All caught up...

My first thought was to title this post "Done and done", but let's not kid ourselves.  I'm caught up is all.  I half expected to go online after finishing End of Watch and see announcements for another dozen books.
But no.  Not yet.

So, yeah, what to say after reading Stephen King's complete bibliography and taking about six years to do it?

It has been a wild ride.  I know I've made it up to be something more than it really is. But 55 novels and 10 short story collections is quite a bit to get through.  To really get a grip on it all, I think I'll need to go back and read the whole of this blog.  Bit I'm not quite ready for that.  A while ago I read some of the early posts and couldn't help cringing.  All youthful (ha!) ambition and exuberance, throwing opinions all over the place like I had even a clue what I was talking about.  Not that I know anything now.  At least now I know that I don't know shit.  But that's OK.  This is the internet.  Giving a voice to those with nothing to say.

Enough of that.

So, what's next?  Comics.  Lots of comics.  I've a few series to catch up on: Ta-Nehisi Coates's Black Panther, Kim & Kim, Animosity, The Revisionist, Civil War II: Kingpin. With most of those, I'm only an issue behind as it was only in the last couple of weeks that I completely abandoned everyone but Uncle Steve.
Past that, I've got a Marvel Unlimited subscription to properly dig into.  I got it last year sometime, ostensibly for my son's benefit, but I was always going to give it some hammer.
After that, I'll be taking a step ladder to my "to read" pile and see what's what.  In the short term, I'll be heading into F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night.  My lovely friend Amanda and I talked about starting our own little book club a few years ago following our visit to North Carolina.  We did read Walker Percy's The Moviegoer and almost got going on The Last Gentlemen, but didn't manage to keep it up.  Now seems as good a time as any and the idea of maintaining closer contact with a friend is a massive boon.

I'm not sure whether to keep on blogging.  Posting about other books and doing the whole journal thing seems to go against the purpose of this blog.  It was/is a specific accompaniment to reading Stephen King.  Aside from recording and collecting any thoughts or reactions, it's main purpose was to maintain momentum and encourage progress. I don't know.  We'll see. In the end, I had no idea of the blog's audience.  The stats on the blogger account page suggest someone's looking at the posts, but I couldn't say whether it's more than bots dropping on search terms.  I've never encouraged discussion, mainly because I haven't given much value to my opinion, so there hasn't been much reader interaction.  All my own fault.  But it has served its purpose well enough for me.  I got to the end.
Maybe I'll just read books and keep my opinions to myself. Maybe I'll write bits and bobs in an attempt to see whether my brain still works. Yeah, we'll see.

Before I go, I'll give one note of thanks to Laura.  She keeps a blog at http://devouringtexts.blogspot.com where she has not only been reading all of Stephen King, she also reads and reviews (like proper reviews!) zillions of other books.  And engages with her readers in a warm and lovely way.  Go read her blog.

Here's the full list of books that I've trawled through:

Novels

Carrie (1974)
'Salem's Lot (1975)
The Shining (1977)
The Stand(1978)
The Dead Zone (1979)
Firestarter (1980)
Cujo (1981)
Christine (1983)
Pet Sematary (1983)
Cycle of the Werewolf(1983)
The Talisman (1984; with Peter Straub)
It (1986)
The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)
Misery (1987)
The Tommyknockers(1987)
The Dark Half (1989)
Needful Things (1991)
Gerald's Game (1992)
Dolores Claiborne (1992)
Insomnia (1994)
Rose Madder (1995)
The Green Mile (1996)
Desperation (1996)
Bag of Bones (1998)
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (1999)
The Plant (2000; unfinished)
Dreamcatcher (2001)
Black House(2001; with Peter Straub)
From a Buick 8 (2002)
The Colorado Kid(2005)
Cell (2006)
Lisey's Story (2006)
Duma Key (2008)
Under the Dome (2009)
11/22/63 (2011)
Joyland (2013)
Doctor Sleep (2013)
Mr. Mercedes (2014)
Revival (2014)
Finders Keepers (2015)
End of Watch (2016)

The Dark Tower series
The Gunslinger (1982)
The Drawing of the Three (1987)
The Waste Lands (1991)
Wizard and Glass (1997)
Wolves of the Calla (2003)
Song of Susannah (2004)
The Dark Tower (2004)
The Wind Through the Keyhole (2012)

Richard Bachman novels
Rage (1977)
The Long Walk (1979)
Roadwork (1981)
The Running Man (1982)
Thinner (1984)
The Regulators (1996)
Blaze (2007)

Short fiction collections
Night Shift (1978)
Different Seasons (1982)
Skeleton Crew (1985)
Four past Midnight (1990)
Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993)
Hearts in Atlantis (1999)
Everything's Eventual (2002)
Just After Sunset (2008)
Full Dark, No Stars (2010)
The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015)

End of Watch: 19th - 20th September 2016

Two days!  That's all it took my to blast through this book.  I'll put it down to a combination of being on the finishing straight of this reading mission as much as the book's pace and readability.
I checked out somewhat on the supernatural elements, almost lamenting their inclusion.  But I was happily along for another ride with Bill, Holly and Jerome.

The book didn't fill me with joy, but then neither did a good percentage of King's other books.
I think it's fair to say that there are elements of the detective story genre that King struggled to adopt and his usually tremendous depiction of youth didn't work at all.  The modern, especially technological, references stuck out like turds in a swimming pool, but rather than pick apart what I did and didn't like, I'll just say that it wasn't a waste of time and I didn't spend any of the time I was reading thinking that King could have better spent his time writing something in his usual mould, rather than this detective trilogy (as one goodreads reviewer said).

And that's that.  One more summary post, and I'm done.

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams: 11th - 18th September 2016

I've never been wholly taken by Stephen King's short stories.  His novellas, sure.  Some of his most affecting work, for me, has been found in his slimmer volumes.  But, while there's some good stuff in here, nothing life changing.  God, what a dick I am to be so flippant and throwaway.  But, at this stage of the proceedings, I'll have to cop to not having given the book much of my critical acumen (I know, I know, I've barely done that for any of the books). I just charged through, inhaling the stories and maybe giving each a "that was alright" or "not so bothered for that one."
My standouts were:
Premium Harmony, Bad Little Kid, Afterlife, UR (even better second time), Herman Wouk is Still Alive and Obits.

Finders Keepers: 2nd - 11th September 2016

I dunno. It was alright. It was a page turner, but the criticisms are easy pickings. As with Mr Mercedes, the villain is way too much of a caricature. Obviously not on the same level as Brady Hartsfield, but he's cut from a similarly perverse cloth.

King's up to date references are still pretty poor. Putting Snow Patrol and cool into the same sentence is a clanging bum note.

I'd been looking forward to seeing how the relationship between the three main characters had evolved, but it was resigned to a subplot that I struggled to care too much about.

The end of the book has me looking forward to the next instalment, but the fact that End of Watch will bring me right up to date on King's work and the opportunity to go to work on my 'to read' pile, may be doing a lot of the heavy lifting on that anticipation.

Revival: 27th August - 2nd September 2016

Yes! I liked this one a lot. I think more for the style than anything else. King writes kids so well, it was hard not to be brimful of joy with the earlier sections of this book. It was only the end that turned me off a bit. But it's not a new thing for King to build things up beautifully to a damp squib climax.

Still, I galloped through the pages and will definitely put Revival on my good pile. If I had one. Maybe I will at the end.

Only three books to go. Wow.