My experience with reading 6 King books in a month

I definitely remember having 2018’s #HorrifyingClassics series wrapped up much earlier (at least on my end) last year, but this year’s jump to do the new website, new intros/closers, the new Patreon, all the above, led me to go about reading the entire series in a month, putting my book output for September at 8 books, or double my typical rate of reading.

Reading them all at once opened my eyes to which ones I was jumping up and down to read, and which ones I was certainly apprehensive or, in the case of “IT,” downright struggling in the “convincing myself to just do it” department to read.

All-in-all, it turned out to be a very interesting self-experiment, especially since when it comes down to it, Stephen King books are Stephen King books, and between stories the only real difference is how each plot ends up playing out.

Did I have surprises in my little experiment? Certainly. It took me forever to read “The Mist,” the shortest book on our list and a novella at that, and only a matter of days to read both “The Shining” and “Pet Semetery,” the latter of which was almost cut from the list (but ended up being my favorite) and the former of which was much, much better than I anticipated, especially considering my love for the movie adaptation. I did not like reading “Carrie,” which was a movie (and movie remake) that I lived vicariously off of when I was a child. And, I found that “Misery,” a psychological thriller that I was trepidatious about reading, was scary but not as traumatising as I had anticipated. (Even though it was still downright terrifying).

In other words, I’ve enjoyed this time with Stephen King tremendously. He is fairly outside of what I typically would read (which is, if I’m being honest here, social psychology textbooks, biographies, and literary fiction), but nevertheless the same sorts of components for analysis are there in his work and I also therefore enjoyed the opportunity to look at King’s books as a literary exercise for analysis this year.

I must close with noting that by the end of Horrifying Classics last year I knew that I would be doing Stephen King, but this year, I have absolutely no idea what is going to be on next year’s roster. Do you have any suggestions for me?