles The American West myths, and a boy he meets named Jake, who was in the process of coming of age in 1980's New York. The story of their fast forming bond, and their sharing of their upbringings and how they came to meet is worth rereading several times. Unlike the religious sections, King is able to express much of his character's intentions and personality through dialogue and plot developments.  The words in the three middle sections of the book seem as scarce as paper in Roland's world. There are no unnecessary adjectives, and the moral decisions don't involve religion just common human decency vs. the desire to achieve long-term goals.

Stray observations:

-- As I mention in the original post about reading this chronology, try and track down a printing of this book from before 2003. King decided to revamp The Gunslinger in 2003, and those his tweaks seem small, they do change your perspective on Roland. He appears to be trying to make Roland more heroic by giving him a more moral reason for his actions in Tull. Fuck that noise. You should know right from the get-go that Roland is willing to do anything to get to The Dark Tower. That he is mostly a hero is an accident of fate. From the outset of this series he was ruthless in his devotion to the quest, and King shouldn't have changed that anymore than George Lucas should have had edited New Hope so that Greedo shot first, or suggested that The Force wasn't a religious thing, but a scientific force that depended on midifuckenchlorians. Sometimes someone becomes heroic by doing shitty things for what they imagine is a noble purpose. I think the story is much more powerful when it doesn't give Roland a way to feel justified.

-- Forget a movie, the Roland/Jake/Man In Black portion of this book should have been a mini-series or part of a long-form television series. It's such a cool way to explore Roland's humanity, and the ability to crossover between worlds that is essential to the upcoming The Drawing Of The Three.

-- You really should read the first section, "The Gunslinger" for continuity purposes, and for the good parts. But feel free to skip "The Gunslinger And Man In Black" entirely, it's mostly just King being unnecessarily grandiose about the world he's building, and foreshadowing the events of The Drawing Of The Three. But it's not necessary, you're going to read the book, do you care that a character in the previous book tells you the major arc of the next book? 

--251 pages is Chump Change once you've flown through The Stand and suffered through The Eyes Of The Dragon, right? We're 1,891 pages closer to The Dark Tower than we were when we started.

In September,  I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books. ​

In a helpful accident, the next portion of the Dark Tower chronology is a short story that is back to back with the previous version. I say it's an accident because Everything's Eventual the collection was arranged by shuffling a deck of cards. Lucky happenstance. It's not going to be apparent, even when you are finished that this is a Dark Tower story, but it's A Very Good Stephen King short story, and I found it to be the fastest read int he chronology so far.

I was expected to go to college right out of high school, so I did. But after one terrible semester, I moved back home...ish. I say home...ish because I moved into a condo that my mother owned but did not live in.

I immediately enrolled in the community college near me, and started a series of odd jobs: an after school program, managing a CD store, managing a liquor store, stage managing in a local theater, waiting tables, teaching swimming lessons. I had various spheres of friends who I would occasionally intersect into Venn Diagram parties that were sometimes epically fun, and sometimes just resulted in an epic cleaning project.

I never knew precisely what I was doing, but I always ended up doing something that I found interesting. And apart from a one-day stint as a telemarketer, I never felt morally repulsed by what I had to do for money.

"Everything's Eventual", the title story from this collection follows a high school dropout from his life working a menial job to a morally quagmirous job that allows him to live a comfortable life on his own.

It's not a horror story. It doesn't have a Western or apocalyptic motif. As I said in the preface, you might wonder how this ties into The Dark Tower at all. Trust me. You will see this character again. Eventually.

Unlike in The Eyes Of The Dragon, I don't insert this book into the chronology purely because the character shows up later. I think this is a solid story, and it's tonally different from everything that's come before it, and anything you're going to see for a while. 

If you've ever been young, unsure of what you were doing in your life, and had an opportunity that seems to good to be true dropped into your lap, you will likely identify with a portion of this story. If you haven't, you can probably at least understand being young and doing a questionable job for money. Though, hopefully, not to the extent of Dinky's job.

Stray observations:

-- There are a couple of scenes in this book which could portray a secondary character as creepy. I think it's to King's credit that the protagonist tells the reader straight up that he understands how the action could be perceived as creepy, but it wasn't creepy to him. It's especially helpful since the protagonist is problematic about sexuality in a total believable suburban teenager in the late 20th/early 21st century way. Unlike the racist language in The Stand, the problematic language is spare and is clearly to illustrate that this protagonist is not a piece-of-shit homophobe, he's just ignorant and has zero world experience.

-- If I had the power this kid has, and was offered the life that this job offers, I would probably have taken it, too. I, too, was an idiot when I was a teenager.

-- I'm slightly annoyed at how long it's going to be before this story is super relevant to the chronology, but trust me, it's best to read this now since it starts the page after "The Little Sisters Of Eluria", and reinforces that there are going to be powers in this universe. It's highly suggested that there regular humans have some powers in The Stand, but this is a very specific power that will be an important part of the later Dark Tower books. 

--Pffft....54 pages? That's the shortest hop yet. We're 1,640 pages into this beast. But who's counting?

In September,  I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books. ​

When I created the chronology, I placed The Gunslinger as part 5, with "The Little Sisters Of Eluria" as part 6, a flashback. But, upon reading both of them, I think Little Sisters Of Eluria" is a better introduction to Roland. So, here we are, part 5, and it's time to meet to meet our protagonist. 

During my writing about The Stand, and coming back when I talk about The Gunslinger (I read it in my originally intended order, and started to write about it before composing this entry), I mention that I don't enjoy Stephen King's relationship to religion, particularly Christianity. It's usually exhausting, as he over-examines the importance of that particular Childrens' Book Club For Frightened Bigots.

And yet, "The Little Sisters Of Eluria" (from his short story collection, Everything's Eventual) is, at its heart, a story about using the symbolism of Christianity to overcome evil. And I like it. I don't love it. But I like it more than Mother Abigail's role in The Stand.

Like most of The Gunslinger, this is a Western motif with just a tinge of fantasy. Gunslinger finds a ghost town, but it's not as it seems. It's the premise of a thousand movies that my father watches on cable. It's also mercifully brief at sixty-six pages (throw a pinch of salt over your shoulder and show the sigul of the evil eye).

Because it's short, and because I never intend to give plot recaps or spoilers, I'll simply say that this is a better introduction to Roland than The Gunslinger, not because it's better written, but because it's significantly briefer, and I think it's important to get a glimpse of Roland now before we take another, also very brief, detour to see how The Dark Tower interacts with our world.

Stray observations:

--I enjoy that many of the allusions in this story read as foreshadowing in this continuity, though they were written as fan service, since this book came out between Wizard And Glass and Wolves Of Calla. 

--The brevity of this story seems so necessary after the previous two books. Enjoy it. While I don't think any of the other books are as long as The Stand, they're not short stories, either.

--This tiny morsel brings our Total Page Count on this journey to 1,586. A breeze!

I tell you this because I care. The solace we take from speaking calmly to children is not reciprocal. We imagine the wide eyes of toddlers when we yell as fear of volume. But it is only fear of consequences. Should you calmly explain to the niece or nephew who just dropped your indoor cat from your second story window to see if it would land on its feet, that the next time (s)he touches your cat with any intention other than petting, you will cut out the child's eyes and serve them to their parents as vitreous soup, they will be much more filled with wide-eyed terror than if you scream "No TV Or Internet For A Week, You Little Monster!" at full volume.

It's never about volume. 

When I was eleven, and terrified of horror movies, I got heavily into the work of Stephen King, so my mostly calm parents, my don't-shield-him-from-horror parents, my encourage-him-to-read-whatever-he-wants-because-he's-at-least-reading-more-than-his-idiot-friends parents, my last-year-it-was-judy-blume-maybe-next-year-it-will-be-tolstoy parents bought me the latest Stephen King paperback, The Eyes Of The Dragon.

I hated it.

As you, dear reader, doubtlessly know, writers who speak to children in hushed tones are often speaking in condescension. Should I explain this further? Many writers imagine children, not their own, mind you, but others' children, are stupid. They believe their writing should be as plain and calmly intoned as possible to help educate the child reader . By spelling out every plot point by having the protagonist's sidekick repeat the lesson that the reader has, no doubt, already inferred, in conversation to another character, the writer feels they have accomplished two things. One: the child has learned the lesson because it was  echoed at them. Two: If a parent is reading the story to the child, they will be subconsciously annoyed by the repetition of the lesson, and it will stick in their brain, so that they feel the need to discuss that point with the child, if they somehow manage to stay awake through the reading.

Stephen King is not a writer who aims his books at children. At eleven, I was unlikely to be who he imagined as his ideal reader for It, Cujo, Salem's Lot, and The Shining. But he wrote the Eyes Of The Dragon for his daughter. A girl. Someone around my age when I read the book. This book was written for someone in my demographic, and thus should have been my favorite.

I hated it.

I could not, and did not, gentle reader, express why I hated The Eyes Of The Dragon when I was eleven. I do not remember how many pages my eyes traversed before I put the book on my shelf. I don't believe I ever told whichever parent bought me the book, that I found it boring. That it did not interest me to read it further.

As an adult, I can share with you the truth. The Eyes Of The Dragon is a somewhat interesting premise for a thirty page fairy tale. This is the kind of story you should tell your child in an hour. It is not The Lord Of The Rings. Nor The Hobbit. 

There is, of course, an exercise commonly given to writers where you condense a story into Cliff Notes. It's part of the Murder Your Darlings school of editing. And King, as frequent murderer of fictional characters, should more have embraced this practice in his creation of The Eyes Of the Dragon, and presented us with a short story, instead of a novel.

Again, I have conversed with several friends who proclaim that The Eyes Of The Dragon is one of, if not their absolute, favorite novels of Stephen King. I mean those people's opinions no shade. Some people enjoy being condescended to. Or, mayhap, they read this book when they were young, and used to being spoken down to, and it reminds them of a time when they were safely coddled. They are welcome to this retreat. I, too, enjoy some children's books that I read as a child, that I probably would not have enjoyed if I'd first encountered them as an adult. 

So, if I, as an adult who is creating a chronology where I am in complete control, did not enjoy this book, whyfor am I recommending you read it? Merely because your taste in writing may differ? As a palette cleanser for the epicly long, more adult-focused apocalyptic The Stand, which you have just finished reading before making it this far?

I leave you to provide the answer at your discretion. Assume you know me well enough to be correct.

I have mostly included it because the villain of the book is Randall Flagg, also the villain of The Stand, which I mentioned earlier. He has the same powers, and the same agenda, but now, instead of being in a disease ravaged twentieth century America, he is in a fairy tale land of kings and baronies. Instead of crucifying his betrayers on the lampposts of Las Vegas, he has them beheaded in the main square. He is still as cunning, as red eyed, and mysterious as The King's Magician, as he was as The Walking Dude. And, just like in The Stand, we don't spend nearly as much time with him as we do with the much less interesting characters who surround him.

I know you are eager to get to The Dark Tower. You wonder why we are two books in and have met A Roland, but not The Roland who will serve as The Dark Tower's protagonist. Why even bother with this world of The Eyes Of The Dragon.

The answer is simple. This book takes place in Roland's world. Some of the language King uses in The Dark Tower series sneaks in. Characters you will not see for several books are casually referenced. Devices that will not be used for thousands of more pages of this chronology, are seen. Their import not quite yet understood. It is the building of a world, and, while it was excruciating for me, it is well loved enough by others for me to believe you would benefit from knowing this story.

There are, over the course of the three hundred pages, several promises by the narrator that we will encounter certain characters again. At the end of this book, you might be tempted to believe that Thomas and Dennis's quest is the journey to The Dark Tower that we will be following. Alas, this will be the last we hear of them. It is time for us to join The Roland on the main quest. 

Place this bedtime tale on your nightstand, and give its protagonists no more of your thoughts. Be familiar enough in the world presented here to travel A Bit East and join a more adult crew. Go, now. There are better worlds than this.

Stray observation:

--at only 367 pages, this book was just about 1/3 the length of The Stand, but felt three times as long, bringing us to a total of 1,520 pages of Randall Flagg so far.

Last month, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books. ​

You made it! You're 1,000 pages into the longest book on the list, and you finally have a vague idea of what The Stand actually is. It's a typo. This whole post-apocalyptic plague story is about the origin of the Nu-Metal rock group, Staind. As rock related merchandising goes, it's at least better than Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park.

Everyone good is flawed. Everyone evil is flawed. Nobody is as good a spy as they imagine when they watch espionage films. Having sex with someone you don't care about, just because you're lonely and don't like your neighbors won't necessarily get you killed, but it's not going to make either of you feel better in the long run. Everything's cyclical. Fanaticism will get you killed every time, no matter whether or not you think you or the focus of your devotion is benevolent, or lets you get away with your sinful behavior.

The last third of The Stand is much like the first third, in that it's a road trip story. Only this time, instead of a bunch of survivors journeying to stay alive, it's a bunch of survivors who all assume they're traveling towards their death. And they're not all wrong. 

Having read this at very different parts of my life, I want you to know it's not a book with a satisfying ending (and I don't mean the tiny epilogue, which you should actually skip entirely), but I think it's the right ending for a story like this. I don't think it will make you angry or sad. It's just not a blockbuster ending, even though the beginning of the book seems to be setting up a blockbuster event. 

There is, finally, a ton of Randall Flagg in this section. You get a peek at some of his villainous potential, and some of his fallibility. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, there's a short epilogue that shows you what happens to Flagg post-The Stand. SKIP IT. It's 20th century well-intentioned, maybe, racist, and in the the story of this chronology, completely irrelevant. If I were editing the books for this chronology, it would be one the two hundred or so pages I'd chop out. I'd replace it with the first chapter of the next book, The Eyes Of The Dragon, to give it that Nightmare On Elm Street ending that Randall Flagg sort of earns.


Stray observations:

--It never gets easier in a post-apocalyptic world, huh? "Oh no, almost everyone is dead. What should we do now? Kill more people? OK!"

--Stephen King was really figuring out his voice in this book. In many ways, I enjoy the way he writes in this book more than his work from when he was a more Established Writer, and certainly more than his current status as a Legendary Writer. I'm certainly going to miss his voice in the next book.

--While not every agnostic character makes it out of this book alive, NONE of the religious people do.  And given how all of the religious people behave, whether they worship God, Satan, Mother Abigail, Randall Flagg, themselves, or agnosticism (never get high on your own farts), I highly approve of clearing them all off the board.

--This book was only 1,153 pages from cover to cover. A breeze. And there's only twenty or so more books to go, right?

Last month, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books. 

I know this seems a little early to say, but if you can make it through this section, you can make it through the whole chronology, as this is a long trudge through world building between an amazing first section of an epic, and the actual action of the third act. I ended up skipping some chunks of this section, and you can to, without fear that you're missing any part of the Dark Tower journey.

Voiceover: Meet Randall Flag. He's just a regular guy in a regular world. 

(A guy wearing jeans and cowboy boots shrugs at the camera.)

Voiceover: Until one wacky summer when the American government accidently unleashes a supervirus killing billions of people, and the American survivors start to see him as Our Dark Lord, Satan.

(Guy In Jeans And Cowboy Boots's eyes turn red.)

Voiceover: It's like The Hangover but instead of a bunch of bachelors, it's hardened criminals doing community service by having to rebuild Las Vegas in a post apocalyptic world, while a bunch of hippies follow a crazy religious lady from Nebraska to Colorado.

(A pregnant lady, a filthy teenager, a kid holding a knife, a woman with a white streak in her hair, a guy holding a guitar and wearing sunglasses, a sixty year old professory type, and an average Joe are all playing hackey sack when a Very Old Black Woman shows up...a record scratches)

I don't think I ever watched the first TV miniseries version of The Stand, and I definitely haven't seen the remake, but I imagine they mainly skipped this second section. There are some necessary plot points to get us to the third section of the book, but there's also a ton of Mother Abigail backstory and a focus on religion that you, thankfully, don't find in most Stephen King books. 

Scott Woods has a whole lecture on Stephen King's Magical Negro Problem, and that trope
is in full force in this book, as Mother Abigail is really given no depth, except that she's old, and people were really racist to her when she was young. Oh, and she thinks God has been speaking through her, and that's why she was Freddy Kruegering people in the first section of the book.

I skipped most of the chapters that focused on her. It was clear that, since she was one hundred and (mutters under breath) at the beginning of the book that she probably wasn't going to make it to the end, why bother getting to know her? We want to know more about this Randall Flagg guy, and how he convinced The Bad Survivors Of the Plague to go to Vegas and help him. And we get some perspective on that, but not enough.

What I like about the dividing up of people between Randall Flagg ad Mother Abigail is that it's not actually Good People vs. Bad People, it's mostly Efficient People vs. Dreamers. Everyone is flawed, and most people mean well. The people who don't mean well are in Vegas AND Boulder, and neither Flagg nor Mother Abigail really know their motives, which speaks to a more humanist view than the religious Good Vs Evil trope that's being set up for The Stand. And we still don't know what The Stand is or will be in this section of the book.

This is the longest section of the book, and it feels like it, at over 500 pages. As I said in the intro, if you can make it through this, you can make it through the whole chronology. It's not bad writing, it's just not as fun and attention-grabbing as the first section, and it's not as consequential as what follows, but you do get some quality time with Randall Flagg, who's going to be with us to the bitter end of this journey.

Stray observations:

--I really did skip through most of the Mother Abigail story. It's tedious, and is clearly a White Dude from Maine trying to write about the difficulties of growing up a Black child in the midwest, and that's not what Stephen King is known for. Nor should it be what he's known for.

--Don't ever get too attached to anyone who seems like they might be a protagonist in this book. It will blow up in your face.

--Who says this chronology is long? We're already 2 parts in, and it's only 927 pages so far.

Last month, I suggested a reading order for the extended universe of Stephen King's The Dark Tower, a series I loved, but hadn't read any of since Volume 7: The Dark Tower came out in 2004. I realized that I missed the characters from the series, and wondered if the reading order I suggested would really hold someone's interest all the way through. I scoured some local bookstores, and then the internet for the hardcovers of the books, and prepared for my quest to read a Super Long series of books. 

I've spent most of the last decade reading poetry collections and graphic novels, rarely investing my time in long form fiction, even though it's what originally got me into reading. I tried doing this with the Terry Pratchett novels a couple of years ago, but ended up distracted, so wish me luck. M-O-O-N that spells luck.

Artie Moffa tells the story of how, when he was a middle schooler, he got guilted into reading The Stand by a shopkeeper. And since he never read Needful Things, we don't know for certain if it was Leland Gaunt: Just read this book while you are at summer camp, young Mr. Moffa, and steal a radio for me, and you shall have the finest shoes for the rest of your days. Just don't take them dancing until you've broken them in.

I was already versed in Stephen King by the time I got to The Stand, I read it back to back with Les Miserables, which, while definitely not written by Stephen King, is almost precisely the same length. The length of the last hour of school before a dentist visit. The length of years it would take to watch every episode of the Star Trek franchise, The Simpsons, the Law & Order franchise, the Doctor Who Franchise, and Guiding Light while taking only occasional breaks to eat, use the restroom, and convince yourself not to bash your head into the television until it stops working forever. Except longer.

The only reason The Complete And The Uncut Version Of The Stand is readable is because of the first section. It does what every sci-fi, apocalyptic, horror, autofictional,  romance, fantasy, historical novel should aspire to do: it draws you in with its opening chapter, and then makes every chapter that follows feel like it's also a first chapter.  If I were going to teach a class on modern fiction, I would probably spend two weeks just on the first book of The Stand, which is The Circle Opens.  From a storytelling perspective, it's perfect (from a modern sociological standpoint, it needs a lot of work). It's so good that the perfectly fine second and third acts of the book seem to be enormous letdowns in comparison.

The opening four hundred pages of the hardcover edition tell the story of The End Of The World As We Know It (where not many people feel fine). But the plot and the characters of the first book are mostly inconsequential to the Dark Tower narrative, they're just part of a Very Good Story that ever so slightly involves Randall Flagg, The Walking Dude, a man who appears in the dreams of the survivors of  plague. A man who is pretty clearly evil.

In comic books, there is a trope when a series is launched or relaunched (which seems to happen every other year or so with Marvel and DC comics) wherein you meet a cast of characters who are clearly meant to be assembled into a team. Some may not make the grade, and end up as future villains, some will be protagonists, some will come and go from the team, but it's important you meet them early on. That's what The Circle Opens is. Four hundred pages to meet the players and care about them.

It shouldn't work. But it does because of the pacing, the constantly shifting points of view, and the believable characters.

When I made the original post How To Read The Dark Tower If You're A Fucken Masochist, my roommate, a devout Mainer and fan of Stephen King, pointed out that this technically takes place a bit later in the chronology. Several websites would have you read this between Wastelands and Wizard and Glass. DON'T BELIEVE THEM. While there are some great characters in this book, Flagg is the only one who ends up being important to The Dark Tower, so it doesn't make sense, once you are heavily involved in the characters  journey to The Dark Tower, to take you out of the main story for 1400 pages, just to see what the villain did to Mid-World (which is the Stephen King version of our world) in the early 1990s.  But you should read this in order to understand what Flagg is capable of. So do it now. Bask in these first four hundred or so pages, depending on which printing you're reading, of addicting storytelling.

Stray observations:

--Stephen King originally wrote this in the 1970s, and then restructured and retooled it in the 1980s. I would like to think that in the 21st century, the very progressive and socially responsible Stephen King would not have made such gratuitous use of racial slurs. You can argue the importance of having characters of color having to overcome this word, if that's a thing you want to invest time in, but during this first book, the racial slur is aimed at a Very White protagonist to describe his singing style. It is also used as a disparaging type of behavior, though, again, there is precisely One character in the book who's presented as Not White, and she is barely in this first section. Having family from 20th century Maine, I understand that this was the way many people actually talked, but in the context of this first book, it's totally unnecessary, and several times took me out of the otherwise enjoyable story.

--I'm not going to give Content Warnings for any of these books in this chronology. Stephen King doesn't often fuck around. There's going to be violence, murder, sex of the consensual and nonconsensual variety. There is going to be every type of inappropriate language you can imagine. The actions and language are rarely (but occasionally) gratuitous. There is Almost Always context. Neither the non-consensual sex nor the violence is ever glorified. If these are not things you can handle, Stephen King is not going to be on your Holiday Gift Exchange list.

​--We are a meager 394 pages into this journey

1. Don't.

                                                                                            -or-

2. Just read the main books in the proper order: Gunslinger, Drawing Of The Three, Wastelands, Wizard And Glass, Wolves Of Callah, Song Of Susannah, The Dark Tower. 

                                                                                            -or-

1. The Stand: It is sacrilege not to start with the first Dark Tower Book, The Gunslinger. But Stephen King books shouldn't be a religion. Like The Bible, The Quar'an, or Dianetics, Stephen King's bibliography is fictional, full of Very Bad Advice, and includes some concepts about Otherness that are Flat Out Wrong, and Fucked Up in 2017, but you could see how a talented drug addict trying to make ends meet in Maine in the 70s and 80s would have had those Fucked Up ideas.

In my Very Biased rating of Stephen King books, I had this as #9 on my list, so it may seem weird that I say that, technically, this is A Better Book than The Gunslinger, which I placed at #1. 

The main problem with The Stand is that The Complete & Uncut version, which is the one you should read, accept no limitations, is that it is Fucken Long. 1400 pages. The second, almost as main problem is how race is discussed in a way that is totally in line with how someone socially progressive in the 1970s wouldn't realize they were being Fucked Up.  It can be a chore to forgive, just know that King would almost definitely Not Be This Level Of Fucked Up in 2017. And not because he doesn't think that Fucked Uppedness would sell, but because he is, by all accounts, A Man Who Is Trying To Be Better At All Times. He's not your All Lives Matter Uncle on Facebook, he's a product of a time where racism was different, and most white people, particularly in fucken Maine, didn't have progressive discussions of race. 

What makes The Stand great is that almost every chapter  in the first 100 pages or so could be The Opening Chapter. He is constantly introducing new characters or situations that makes it seem like he's starting to tell you a story, so, even though this book is Long, it's paced such that the beginning flies by.

It is heavily tied-in, thematically, with The Dark Tower series. It also introduces one of the main villains. And, again, it's a great story. And it makes sense to start with it. Partly because it's well-told, but partially because it's almost too long to put anywhere else, as it doesn't contain any of the main non-villain character from the series.

2. The Eyes Of The Dragon: Deep inhale.

I haven't read this book all the way through. I haven't tried since I was in high school, and I have a visceral memory of Hating This Book.

This is, however, Firmly Set in the world we encounter in The Gunslinger, but it takes place earlier than The Gunslinger, and Oh Shit, it's the same villain we met in The Stand. Only instead of being in a late 20th century apocalyptic story, it's an epic fantasy about magic and political intrigue in ancient(?) society. So...is this The Future of The Stand?

(Shrugging emoji.)

3. Everything's Eventual:  This is a short story collection, and you do not have to read every part of it. You're on a schedule. I get it. If there is a local or used bookstore near you, you should buy it there. If there is a Barnes & Noble, you should just read a couple of the stories there, and not feel bad about it.  Those robots can mainline a rust smoothie.

The first story you're going to read are "The Little Sisters Of Eleuria". It's a cool pre-Gunslinger introduction to Roland Deschain and his quest for the Tower.

The second story to read is "Everything's Eventual". It will in no way be clear what this has to do with The Dark Tower. Go with it.

4. The Gunslinger: The true, actual beginning of The Dark Tower series is my favorite and, arguably, The Best. It's a Western-themed post-apocalyptic story featuring the main protagonist for The Dark Tower series, as well as introducing some other characters who will turn up later.

The important thing is that you Should Absolutely read the original version of The Gunslinger, not the 2003 re-edit. The re-edit is a George Lucased version of The Gunslinger. King went back and added some effects, changed the motivation of some scenes, and added more Tower Talk (language that he used more and more frequently as the series went on). It's not bad, but it's not how you should read this. Go to the library, go online, find the unaltered version. Trust me. There are Reasons.

5. The Shining:  There are massive differences between the book and the famous movie starring Jack Nicholson. Massive. But at the core of both is a young boy with a power of foresight called The Shining. This power will factor hugely in the quest for The Dark Tower. And at least one character from this book will show up a couple of more times in this chronology.

Fans of the movie should know that the book is more about the crumbling of a marriage and what children understand than it is about the creepy hotel. The hotel is still creepy as Hell, but it's more sinister than just vomiting an elevator of blood.

6. The Drawing Of The Three: Picking up as close as possible to the end of The Gunslinger, this book brings in the rest of The Major Players for the rest of the series. 

It's an 80s crime book, it's a Civil Rights story that deals with mental illness, and it's the story of a little boy who fears he's going crazy. They're all tied together by good old Roland The Gunslinger, who has his own battle at the beginning of the book.


​Everything in this book melds together really well. And the writing in the Roland portion of the story is the tone that the series will mainly feature for the rest of the series.

​7. the first half of Waste Lands: Back to the main characters! Back to the tone set in Drawing Of The Three. This is a straight-up Dark Tower book. No part of it is not vital to The Dark Tower series. I don't like breaking up a book into portions for this list, but this one definitely makes better sense this way.

​8. 'salem's Lot: This is going to seem extraneous. It doesn't feature anyone you've met yet, and it's a damned vampire book. Vampires? Ugh. 

But it's a fun, fast read, and while you will spend the whole book wondering what the fuck this has to do with the Dark Tower series, trust that it will. And not in a minor way. And no, it's not that The Dark Tower ends up being about goddamned vampires.

​9. It: This book is technically not Essential to the Dark Tower books. In fact, if you read It already, or saw the movie, you might be thinking, Why The Fuck Is This Book On The List? Well....there are some parts of It that seem like nonsense if you haven't read The Dark Tower, but it turns out they're all terminology from The Dark Tower universe, and Pennywise has some relatives who are very important to the series, so check it out.

​​10. the second half of The Waste Lands, and then Wizard And Glass: The ending of The Waste Lands was extremely frustrating, as the books were coming out, but they're all out now, so you can Ask yourself "Why Would A Writer Leave Us In The Middle Of The Scene? That Cruel---Oh, I'll just pick up the next volume then."See how easy that was? That cliffhanger? Totally hung. Umm...that's phrased wrong. I just mean that you don't have to sweat the situation they're in because it's right at the beginning of this book. This also begins the practice of some of the previous books that didn't seem so Dark Towery suddenly becoming Very Dark Towery, as we end up in the aftermath of a previous story. There's also some decidedly non-Stephen King books drawn in, but don't worry, you don't need to hunt them down and read them unless you want to, you totally know this stuff.

​11. Hearts In Atlantis: While this doesn't say Part (Whatever) of The Dark Tower series, this is a series of connected novellas that all deal with the mythology of The Dark Tower. It has echoes of "Everything's Eventual", and, at this point, you should figure that these characters are getting drawn into the major story at some point.

This also the most Veitnammy Baby Boomery Porn you're going to experience. But it does serve a higher purpose. The Tower. All Things Serve The Beam. 

(I originally placed the Stephen King/Peter Straub book Black House before this one, but I found Straub's writing incredibly frustrating, and removed it from the list. But if you want to read it, it would have been #11.)

​12. Wind Through The Keyhole: This book is billed as The Dark Tower Book 4.5, as it takes place between Wizard And Glass and Wolves Of Callah. It was written well after the series was wrapped up, and it's mostly an excuse for Stephen King to tell some backstories, as this is essentially Roland telling more of his history to his assembled companions.

On the whole, it's not great, but the story within a story within a story is totally worth it.

​13. Insomnia: Another case of Not Explicitly About The Tower if you haven't read the series, it is Very Clearly a Tower book when you're this far into the series. All Things Serve The Beam, damn it.

14. Doctor Sleep: It's time to revisit with the survivors of The Shining, as their lives are totally hella normal now. Wait, they're not? (Placed here partially for the joy of putting a book about sleep after a book abut insomnia.)

15. Wolves Of Callah: Back to the whole main adventurey quest for the tower that's, you know, the whole point of this. And, hey look, it's characters from those seemingly non-Dark Tower books. Turns out, they Are Important to this story. Cool! Plus, another major non-Stephen King book is tied into The Dark Tower. You don't have to have read it to follow any of what happens in this book. But you've probably read it. Almost definitely. 

​16. The Regulators. It seems cruel to separate Wolves Of The Calla and Song Of Susannah. But there are two books which include Todash monsters (which we've seen in the official Dark Tower series, as well as in It) and take place in mirrored universes of each other. I had originally had The Talisman and Black House on this list as twinned books but I can't get into Peter Straub's writing. Luckily, I have no such problem with Richard Bachman.

18.Song Of Susannah: Picking up directly where Wolves Of Callah left off, we tie into all sorts of past plot points that you might have thought were buried a long time ago (and no, I'm not spoiling a return from the dead, I mean buried plot points, not people or monsters). 

It also really starts to feel like we may actually get to that friggen tower they've been talking about since The Gunslinger.

19. The Dark Tower: Finally. Gods. How long have I been reading this series? We're at the end, though. Hoooo-buddy. So now I present you with a choice. It's an important choice. I don't want to say Matrixy pill choosing because the Racist Pieces Of Shit Currently Ruining Our Country use that analogy, so let's say this is a Kobiyashi Maru.

I have mentioned before that you SHOULD NOT READ THE EPILOGUE. You shouldn't You just shouldn't.

So, if you don't read the epilogue, then this is the end. The quest is over.  Hooray!

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut...if you Do Read The Epilogue, then there's one more book for you to read.

​20. The Gunslinger Revised Edition.

But...but...but you said to...and now...NOW?...but...but.

Yeup. Trust me.

11. Misery:  If this list were based purely on merit, this book should be much higher. It contains actual metaphor. It's about his own life without being as cloying as the self-references are in the later Dark Tower books. And it's probably the most realistic book he's ever written. No magic powers. No inhuman monsters. No mythical wish fulfillment. This is just the story of an author and His Biggest Fan. Which makes it, in many ways, more terrifying than most of his books.

I just don't have any personal anecdotes about it. It's a good book. I read it. I recommend it.

​

12. Nightmares And Dreamscapes: During the conversation that prompted these posts, I admitted that I hadn't read a single book King had put out since The Dark Tower. I had purchased a few, but they sat on a small bookshelf, not so much as glanced at since I bought them.

So I picked up his novella collection, Full Dark No Stars, and after giving each story about twenty pages, decided that it was probably for the best that I wasn't reading his recent stuff. It felt...clumsy. It certainly didn't feel like a Master Storyteller had been anywhere near it. It was basic tropes told poorly about a bunch of two-dimensional characters.

Nightmares And Dreamscapes had made me want to write short stories. These weren't just unpopped kernels of ideas at the bottom of a 1990s air popper. These were delicious bite-sized stories. When I looked at the list of all of Stephen King's works, I didn't remember much about this book other than I Liked It. But all it took was a glance at the table of contents, and I remembered about a dozen of the stories very vividly, and am considering going back and rereading some of them.

13. Pet Semetary: I mention in the very title of this series that none of Stephen King's books gave me nightmares, and that is True. But I have several times dreamed that pets recently buried have come back from the grave to hang out. Luckily, none of them were bloodthirsty zombies.

It's been a while since I've read this, but I don't think it suffers from as many negative tropes as most Stephen King books. And I like the idea of a Magical Mainer much more than King's usual alternatives.

14. Wizard And Glass: I waited forever for this book. The third book stopped practically mid-sentence, and left me hanging for six Fucken Years. And I swore that if this book did the same, I was going to pretend the series stopped with Drawing Of The Three, and never read another Dark Tower book as long as I lived.

While it did begin mid-scene (as it had to), it did offer a complete story, AND it drew one of my favorite non-Dark Tower books, The Stand, into The Dark Tower mythology.

I wasn't reading comics at the time this came out, so I wasn't familiar with Dave McKean, and didn't buy the hardcover with his illustrations.

I was managing a liquor store when I got around to reading this. I have mainly bad memories of this job. But I had recently reconnected with an acquaintance who stopped into the store to hang out with me for a bit, and I was reading this behind the counter when he came in. He wasn't a Stephen King fan, but I mentioned the Wizard Of Oz overtones of this book, and we got into a long discussion about literature and books that we liked, and TV shows. He was still hanging out by closing time, so I bought some beer and Zima (it was the late 90s), and we went back to my house to keep the conversation going. His name was Ryan.

15. Firestarter: This is another book I haven't read in forever. So I'm mostly rating it by my memory of reading it, not by its actual quality.

I read this shortly after reading The Shining, and thought that they were moderately similar. I had the idea that Firestarter should be a sequel to The Shining. Where Danny has met someone else with The Shining/Push, and they have given birth to Charlene. 

It's opening is somewhat similar to the opening of The Stand, in the whole Running Away From A Government Agency That Has Fucked Up And Needs To Contain Or Kill You Before They're Discovered. But I remember The Stand's version vividly, and have only a vague recollection of it in Firestarter.

16. Dolores Claiborne: I bought this at the same bookstore where I was given the autographed copy of Needful Things. I had gone back and forth about whether to buy this book or Gerald's Game (which came out around the same time, and the owners convinced me to buy this one. 

The reason turned out to be that they had a pre-ordered a signed copy of Gerald's Game. I am pleased to report that it was not signed TO me, as that would have been a creepy gift for a fifteen year old.

I *think* I read Gerald's Game first.  You'll note it's not on the list yet. There is a cool moment in both books where a solar eclipse takes place, and the two characters see each other, but that's the only point of crossover that I remember.

Doloros Claiborne is a murder confession given by someone who is defending themselves against a false murder accusation. There's no magic. No monsters. King isn't always great when he writes female protagonists, or when he sets out to tell a monsterless story, but I remember really enjoying this one.

17. Night Shift: This is another collection that I admit, might be much higher on the list if I were to have read all these books as an adult.

I'm pretty sure that I didn't get around to reading this until my senior year of high school.  By that point, I'd seen all of the So Far produced movies and TV episodes based on the short stories in this. And some of my favorite actually short stories (as opposed to novellas) by Stephen King are in here. And, in absolutely every case, the stories are all vastly superior to the movies. Some King adaptations range from Decent to Excellent. But most of the movies that came out of this collection aren't even interesting t watch. But the book is definitely worth reading, particularly if you enjoy very short horror stories.

18.  The Dark Tower: This book is only this high on the list with the following caveat: DON'T READ THE EPILOGUE. It will be tempting. After all, this is the culmination of thousands of pages (probably tens of thousands if you include all the non-Dark Tower books that King also ties into the story) of a story that began so well. And even though there are some Massive Missteps in the series (the cliffhanging ending of Waste Lands, the use of 9/11 as a plot point in Song Of Susannah, the sometimes interesting but sometimes Too Much use of Stephen King as a character in much of the later books), Some of the threads of the series are tied up nicely, and leave a satisfying ending PROVIDED YOU DON'T READ THE EPILOGUE.


This came out during a time when I used Livejournal frequently, and I made a spoilerless rant on my LJ about the end of this book. An acquaintance whose work I admired noted: Stephen King Told You To Put The Book Down And Not Read The Epilogue. Why Didn't You Trust Him?

So, if you're going to invest the time to read this series, tear out the epilogue, burn it, and use the ashes to spice the food of your enemies. DON'T READ IT.

​19. Carrie: Yea, yea, yea. It's a classic. Yea, yea, yea. It's his first book, and it is actually good. It's not as Dated as you might imagine based on some of his other early books.

It's only this low on the list because there have been fifty-seven? movie and television adaptations, and a fucken Broadway fucken musical. 

I read it. It was good. But I don't remember when I read it, or it affecting my life other than my thinking, "Stephen King's first published novel was pretty good. That's cool."

20. Everything's Eventual:  I wasn't sure whether this or Hearts In Atlantis would be the last on my in-depth list. They're both collections of stories rather than novels, they both tie into The Dark Tower series, and I may have read them back to back, smudging my ability to rate them individually. 

In the end, I decided I liked this one better purely because of the way each of them is set up. 


Hearts In Atlantis has a lot of  Vietnam-era nostalgia that appeals more to Baby Boomers than anyone else. I understand its importance and influence over American culture in the late 20th century, but TV and movies and books were inundated with the material so much that writing a Great Book About Vietnam in the 21st century is akin to writing A New Take On Vampires, or A Non-Problematic Story About A Woman Being Raped As Written By A Man. It's possible, but statistically unlikely.

Hearts In Atlantis is also a mostly chronological tale of interweaving stories while Everything's Eventual, according to King, was arranged by shuffling a deck of cards, with each story being represented by a different card.

While only one of the stories in Everything's Eventual is directly tied to The Dark Tower, it's an important story, and would be worth reading on its own.

Other books by Stephen King which I read and either enjoyed, or, at least, didn't hate, are Hearts In Atlantis, Four Past Midnight, Tommyknockers, From A Buick 8, Bag Of Bones, Wastelands, Wolves Of Callah, Song Of Susannah, Insomnia, and Cujo.

Books I couldn't get into at all: Eyes Of The Dragon, The Talisman, Christine, Green Mile.

Books I read all the way through that were So Awful I Was Angry: Dreamcatcher, The Regulators, Desperation, Rose Madder, Cycle Of The Werewolf, Gerald's Game.

Underappreciated literary connoisseur, Scott Woods, has warned that he is putting together his rated guide to the complete works of Stephen King. This has been inspired by the release of the new adaptation of It, which I was invited to go see last night, and which I have also been invited to see tonight but which I'm not likely to get to any time soon.

I'm not a horror guy. Or a fast rides guy. Or a Haunted House guy. But I've read every twentieth century, and most of the early twenty-first century books. And since The Esteemed Mr. Woods has me pondering whether or not to read any of the more recent books, or whether I might want to revisit some of the classics, I present you with the first ten choices from  my own rating guide.It's highly subjective, and attached to my memories surrounding the book, as well as the books' literary merit. Caveat emptor.

1. The Gunslinger: My dad's second wife was a lifelong Stephen King fan. She read every book when it came out. Except the Dark Tower books. She refused to read the series until it was finished. I was about seventeen when we had our first conversation about King's work, and I asked how she knew The Gunslinger was going to be the sprawling epic it became, and she admitted that she didn't. But by the time she remembered that she wanted to read it, The Drawing Of The Three had come out, and that's when she made her pledge. 

​I was in junior high when  first read The Gunslinger. I wrote a series of poems about it, the first of which was plagiarized by one of my friends who went to a different school. When, the next year, we attended the same school, and I read my poem at an open mic, an hour after he'd read the same poem at an earlier session of the open mic, we were hauled into the principal's office where I wept like an ill-tended wound at the betrayal, and he called me a liar. The teacher who'd run the open mic told us neither of us should ever submit it to the school lit journal, and we should forget about the poem and work on our friendship. That was the only year I went to that school.

Unlike some other epics, the original version of this book (I haven't read any of the subsequent rereleases, and don't care to) was a self-contained story unlike any of King's other works, and I treasured it, and reread it every time a new volume of The Dark Tower came out, and sometimes reread it on its own. I've read the graphic novel adaptation, and will probably see the movie, though I have very low expectations for it. 

2. Different Seasons: Arguably, Stephen King's most literary collection. Three out of the four stories in this book have been made into films. Two of them: Stand By Me (based on "The Body"), and Shawshank Redemption (based on "Rita Hayworth And The Shawshank Redemption") are excellent. One of them: Apt Pupil, based on the story of the same name, is Not At All Watchable.

I don't remember whether I watched Stand By Me before I read "The Body", but I probably did. I definitely read this before Shawshank Redemption.

I don't have many specific memories of the first time I read this book. I bought it from a bookstore that I'll write about more in-depth later. And I remember the owners asking me about it the next week.

Whatever I said must have impressed them because every time I went into the store after that, one or both of them would ask me why I was picking certain books, and how I was liking them. It didn't feel invasive, or like they were market testing me. They seemed really interested in this strange kid who would wander around their store and always buy something while his parents were in the grocery store.

3. The Drawing Of The Three: Still high off the fumes of The Gunslinger, I went and picked up The Drawing Of  The Three, the second part of The Dark Tower. Like The Gunslinger, it's a complete story. But, despite some character overlap, it feels like an entirely different genre. It's a fantasy book when we're in Roland's world. It's a 1980s crime book when he encounters The Prisoner. It's story about schizophrenia and civil rights, two things Stephen King doesn't write very well but he's slightly successful with in this volume....slightly,  when he meets The Lady Of The Shadows. And it's a coming of age with mental illness story in The Pusher. 

While this is more traditionally Stephen-Kingy than The Gunslinger, it's still a fun read, and it made me want more of this series. It's the last book of the series that I consider Truly Great. 

The second time I read it was just before The Waste Lands came out, and I was So Full Of Hope for what it would be. You'll note that it's not next on the list.

4. The Shining: I can't be the only person who read the book before I saw the movie. I love them both independently of each other.  I saw the movie for the first time in high school, when the dorm I lived in had a Jack-Nicholson Is Crazy-thon watching Batman, A Few Good Men, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, cna capping it off with The Shining. Narratively, I would have had a Few Good Men leave the disgraced general to go to The Overlook Hotel and experience The Shining, where he's rescued at the end and redeemed into One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, but that doesn't hold, and BOOM he's the Joker in Batman.


The most recent time I saw the movie was one of the last times I did hallucinogens, and I was slightly worried about how the film would affect me, but I ended up spending the entire time staring at the hotel's carpets, and missed the plot entirely.

The scene that terrified me in the book that never made it into the movie was the wasps' nest.  As a kid who played outside a lot, and was stung repeatedly, I had difficulty reading this part. I was completely convinced it would give me nightmares, but it didn't. It reminded me of a nature trail in my town that we would field trip to every year or so. In the museum/gift shop there was an empty wasp's nest that terrified me.  As an adult, I took a date to the nature trail, and he Stepped In A Digger Wasp's Nest right in front of me. I have an old poem about this which is absolutely true. The wasps landed in his hair, and buzzed around him but left me alone (as a contrast, when I was twelve, I stepped in a yellowjacket nest on the ground, and, despite running faster than my compatriots, was the only person who was stung...and I was stung Quite A Bit).

So this book should have utterly terrified me, but I actually enjoyed it as a character study rather than a horror book. I thought about it when, the February Vacation after I read it, my family spent a week in a quiet (but not empty) hotel in Maine.  

This book has a lot of flaws, but it captivated me when I was younger, and it's flaws (mainly the Magical Negro trope) were done out of ignorance, not malice, and I'm willing to excuse them in his earlier works in a way that I can't when the time came that he Should Have Known Better.

5. It: This was the first book I ever read by Stephen King. My family was on our way to vacation in Florida, and my parents were willing to buy anything to keep me entertained. The problem was that I'd read all the children and young adult books in the airport store, so I picked up It.

This must have amused them. I'd been terrified of Gremlins, and Nightmare On Elm Street, and the horror movies that my friends liked. I was ten and had no room in my life for horror. During this vacation, I would cement my fear of roller coasters on Disney's Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. But I read that book from cover to cover.


I hadn't finished it during vacation, so I brought it in to read during Reading Time. The girls in my class noticed it first, and said there was Sex Stuff in it (I knew!) and I shouldn't read it, so the told my teacher, Miss Markarian. She asked what my parents would think of me reading such a book. And I told her they bought it for me. Thus, she let me read it in class, but wouldn't let me allow anyone else to borrow it.

The sex parts didn't really interest me. Nor was I mature enough to understand that The Losers Club was a bunch of traumatized kids from a community not unlike mine. The appeal of a group of outsiders facing some cosmic monster that was sometimes a spider and sometimes a clown fascinated me. It wasn't until I read it as an adult when I went "Uhh...why are these kids having a gangbang to celebrate killing a monster? This is...kind of messed up." As a kid, it flew right over my head.

6. The Dark Half was the second Stephen King book I ever finished. I wrote a ton of short stories and journaled fairly religiously when I was a kid. So the idea that you could excise a part of you that created a type of art you were uncomfortable with fascinated me.


I think my parents assumed that my choosing It had been a fluke of availability, so they were probably a little taken aback when I bought this the year it came out.

​
I had tried The Eyes Of The Dragon and  The Talisman between It and Dark Half, and I believe my parents thought the books had been too frightening for me. Actually, they both bored me. This was the book that made me pick up Dead Zone and The Gunslinger, and  follow down the dark, winding road of Stephen King books.

7. Needful Things: I haven't gone back and reread this since I was a teenager. 

There was a book store that opened up in the plaza where my parents did their grocery shopping when I was fourteen. It's where I bought Misery, Tommyknockers, Different Seasons, The Stand, and Four Past Midnight. 

I wasn't their first ever customer, but I think I was the first Avid Reader Kid they encountered. It was a British couple who owned the store, and they loved talking to me. And they loved how much money I spent there, as I didn't JUST buy Stephen King books there.


One week, I was feeling pretty down. I had gone into the pet store to check out hamsters, and at some point, I'd picked up a shaker full of fish food for my aquarium and stuffed it in my pocket, not realizing I hadn't paid for it until I was out in the parking lot. I was shook, and trying to figure out what to do. I loved that pet shop and not only didn't want to get caught shoplifting from them, I didn't want them to lose money from my mistake. So I went into the bookstore to figure out my next step.

The woman saw me come in and said "Oh good, you're here! I have a present for you." and went into the back.

I was expecting the cops to come out and drag  me out in cuffs.

Instead, she handed me an autographed copy of Stephen King's new book Needful Things. It wasn't just autographed. It was personalized. To me. She and her husband had been at a book convention, had the opportunity to meet him, and had him sign a book to me. I cried So Hard.

I did get a little skeezed out reading the book when it turned out to be a shop owner who trades people their desires in exchange for "mysterious deeds". I wondered what they wanted from me.

The next week I went in, bought some more books, and also sneakily returned the unopened fish food to the pet store and then purchased it.

There is a creepy dream sequence involving a twelve year old boy's sexual relationship with one of his teachers that inspired me to write several Also Creepy erotic short stories that, thankfully, have been lost forever and ever.

8. 'salem's Lot: My confession for this book is that I didn't finish it the first time I read it. I had been reading The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice (which was a trilogy at that point) and I decided I didn't care about vampire stories. 

So, shortly after vampires were revealed to be a part of this book, I stopped reading it.

I didn't pick it back up until I was reading Wolves Of Callah over a decade later, and they referenced one of the characters from 'salem's Lot, so I put that book down and went back and actually read 'salem's Lot and loved it in a way I might not have as a teenager, even if I'd bothered finishing it.



I'm not big on religion in the same way that I'm not super into vampire stories. But I love a good Loss Of Faith tale, particularly when it's not resolved. 

I spent about an hour talking about this book with a roommate who didn't read very often, but had read 'salem's Lot as a teenager, and had a lot of thoughts about it. I convinced him he should read The Dark Tower series, ad he initially liked it, but got bored during the fourth book, and so never made it to see how 'salem's Lot came into play.

9. The Stand: I read this the same summer I read Les Miserables. Those were, The Only Books I Read That Summer. In a parallel universe, I am still reading this book. M-O-O-N that spells Fucken Long Ass Book.

There are a ton of tropes in this book that I didn't pick up when I was a teenager. That's probably for the best.

What I loved was the world building, and I remember being surprised that when I finished reading this, I still wanted More.


So when The Dark Tower series crossed over into the world that The Stand had set up, I was overjoyed. It was when I first realized that King was building a Universe. Sure, a bunch of his earlier books had taken place in the same towns (usually in Maine), but this was Different. Something amazing was happening in The Dark Tower, and it was going to be tied into this book that I had wanted to be Somehow Longer.

I was also considering becoming a Deaf Education Major, and working with Deaf Children when this book came out, so I was excited that there was a Deaf character in this book. I remember explaining that to a Deaf friend and having him reply by making the Universal Whoopty-Doo sign with his index finger.

10. The Dead Zone:  If I've learned anything from comic books and Stephen King novels, it's that Having Powers sucks. There's always some cosmic or karmic price tag. "Oh, hey, you can see terrible things in the future, but that power is slowly killing you, and you only realized you had it after a prolonged coma." Yeesh.

I think much of why I liked this was that I was just beginning to distrust politicians as I was reading this, and the idea that a despicable man would have risen to power and destroyed the world, only to be stopped when he's exposed as a coward (he uses a child as a human shield during an assassination attempt), just sat really well with me.

If you're fairly certain your congressperson wouldn't gladly use a poor, minority child as a human shield to prolong their ghoulish existence, congratulations, you're probably delusional.

To be....continued. (But hopefully you won't have to wait as long as I had to wait between Wastelands and Wizard & Glass.)