My Long Walk Through Stephen King's Lot

Soon I’ll be posting my thoughts about the King novel I’m currently reading.   I’m just about finished; I have less than a hundred pages to go.   It’s definitely a good one, so I’ll be eager to share my thoughts on it. In the meantime, given that it’s been so long since I posted anything, I figured I’d share my current top ten list of King novels.   I wanted to do this somewhat early on in my blogging journey, thinking it might be neat to see how the list evolves over time as I continue reading King’s books.   This isn’t necessarily a list of my “favorite” King novels, but rather my attempt to identify those I think are his “best.”   This kind of task is notoriously difficult, particularly when you are a fan of the work you’re assessing.  I also realize it's a silly exercise.  But what can I say?  I love lists, and it's fun to make them!  At any rate, after much debate, this is my attempt to highlight the novels I consider to b...

Reflections on Rose Madder : Part One (pp. 1 – 192) In the early-to-mid 1990s, Stephen King wrote a small string of books—tenuously, but intriguingly related to one another—featuring abused female protagonists who come up against a different sort of evil than is customary in King’s horror fiction: the sort of evil perpetrated by vicious men.   I found the first of these novels, Gerald’s Game , to be vaguely exploitative, unnecessarily grim and too vulgar for its own good, but the second one, Dolores Claiborne , to be a terrific achievement.   Rose Madder , the third book, seems to be widely regarded as the worst of the batch—and not just that, but also as one of Stephen King’s “lesser” books overall.   This reputation preceded my reading of the novel, yet a mere few chapters in, I could already see what a great work of empathy it is. To begin with, I have not always been enamored with King’s ability to write from the perspective of women.   I ...