Squire Reads: Confessions of a Constant Reader

[Squire]

My first King book was The Shining in 1981. I was 15 and not allowed to see the movie, so I read the book. I finally saw it in 1982 on a pay movie channel and have since seen it countless times on the big screen over the years.

I was a constant reader until 1990 when The Stand was republished; at which point I became a sporadic reader until 2010. But since I have nearly caught up (2023 should just about catch me up), I feel like I have regained my CR credentials.

With only 4 notable exceptions, King has never failed to entertain me. I count him as my favorite author. So here goes....


READ
Carrie (1974): 4 stars
Salem’s Lot (1975): 5 stars
The Shining (1977): 5 stars (first King read and still my favorite)
Rage (1977): 4 stars (Ted's fate is horrifying to the max; as is that it's OOP)
Night Shift (1978): 5 stars
The Stand (1978): 5 stars (too bad it's OOP)
The Long Walk (1979): 5 stars
The Dead Zone (1979): 3 stars
Firestarter (1980: 3 stars)
Roadwork (1981): 3 stars
Danse Macabre (1981): 3 stars
Cujo (1981): 5 stars
The Running Man (1982): 3 stars
Different Seasons (1982): 4 stars
Christine (1983): 5 stars
Cycle of the Werewolf (1983): 4 stars
Pet Sematary (1983): 5 stars
The Eyes of the Dragon (1984): 4 stars
The Talisman (1984) with Peter Straub: 4 stars
Thinner (1984): 3 stars
Skeleton Crew (1985): 4 stars
IT (1986): 5 stars
Misery (1987): 5 stars
The Tommyknockers (1987): 3 stars
The Dark Half (1989): 3 stars
The Stand: The Complete & Uncut Edition (1990): ZERO STARS!!! DOUBLEDAY EDITIORS DELIVERED YOU A MASTERPIECE AND YOU ROYALLY FUCKED IT UP!!!
Four Past Midnight (1990): 4 stars
Needful Things (1991): 3 stars
Gerald’s Game (1992):4 stars
Dolores Claiborne (1992):3 stars
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993):4 stars
Insomnia (1994): 3 stars
Rose Madder (1995): 2 stars
The Green Mile (1996): 4 stars
Desperation (1996): 3 stars (4 stars when read with The Regulators)
The Regulators (1996) 3 stars (4 stars when read with Desperation)
Bag of Bones (1998): 5 stars
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999): 4.5 stars
Hearts in Atlantis (1999): 3 stars
Storm of the Century (1999): 3 stars
Dreamcatcher (2001): 3 stars
Black House (2001) with Peter Straub: 2 stars
Everything’s Eventual (2001): 4 stars
From a Buick 8 (2002): 5 stars
The Colorado Kid (2005): 5 stars
Cell (2006): 3 stars
Lisey’s Story (2006): 5 stars
The Secretary of Dreams: Volume One (2006): 5 stars
Blaze (2007) [by Richard Bachman]: 3 stars
Duma Key (2008): 4 stars
Just After Sunset (2008): 4 stars
Under the Dome (2009): 4 stars
Blockade Billy (2010): 4 stars
The Secretary of Dreams: Volume 2 (2010): 5 stars
Full Dark, No Stars (2010): 4 stars
11/22/63 (2011): 3 stars
Joyland (2013): 3 stars
The Dark Man (2013): 5 stars
Doctor Sleep (2013): 3 stars
Mr. Mercedes (2014): 3 stars
Revival (2014): 4 stars
Finders Keepers (2015): 2 stars
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015): 4 stars
End of Watch (2016): 3 stars
Gwendy’s Button Box (2017) with Richard Chizmar: 3 stars
The Outsider (2018) 3 stars
Elevation (2018) 2 stars
Sleeping Beauties (2017) with Owen King: 2 stars
The Institute (2019) 4 stars
If It Bleeds (2020): 3 stars
Later (2021): 3 stars
Billy Summers (2021) 3 stars
Fairy Tale (2022): 5 stars
Holly (2023) 2.5 stars
Gwendy's Final Task (2022) 3 stars

THE DARK TOWER
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger (1982): 4 stars
The Dark Tower: The Drawing of the Three (1987):5 stars
The Dark Tower: The Waste Lands (1991): 5 stars
The Dark Tower: Wizard and Glass (1997): 3 stars
The Dark Tower: Wolves of the Calla (2003): 3 stars
The Dark Tower: Song of Susannah (2004): 4 stars
The Dark Tower: The Dark Tower (2004): 4 stars
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012): 5 stars

TO READ
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000)
Secret Windows (2000)

NEVER TO READ (but still on my bookshelf)
Faithful (2004) with Stewart O’Nan (lifelong Yankees fan, Red Sox hater)

[Squire]

Confession #1: 4 times King has failed to entertain me:

The Stand: Complete and Uncut (1990): It made a book I dearly love unfocused and messy. Only the scene between Frannie and her grandfather before his death felt "necessary". The "epic" ending made the sacrifice of Ralph, Larry and Glenn inconsequential. And I could have lived my whole life contentedly without ever having met "The Kid."

Rose Madder (1995): The whole Greek mythology thing was strained to the point of breaking and really weak. King simply tried too hard with this one.

Black House (2001): It read like Straub wrote the first 100 pages and King finished it up. The narrator in the beginning was a bird? Really? By the time King took over, it was too late.

Sleeping Beauties (2017): I blame this one on Owen King. His father doesn't preach at me and his villains are not as inscrutable as Evie Black. Intriguing premise, tho.

I'll never read these books again. Life is too short.

EDIT: While I also was not really entertained by Finder's Keepers, I'm counting it as the boring middle section of a longer, more-or-less entertaining, narrative (trilogy). So I did not include that in the above calculations. But I am not interested in rereading the Bill Hodges Trilogy either.

[Squire]

Confession #2: I'm not as big a fan of the Dark Tower series as I probably should be.

I really liked The Gunslinger when it was published in 1982 (somehow the Donald Grant edition HC made it to the public library in my really small hometown), but I was really confused by it. Then in 1987, The Drawing of the Three blew me away. The first half of The Wastelands was outstanding and took TDot3 to it's logical conlusion; the second part was pretty good, too.

In 1997, King released Wizard and Glass, and that's when I sensed that something was rotten in the state of Gilead. Roland started telling stories and was a very unreliable narrator; I felt like most of the flashbacks were not exactly as they happened. Finally, among the last 3 DT books, Song of Susannah alone stood out for me .

The Wind Through the Keyhole was a terrific, well-written story in which Roland admitted that when he started telling stories to his katet, he wasn't very good. No kidding!

Still, the series did explain the Turtle in It, but it caused him to completely mess up one of my favorite books of his: The Stand--which is now, sadly, out of print.

I've probably read The Gunslinger more times than any SK book because everytime a new book came out, I reread the others--with a complete reading between book 7 and 8:

1,1,2,1,2,3,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8

My last full reading of all 8 novels took me 42 days to complete. Half that time was spent slogging through Wizard and Glass.

I haven't bothered with any of the comic adaptations of King's work.

[Squire]

Confession #3: Although I am a Constant Reader, a new Stephen King book feels more of an obligation for me these days than a must read. I am most always entertained by his books and surprised every now and then.

Holly feels obligatory to me, but we'll see.

I can count the 21st-century books of his that I consider masterpieces on one hand: The Colorado Kid, From a Buick 8, Lisey's Story. There have been a few others that I've rated 5 stars, but I don't consider them masterpieces.

[Kandice]

Squire wrote: "I can count the 21st-century books of his that I consider masterpieces on one hand: The Colorado Kid, From a Buick 8, Lisey's Story. There have been a few others that I've rated 5 stars, but I don't consider them masterpieces..."

I count The Colorado Kid and Lisey's Story among my favorite books from any author, but I have liked, if not always loved, almost everything he's written since 2000. The exceptions are Revival and Sleeping Beauties. I'm not a Lovecraft fan, so the ending of Revival was not my cup of tea. I also thought Jamie became unreasonable. Sleeping Beauties felt too much like Owen, and I just can't get into his writing.

[F.C.]

Squire wrote: "Confession #3: Although I am a Constant Reader, a new Stephen King book feels more of an obligation for me these days than a must read. I am most always entertained by his books and surprised every..." I really liked From a Buick 8 as well, but few others seem to rate it very highly.

[Kandice]

I just went back and reread my review of From a Buick 8 and in it I compared it to The Colorado Kid, Maybe that's why we both ended up liking them?

[Squire]

I've enjoyed the vast majority of the King books that I've read and will continue to read. It's just that I prefer his output from 1974-1989. And I think his disdain for mid-westerners shows more and more as time goes by, Which is fine, I find it amusing.

One of the most impressive things (for me) about Buick is that he has 13 narrators and each one is distinct. King doesn't even have to identify them after a while. You just know who is talking.

[F.C.]

Squire wrote: "I've enjoyed the vast majority of the King books that I've read and will continue to read. It's just that I prefer his output from 1974-1989. And I think his disdain for mid-westerners shows more a..." It's not just mid-westerners King has disdain for; depending on the book, he paints some ugly pictures of the denizens of small town Maine. It was very noticeable to me in IT and The Tommyknockers, as Derry and Haven were filled with foul mouthed and ill tempered citizens. I know a lot of it was done to create suspense and tension, but some of those characters were excessively hateful.

[Dan]

I was first introduced to Stephen King by an English class I took in community college on the horror genre, it was called "HORROR: FROM MARY SHELLEY TO STEPHEN KING". We read a number of different books in that class, but after the teacher had us read 'Salem's Lot and Night Shift...I was hooked on King.

I will make my list here, although I will not add stars, I will tell you which books I liked and maybe didn't like...

1.)'Salem's Lot
2.) The Shining
3.) Night Shift
4.)The Stand: The Complete and Uncut Edition
5.) Pet Sematary
6.) Skeleton Crew
7.) It
8.) Nightmares & Dreamscapes
9.) Four Past Midnight
10.) Danse Macabre
11.) 11/22/63
12.) The Bazaar of Bad Dreams
13.) If It Bleeds
14.) Revival
15.) Full Dark No Stars
16.) The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger
17.) The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three
18.) The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands

To Read:
19.) The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass
20.) The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole
21.) The Dark Tower: V: Wolves of Calla
22.) The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
23.) The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower

I'll be honest, the teacher of that English class set up the class where Bram Stoker's Dracula was supposed to be the gateway to King's 'Salem's Lot and his other works. I do believe that 'Salem's Lot is one of the greatest vampire tales written in the twentieth century next to I am Legend and Interview with the Vampire. It does "echo" what Bram Stoker did, which is what Stephen King admits to trying to do. Being such a vampire nut I've read the thing three times...and King did tell a good yarn!

Other than that, the only other Stephen King book I would go back and re-read is Nightmares & Dreamscapes. Because Stephen King is not only a damned plastic surgeon of the short story...that one, in particular, is I feel his best as short story collections go. The Dark Tower series, as you can see, is something that I am currently enjoying even though I feel, at least, doesn't pick up till book three.

what didn't I like? Well...everyone told me that Pet Sematary would scare the SHIT out of me. Like it would literally keep me awake at night. But, I saw the movie as a kid, and even though I was looking to be scared...I was not too surprisingly disturbed by it. What I was disturbed by, however, was one part of It where (view spoiler)[ there is a preteen gangbang among the Loser's club (hide spoiler)]. I hated that, thank God it was struck from both movie versions!

I've enjoyed the King books I've read so far as a whole...and I'd like to go back to my community college and shake that teacher's hand, if he is still there, and thank him for introducing me to such a great author.

[Squire]

Confession #4: There are some King/Bachman books that I should probably reread because looking back over the list, I can't recall anything significant about the book (realizing that these may be senior moments I'm having).

These books I may have given short shrift: Roadwork, Thinner, Blaze, The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon and Hearts in Atlantis. I'll add Cell to this list because I really like the ending.

I rated all of these 3 stars. All other ratings I'm satisfied with.

[Nick]

Tom Gorden is a great book... especially as a starter for people who want to read king but are afraid of horror. We recommend it to those friends and have always gotten positive comments. Many of them, then go on to become King fanatics when they see the depth of his characters. I also like Hearts in Atlantis.

[Squire]

Tom Gordon is the book I feel most guilty about. The only thing I can recall about it is that it became a pop-up book (which I neglected to buy). That and, as a Yankees fan, I didn't give a fig for Tom Gordon. ;-D

The bookshop in the town where I was living actually got a first print UK HC and that's what I had for years (I later added the American 1st print HC).