My Stephen King Summer (Part I)

When you’ve got a book blog, then the one thing you have to do before writing about books is actually read them. For quite some time before the summer holidays started, I found myself quite unable to do so. I did finish a couple of books, but these were titles I had to read for a lecture or a book club. I didn’t really enjoy reading as much as I used to. Until the school year ended and I decided I could read something for fun. Turns out my idea of reading for fun starts with Stephen King novels. Want to know why reading his horror stories fills me with a sense of calm? Read on!

This isn’t the first time that Stephen King has helped me out of a reading slump. While I do enjoy reading highly literary novels (I had to read Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go for my book club, and I loved so much I finished it in a couple of days), my brain, whenever it is feeling overwhelmed, doesn’t need slow-burning, psychological novels about the meaning of life and what makes it worth living. Instead, it apparently needs action-packed, scary books about supernatural monsters and made-up worlds and heroes who conquer their fears and defeat the villains. In short, whenever I’m tired, I need to read books which don’t reflect my mental state at all.

The first King novel I started reading was Fairy Tale, which was published only a couple of years ago. It’s about a boy who stumbles upon a world hidden beneath our own, which is slowly decaying because there’s evil powers taking over. Of course (surely the title already suggests there would be a happy ending, so this isn’t really a spoiler, is it?) this boy, Charlie, manages to defeat the evil forces and save the world. Still, I kept reading because I wanted to find out what was going to happen next. And for the first time in a very long while, I felt myself immersed in a book again, unable to stop. So there I was during the first week of the holidays, reading instead of playing a stupid game on my phone, reading instead of watching Netflix. Reading, instead of sleeping.

Needless to say, I finished Fairy Tale in a couple of days. But I hadn’t had enough yet. Years ago, I bought this huge collection of second-hand Stephen King novels. Now it was time to go through this collection, ignored for years, once again. I didn’t want to read a huge novel, for the one I had just finished clocked in at over six hundred pages. I decided it would be The Dead Zone, for it sounded pretty cool (a man finds he has psychic abilities after he was in an accident). The thing is, when I told Goodreads this was to be the next book I’d read, it told me I’d already finished it. I had no idea. Apparently, I was reading this during my previous reading slump – five years ago, according to my app. I didn’t remember anything about it, so I reread it anyway. This time, I enjoyed it much more. That’s because the political events in this novel mirror our current political landscape, and that’s where the true horror lies. It is all the more impressive because The Dead Zone was published in 1979.

It took me even less time to finish this one. Still, my hunger for King’s novels hadn’t abated yet. Last night, I finished reading Duma Key, about Edgar, who loses his arm in an accident, starts living on a remote island in Florida to find inner peace, and gains psychic powers (again the accident and psychic powers, eh?) when he returns to his lost talent, painting. It’s scary, it’s realistic, it’s heart-breaking, and it’s unputdownable. Again, I finished its almost five hundred pages in a matter of days. Whenever Edgar is particularly gripped by the act of painting, he is ravenous afterwards. The moment I had finished Duma Key, I felt the same way. Another King, doctor’s orders.

So here we are. I started reading Gerald’s Game, his 1993 novel about a woman who is handcuffed to the bed during a sex game, but who refuses to play along this time. That’s how far I’ve come. This one will probably very different to the previous ones, because I think its setting will be limited to the bed she’s stuck in, and there will be no supernatural monsters in it. I’m looking forward to the psychological games King will be playing with his readers this time.

I wonder how long it’ll take me to finished this one. I also wonder which one will be next, which will probably be another King novel, now that I’ve set my mind on reading only his novels during the summer holidays. That’s because Stephen King’s novels made me want to read again. I can feel my heart swelling when I’m reading a book. And while I originally set out reading for fun, I can also feel my mind analysing the books again, focusing on themes, characters, setting or references to other novels. I might even write about it, soon.

I guess I’m returning to my old self.

Did you read any of the novels I’ve read these last couple of weeks? What’s your favourite King novel? Do you like horror? Which books do you turn to when you’re tired or stressed or don’t feel like reading? Please let me know in the comments! Also, don’t forget to follow me for more bookish posts!