The plan is to reread all of Stephen King’s works in the order that they were published. Richard Chizmar of Cemetery Dance had the vision. I’m doing it because I am a writer and I want to improve my fiction. And I love Stephen King’s stories. I think there is something to be learned through this process.
You can also go back to the beginning and read Before Carrie or any of my other posts up through this one and beyond by checking out this link to the Master List of all my #StephenKingRevisited posts.
As I prepare to read Finders Keepers, I feel like I’m moving through a new phase of King’s career. Not the final phase, but modern and current phase of his storytelling. Reading Mr. Mercedes made me want to read Finders Keepers even more. Mr. Mercedes was great, but I have this odd feeling, an expectation, that the second book will be better. That seems to be the trajectory of his writing over the last decade as of the time I am writing this.
This feels like the payoff as I move through his most recent books. Reading all his work up until now was rewarding. Every book was a gift. For better or worse, this is where this journey has led. I think it was for better. Stephen King is not slipping and he’s not mailing it in. He’s not writing for the money or just out of habit. He still has stories to tell, and these stories are built on a mountain of great work, maybe unparalleled work. I’m starting to believe that King’s best writing has been these past ten years.
As we bring back Bill Hodges and his unlikely helpers for the second book of the trilogy, King revisits the concept of the obsessive fan threatening the life of an author that he portrayed so ironically in Misery. I’m interested to see what he does with all this.
It was a long road to get to Finders Keepers and I’m rewarding myself with this story now.
My next post in this series will be After Finders Keepers which will be linked on the Master List of all my Stephen King Revisited posts.
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