Introduction to Books That Shine: A Stephen King Review Series
My name is Jamie Stewart, I am a horror author of such works as I Hear the Clattering of The Keys (And Other Fever Dreams) and Mr. Jones. But today I’m not writing about myself. No, I’m indulging in another favourite hobby of mine, writing about the works of others, which is a great way to support them. I love supporting other authors through reviews, posts and discussions. I also love Stephen King, something you can read about in my essay Room 217 (Why I Never Left) available here or on the Horror Oasis website.
For the last two years, I have been rereading Stephen King’s work chronologically following a night in the Stanley Hotel reading The Shining.
For those that may not know The Stanley is where King got the idea for the novel. What turned into a quest to enjoy the man’s work and discover how his writing has changed over the years became an opportunity to review, rate and rank them all. I want to take that one step further with this ongoing (hopefully) exercise by offering a suggestion of modern or lesser-known horror that would make a good companion with each of his books. Thus, the Books That Shine Series was born. I will urge those that read this to visit Horror Oasis’s website where each of these reviews will be published first, alongside some amazing graphics created by the website’s owner.
As previously mentioned, I will also be ranking each book into a four-tiered system, which are as follows:
> Books That Shine
> Books That Surprise
> Books That Try, Sometimes Too Hard
> Headache Books.
If you stick around in the next few months, you’ll begin to understand how I came upon the name of each. The overall aim once I’ve finished with every last King book is to release the entire best to least list. As with everything I intend to do here this is entirely personal, what I like you may not and vice versa. That being said I hope this can encourage discussions on the man’s work as well as offers readers books by authors they may not know about yet.
Without further ado let’s start at the beginning with Carrie.
For the last two years, I have been rereading Stephen King’s work chronologically following a night in the Stanley Hotel reading The Shining.
For those that may not know The Stanley is where King got the idea for the novel. What turned into a quest to enjoy the man’s work and discover how his writing has changed over the years became an opportunity to review, rate and rank them all. I want to take that one step further with this ongoing (hopefully) exercise by offering a suggestion of modern or lesser-known horror that would make a good companion with each of his books. Thus, the Books That Shine Series was born. I will urge those that read this to visit Horror Oasis’s website where each of these reviews will be published first, alongside some amazing graphics created by the website’s owner.
As previously mentioned, I will also be ranking each book into a four-tiered system, which are as follows:
> Books That Shine
> Books That Surprise
> Books That Try, Sometimes Too Hard
> Headache Books.
If you stick around in the next few months, you’ll begin to understand how I came upon the name of each. The overall aim once I’ve finished with every last King book is to release the entire best to least list. As with everything I intend to do here this is entirely personal, what I like you may not and vice versa. That being said I hope this can encourage discussions on the man’s work as well as offers readers books by authors they may not know about yet.
Without further ado let’s start at the beginning with Carrie.
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