Joyland: 5th - 6th July 2016

I liked Joyland a lot: as evidenced by my reading it in a few hours over a couple of days. It brought the film Adventureland to mind early on, but really only as a reference for the vibe of the place. Which was quite helpful for an Englishman with experience of only either big theme parks or the grim travelling fairs that turn up on village park and fields, that I wouldn't take my kids to for love nor money.

Other than that, it's a tight little book that has definitely left me looking forward to the crime trilogy, that I'll be starting with Mr. Mercedes as soon as I've caught up with these posts. It's partly the desire to get on with reading that these posts are so flimsy and shit. The other part is that I can't be bothered to pretend that I know a thing about reviewing. Commenting on how well the plot unfolds, how well the characters and motivations are painted would be a half-cocked wet fart. Most of the reviews on Goodreads, in fact in actual publications or on websites tend to make me want to boil my head. So I don't bother reviewing. I just talk anti-critical bollocks instead. But you already knew that. Don't worry, we're nearly done. Only a handful of books to go...

A Face in the Crowd, In the Tall Grass, Guns - One day in July

I'm not entirely sure when I read these three stories other than it was all in one day in July.

Not much to say about them, I'm afraid. Obviously Guns is an essay rather than a story but, just like always, it's Uncle Steve telling it how it is. So it's worth a read. As are the other two. I think that's my main takeaway: they're all worth a read.

Oh wait, just remembered In The Tall Grass was co-written with Joe Hill. That reminds me, I need to get a hold of his new novel, The Fireman, cos I've rated everything he's done so far. From Horns to NOS4R2 to Locke and Key. Cool. I've also got a few of comics waiting for me to read them. Bonus!

OK, I'm done. Bye.

The Wind Through The Keyhole - A Dark Tower Novel: 30th June - 4thAugust 2016

I went into this one in two minds. On the one hand, I don't consider myself a true convert to the cult of the Dark Tower. On the other, I'm an open-minded soul and there were points of the Dark Tower odyssey where I couldn't help but be caught up by the undertow of the characters and their fates.

In the end, the story within the story was the one that got me and the rest became almost incidental. Part of this may have been the fact that, in the grander scheme, the fate of Roland's ka-tet has already been sealed. A cynical, dick point of view, I know.

All things considered, I think it has its place. It stands up both on its own and as a slight return to the Dark Tower.

11/22/63: 6th Jun - 29th Jun 2016

Awesome.

King has knocked out nothing but bangers for a while now and 11/22/63 was an absolute joy to read. One of those books you think about when you're not reading it and compelling enough to curtail the endless iPhone/iPad distraction. I also didn't read anything else concurrently. High praise indeed.

Not only was the book great, it features an uncharacteristically solid ending. Not the usual 'fuck it, let's tie this shit up and call it a day'. Perfectly bittersweet.

UR & Mile 81: 3rd June 2016

I liked both of these stories.

The Dark Tower tie in of UR was a nice touch. Not much to say otherwise. Nothing amazing, but worth the time and money.

Mile 81 was a lovely dose of horror that King does so well.

Full Dark, No Stars: 10th May - 2nd Jun 2016

I've left this a bit late.  I finished the book brimful of enthusiasm.  I relished in the bleakness of the novellas.  1922 was my least favourite, but it's a solid collection and was a pleasure to read.
Big Driver was my favourite, because who doesn't like a good revenge story.

Overall, the book again fits into the mound of the sort of King I want to read. I'm torn as to whether this is more a case of it being the thing he does well/best or just my selfish wish that he write the thing I like.

Either way, Full Dark, No Stars is some good shit.

Blockade Billy/Morality: 9th May 2016

Lovely couple of stories. Good, not great (I've a feeling I've totally overused that phrase in this blog, but it fits.)

It felt good to blast through them after thundering my way through Under the Dome. 

I don't know much about baseball. Certainly, I've never fathomed the scoring, but I know enough of the basics to have kept Blockade Billy from flying straight over my head.

That's it really. Full Dark, No Stars is next.

Under the Dome: 6th Apr - 8th May 2016

I'm just going to come straight out with it. I loved this book and, still warm with the glow of belting through it a fair old pace and finishing it yesterday, I'm going to declare it my favourite book of King's so far.

A small part of me feels inclined to answer the obvious criticisms that can be levelled against it, but I'm not in the mood for negativity.  Instead, I'll just briefly ramble about what I liked about it.

I loved the scale; both the big (the length of the book, the expansive cast of characters) and the small (the enclosed, pressure cooker setting).  For me, this is the King I envisioned when I decided to read his from beginning to end.  Rich characters you can't help but love or hate.  You inwardly cheer when they triumph and even shed a tear at their demise. And when a bad guy gets his comeuppance...it's a fist in the air moment. I know they're often painted in broad strokes, and stereotypes are used to save dozens of pages of additional character exposition, but they work for the story and pacing.

Yes the ending is a bit silly, but I don't care.  I'm not going to write off 900 pages of thrilling journey to moan about the destination.

In the early days of this reading project, in each blog post I would ask myself whether the book had scared me at all.  In a lot of cases, it was really a question of whether it had successfully suspended my disbelief enough to render the supernatural elements in any way affecting. With Under the Dome, the nature and cause of the dome weren't important.  It's the people we have to be scared of. In this respect, the book was terrifying.

I said before reading the book that I planned to watch the TV series.  I watched the pilot last night with my wife.  I'm doing my best to avoid being a massive cock and constantly pointing out divergences between the book and series.  I know it's too soon and the natural inclination to make these comparisons will be hard to suppress, but I'm going to do my best.  There are already enough differences in the pilot to encourage me to just sit back and watch the show on its own merits.

Under the Dome - starting out

Under the Dome is quite a big deal to me.  I haven't read it before, so have no emotional attachment to the story and characters. Instead, the book functions as something of a milestone, a monolith and a line in the sand. It was the first book King published following my decision to start this chronological reading of his works. My mother-in-law bought me the book the following Christmas and there it has sat, calling me from a shelf, a box and, latterly, the top shelf of a wardrobe for the last six years (I might sort out some bookshelves again one day.)  I also bought a copy of the book for someone who binge read it soon after and they loved it. Vicarious enjoyment bears weight.

I've heard good things, I've heard bad, but nothing has dampened my anticipation and longing to read this book. It's a hefty thing and I want to get lost in it. When I finish it, I'm going to plough straight into the tv series. I'll probably watch the Simpsons movie again too. I'm going Under the Dome it's going to be awesome. It is.

Just After Sunset: 23rd Mar - 5th Apr 2016

A week.  That's not bad.  I know it wasn't a huge book, and it was a short story collection, but still.  On past form, a week's pretty good for me.  It helped that I enjoyed the stories.  They, for the most part, hooked me and took me.

The stand out stories for me were The Gingerbread Girl, Rest Stop, Stationary Bike, The Cat from Hell, Mute and A Very Tight Place.    Good shit, overall.

Duma Key: 7th Feb - 22nd Mar 2016

Totally forgot to write a bit about this book when I finished it.  Way too keen to get on to the next one.
So, two weeks after finishing it, what can I say about Duma Key?

I liked it a lot.  The first two thirds especially.  I was well into the pacing.  Usually a brick of a novel from King can take a bit of getting going, but I didn't find that with this.  I dug the character development and believed in Edgar and Wireman's friendship.

Parts of the last third lost me a bit.  I had a picture of the crew of the Flying Dutchman from the second Pirates of the Caribbean film which, while undeniably creepy if it was stood in front of you in the flesh in a dark room, just became cartoonish.  This is only because my boring, rational mind automatically rejects the supernatural, but still, it took the edge off.

It didn't take the edge off my enjoyment of reading King on top form, though.

Blaze: 4th - 6th Feb 2016

Not bad.  Not great.  Not the tearjerker King introduced it as, but definitely to be filed under the 'sad story' category.  I haven't got much more to say about it.  It was easy to blast my way through it in a matter of hours, both in length and style/readability.

Lisey's Story: 18th Oct 2015 - 4th Feb 2016

I didn't know a thing about Lisey's Story coming in to it. I posted a photo of the book on Instagram and a chap from Norway commented that it's his favourite Stephen King book. High regard indeed. So I went in with high expectations. Unfortunately, I didn't dig it at all. Sad face.

Aside from my usual habit of taking months to read a book, instead picking up comics and other books, I struggled to get behind all the smucking and booling. The smucking, in particular, just got on my tits. I wouldn't go as far as cringing, but I wasn't far off.
As usual, I picked up speed towards the end and hammered the last quarter of the book in a couple of days. Once again, I had the same rueful feeling that I hadn't given enough of my self to the reading, but at the same time, it just never grabbed me. I liked Lisey, but didn't give much of shit about Scott. The Dooley character was interesting, and more could have been given to the cat and mouse dynamic, but that's not the story King wanted to tell.
I've since read that Lisey's Story is one of King's own favourites.  Feels like I've missed something.

Cell : 15th Sep - 17th Oct 2015

I'm in two minds about Cell. On the one hand, I just didn't get on board with the overall conceit of a brain rebooting pulse that turns mobile phone users into 'zombies'. It's a shallow metaphor for the benign influence of mobile phones - and, considering our ever increasing enslavement to the smartphone - wholly accurate, but I'm not sure it's strong enough to hold up 400-500 pages. Telepathy loses my attention a bit too.

On the other, I welcomed a return to the familiar King territor of a band of survivors embarking on an adventure and taking on the bad guy (without all the trappings of The Dark Tower - I still have some unresolved feelings about the series, that i'll be working through. Don't worry, it's less weird than it sounds.)

I know how soft and cosseted it makes me sound to find comfort - and relief? in the familiar and formulaic, instead of hankering for King's ongoing creative evolution and waving the flag for his writing whatever he feels like writing, but in order to keep up what little momentum I have in this mission, I was happy for a 'standard-King'.

Lisey's Story is next. I didn't know a thing about it, but I've recently heard good things.

The Colorado Kid - 10th - 14th Sep 2015

I really should have read this in one go as it's a short mystery novel. As it happened, I had a busy weekend flying to Atlanta, driving to Tennessee, running a half marathon before driving back and flying home.

The Colorado Kid was a cool little book that has acted as both a palate cleanser and a springboard to get cracking and power on through the back nine of the bibliography. It's becoming too common a final word in these posts but, we'll see.

Reaching the Dark Tower - Song of Susannah and The Dark Tower: Apr- Sep 15

So, I went and finished the Dark Tower series. I haven't got the energy to write about the two books individually, and I'm not one for lengthy criticism, so I'll just close out the series with a few thoughts.

It's King's self-professed magnum opus. It didn't hit me the way I'd expected or maybe hoped. Overall, I could say I wouldn't have really minded missing the whole thing out. At the same time, there were sections that really got me, specifically the evolution of Jake and Roland's relationship and the death of one of the characters was like a knife. I read the section while walking home from work and after a couple of great wracking sobs burst out of me, I had to put the book away until I got in the house. 

The biggest thing for me, though, was that I didn't care how things turned out. Apart from the particularly moving passages, the rest was just a story passing by.

Now, I read with interest the introductions to the books where King says that he received letters from people who were dissatisfied with the way he ended one book and other plot decisions he made. Who are these dickweasels that take it upon themselves to write to an author and tell them they shouldn't have written this or that? Your options as a reader are limited to read or don't. That's it. It's not for you. It's mere coincidence if you like it. Jesus.

My final thought is that I'm inclined to find the audiobook series and give it all another go. We'll see.

Wolves of the Calla - The Dark Tower V : Feb - Apr 15

This big bugger didn't take me all that long, all things considered. I finally managed to find some reading discipline and forced my way through.
I suppose using the word 'forced' there says a lot. I wasn't rushing to pick the book up every night, desperate to see what would happen next, but soldiered through it.
I'm still not a Dark Tower convert, but still holding on that everything will fall into place and the scales will fall from my eyes. Or not. Either way, there are worse ways to spend your time.

From a Buick 8: 22nd Jan - 2nd Feb 2015

That's better. 400 and a few pages in little over a week.

I'll kick off by saying I liked From a Buick 8 a lot. It isn't a brilliant book, but I had a good time reading it. It had the feeling of coming home to me. Coming home to the style of Stephen King that I fell in love with all those years whenever when. Eminently readable, head far from up its own arse but still able to grab you by the throat, punch you in the gut or compel you to lay the book down and smile with a faraway look and say "shit, he nailed it."

The Stephen King I love always feels real, even though his stories take you further and further into the unreal. He's someone whose stories can be read without an overt, critical dissection of the themes and subtexts because there's enough satisfaction in just reading the fucking thing. The subtexts and themes come through and sink in without being mined in fear of having missed something because the book was so dry or listless.

As I said, the book isn't brilliant. Nowhere near his best, but it got me revved up. (I actually got a couple of sentences on before I came back to apologise for that pun). There were bits I had to force myself to keep reading (the autopsy being one) because the dread was rising.

Long story short, fun and satisfying.

Black House: 16th Aug 2014 - 21st Jan 2015

Hahahaha, 5 months. Pitiful. I'll list my excuses/distractions at the end.

On the plus side, as Laura of Devouring Texts fame promised, it was way better that expected. Still not awesome, but as I say almost every time these days, it would probably have gone a lot better for me if I'd have just charged through it.

Part of me got excited by the Dark Tower references (probably because it's nice to feel part of the in-crowd) but the other part wished I gave much of a toss about The Dark Tower series. Up to now, I really don't. I'm still looking forward to the three upcoming installments of the series I have coming up after From a Buick 8 and Everything's Eventual.

Anyway, Black House. Early on, it was really obvious who was writing. I found Straub's exposition dreary and could tell when King took over with his crackling prose and irreverence. After a while, I didn't notice it as much. I think it stood out at first because I came at the book expecting not to like it (The Talisman didn't thrill me at all - http://thekinglongread.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/talisman-8th-may-19th-august-2011.html), so, like a dick, it was easy to latch on to this as confirmation that it was going to be cack. As it turns out, it wasn't cack. It made me want to revisit The Talisman. Based on how things are going, that might not be for another 5-10 years, so we'll see.

Distractions:
My rekindled love of American Football, heroically enabled by the NFL GamePass app for iPad. So good.

I've also been catching up on some TV with Netflix/Amazon Prime

Sons of Anarchy - bit of a guilty pleasure.
Justified - love it and looking forward to diving headlong into Elmore Leonard's bibiliography at some point
American Horror Story
- only series 1 so far, not 100% but with so many genuinely creepy moments, I'll go back for the rest.
The League - my wife has an aversion to it because my hooting and belly laughing gets on her nerves
Community - only on series 1 and so much of it falls flat, I wonder whether to keep going, but then there are some great bits that keep me pressing the 'play next episode' button.

Dreamcatcher: 4th Mar - 15th Aug 2014

It was nowhere near as bad as I expected. I found it a bit dull through the middle and found it easy to put to one side while I read half a dozen other books and a few comic series. It got a bit confusing in the middle, probably due to my lack of application and just not giving too much of a monkeys how things went.
In the end, as is usually the case, I steamed through the last third and got into it, but still didn't feel too much about it, one way or the other.
Rather than rattle on about it, I'll just say that I wouldn't advise avoiding Dreamcatcher, I'd just recommend blasting through it and not taking four months.

Black House is next. I thought The Talisman was a bit shit. Wish me luck.