I'm Reading Every Stephen King-written Word

I am a reader.

From a very young age I've been in love with the written word. To my recollection it began with Ramona Quimby and moved to Encylopedia Brown to Superfudge to Blubber to The Great Brain to The Three Investigators, I read every word I could get my eyes on.

In 9th grade I read two books that actually accelerated my journey into early adulthood. Books have that power. The first was King Rat by James Clavell, a book I reread every couple of years. Ms. Barnett, my history teacher, assigned us a list of 'historical fiction' novels to choose one book to read and do a report on. King Rat had a cool name. Little did I know how much an impact it would have on me: so this is what books can be. It's a great read; check it out.

After that, I shunned anything one might consider 'young fiction.' My eyes had been opened and while Henry and Ribsy had provided a solid foundation for narrative and serial and characterization, only adult books with their introduction to adult themes would do. Eventually I found Stephen King's novella, Rage written under his psuedonym, Richard Bachman. Four novellas written under that name had been collected in a work called The Bachman Books. I'm not going to describe or synopsize these stories, but they changed me. My eyes were opened to the power of the written word, and from that point on I began reading every word SK wrote.

I found Rage and The Bachman Books in 1986. This gave me 11 novels to catch up with. I read them out of chronological, but rather in the order I got my hands on them. At the end of that year, after reading a majority of those novels along with three collections of short fiction, IT came out.

It remains one of my favorite novels of all time.

Then I caught up with The Stand.

It remains one of my favorite novels of all time.

I could go on and on.

Not too long after this, though, his work began to deterioriate. I find Tommyknockers and The Dark Half almost unreadable. King attributes this deteoriation to his alcohol and drug abuse at the time. Around Gerald's Game or Rose Madder I gave up on reading every word. Since then I've picked up a book now and then with several highlights (The Green Mile and Hearts in Altantis leap to mind). Dude still has it...from time to time.

Recently, I was looking for a book to read and decided to reread Rage. Luckily I was able to find my old copy as Rage is not available in print in the US anymore given its similarities to Columbine-style school shootings. SK decided that the responsible and respectful thing to do would be to pull it from the shelves.

Around then I also had a random thought trying to remember SK's first novel (Carrie) and then which he followed it up with ('Salem's Lot). Having read both forever ago, I decided to reread them too. Between the two, I got a wild hair:

What if I read everything he ever wrote in chronological order of writing it?

What if, indeed.

Web research and one kickass Excel Spreadsheet later, I dove in.

The first thing SK wrote was a short named Jumper for his brother's homemade newspaper, but I didn't get to read it until 7 months after the first work I read (a short named The Reaper's Image) written 10 years later.

This journey began on 2/23/10 and has several stops and starts. Time is my biggest excuse and crutch. I did take a break to read The Passage by Justin Cornin (which I really enjoyed). I'm currently skipping way ahead to SK's newest release, Under the Dome, but then I'm right back in it.

I'll keep you posted.