Stephen King Book • Page 57

‘Salem’s Lot
The Shining
The Stand
Dead Zone
Fire starter
The Gunslinger
It
Drawing Of The Three
Misery
The Tommyknockers
The Stand
The Waste Lands
Needful Things
Geralds Game
The Green Miles
Wizard & Glass
Wolves Of The Calla
Song Of Susannah
The Dark Tower
Cell
Duma Key
Under The Dome
11/22/63
Joyland
Doctor Sleep
Mr Mercedes
Revival
Finders Keepers
Sleeping Bauties
The Outsider
Elevation
The Institute

Night Shift
Different Seasons
The Bazaar Of Bad Dreams

Wow, read more King than I thought I had. I’d love to own a complete collection.

 

I don’t know what it is about her. Also I listened to about half of The Outsider whilst doing daily walks and read the rest, and the voice work for her really grated and I think thats compounded the issue

 

The publicist told me that the book was out next week and then it dropped today so I'm a little behind on getting my review up for it. I'm only on the second story so far. Thought the first one was interesting.

 

Wizard & Glass might be my favorite King book! The story of Roland And Susan is some of the most I’ve ever loved a story.

I do understand why some wouldn’t like it in regards to the primary story. I considered skipping it over once I heard the majority of the book was a flashback, and I’m so so so glad I did not.

 

@Donnie Ruth Stoked that you enjoyed it a lot more than I did! Haha.

Just checked my shelf and I have 32 more books to cover for the podcast. I've read 4 of them and I'm working on If It Bleeds, so 27 will be first time reads for me. I think once I make it past Under the Dome, keeping up will be easier.

 

Yeah it is unquestionably my favorite. I also love bag of bones but it may be because it was my first King novel.

 

Has anyone read his new short story collection? Is there anything apocalyptic in it? I can’t really with that stuff right now.

 

Not in the first two and the title story is a Holly Gibney story from what I can tell so far. Will report back when I get to the final story if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

 

Wow the first story is spectacular, Mr Harrigan's Phone. Major Joyland vibes.

The second story is good, but hitting really close to home with it's realistic apocalypse vibes.

 

You didn't feel Life of Chuck was apocalyptic? I just started it but it's already triggering me like crazy.

 

I honestly didn’t get that vibe at all. It was going backwards through Chuck’s life so it didn’t really feel close to the current situation to me or something like The Stand. Unless I just literally misread the entire story lol.

 

I mean they have used the word apocalypse a bunch, there's like a perfect storm of world ending events happening within a year, none of them the like a disease of course, but the entire story set up seems to be about accepting the reality that the world is ending and shrugging it off. It's way more extreme, but it's super apocalyptic. Also I haven't gotten to the backwards through Chucks life part yet, the main character just keeps seeing his name everywhere, so the story must take a turn I'm not expecting but the set up is thoroughly apocalyptic.

 

Yeah I get that. I think by the end of it I just felt different about it overall. I mean, the synopsis mentions nothing about it directly being an apocalyptic story anyway. But @TJ Wells definitely feel free to disregard my earlier comment if you prefer to play it on the safe side! @Vivatoto always catches things that I don’t haha. I’ve admittedly been in a bit of a fog reading this since the publicist gave me the wrong release date and now I’m rushing through it faster than I wanted to. Nice thing about collections is that you can skip around and circle back to it later.

 

....Ok so something weird just happened in the story and now I think I see where you were coming from. It appears the story is taking on a much different form, but the first 20 pages were like an apocalyse hodge podge lol.

 

Yeah it’s kind of a weird one imo haha. Really loved the first story though. I’m definitely missing out on a lot of the references in the title story since I have yet to read anything else Holly Gibney has appeared in. Should be reading the entire final story tomorrow hopefully.

 

So since I now understand what was going on I'm going to spoil tag what I was talking about and wouldn't recommend others looking at it until they've read it, Those first ten pages are Chuck dying, and the uncle mentions that everyone has a world inside their heads, so we were seeing that apocalypse play out, even though it was all in his head. That was the only section that gave me pause. So we were both right, lol, it's now turning into a non apocalyptic story

 

Yeah it was interesting. I didn’t want to give too much away so I went with what had been mentioned in a little synopsis I saw. I don’t think it’ll end up being my favorite of the bunch by a long shot though.

 

Downloaded the audiobook but will probably try and wrap up LA Confidential before I start.

 

Ended up finishing If It Bleeds today instead of yesterday like I was hoping. I’ll be posting a spoiler-free review in my newsletter on Monday. But first impression for me is that this is one of King’s better collections. I haven’t been super impressed with most of the ones I’ve read but maybe the short story collections just aren’t for me haha. I usually like a few stories and the rest I forget.

 

Loved all 4 stories. Nothing super scary in there but plenty of stuff that's creepy as all hell. The Holly story was crazy intense and suprisingly a worthy sequel to the Outsider. From page 1 I was terrified Holly woudn't be getting out alive.

 

Posted my review today. Left it as spoiler free as possible. Stephen King's If It Bleeds

 

I'm now on the If It Bleeds novella. So happy to have Holly back.

 

Yeah on the third story now, another happy surprise like with The Outsider

 

I'm 2/3 of the way through The Talisman. The first 1/3 really didn't grab me but it's picking up now. Then Black House then going to finally tackle Insomnia.

After those, all I have left is --
The Tommyknockers, Sleeping Beauties;
Skeleton Crew, Four Past Midnight, Hearts in Atlantis, The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, If It Bleeds;
Danse Macabre, Secret Windows, Hearts in Suspension

 

You’re much closer to being done than I am!