You'd think that would enhance my reading time, but really it doesn't to any great degree. I've been working from home this entire year, so I will still be putting in regular shifts (12 hour days) and I still have two small children running around my house, creating joy and utter chaos wherever they go.
But I still am reading, and still plan to keep this blog as regularly updated as I can.
I also have kept watching, and at this point have watched pretty much everything except some stuff I haven't read the book/story versions of, and would rather go in having read them. I have also watched literally King-written film/miniseries in existence, with the exception of that one X-Files episode he wrote (that I understand got substantially re-written anyway).
When it comes to watching TV series based off King, the question is how much do I really want to watch? Unlike my friend over at thetruthinsidethelie.blogspot.com, I don't include "fauxquels" such as Pet Sematary II, A Return to Salem's Lot or the myriad Children of the Corn sequels to be must-watches for this project, but then I did watch The Running Man and The Lawnmower Man, both of which are just barely related to their alleged source material, and I also am watching, and enjoying, Castle Rock. But I kinda quit early with The Dead Zone, the Canadian-produced TV adaptation that stars everyone's favorite 80's John Hughes nerd Anthony Michael Hall. I watched until it was obvious we'd left King's material in the dust and that from here on out we were gonna get passing references at best, and honestly, I wasn't enjoying the show, so I stopped. Maybe if I had enjoyed it, I would have kept watching. I don't know. Or maybe if it didn't run six full seasons. It was easy to get all of Kingdom Hospital watched, and even Castle Rock's seasons are cable series-length.
Write-ups for them are forthcoming, of course, as will posts on what I've finished reading.
Which brings me to my latest reading update. When I stopped the blog last, I was working on Four Past Midnight, which I dropped early, but went back to later on, finishing all four novels in that collection. I burned through The Waste Lands, Needful Things, Gerald's Game, Dolores Claiborne and the remaining stories in Nightmares and Dreamscapes before kinda getting burned out on pure-King-nothing-but-King again, and returned to my first love, which is fantasy.
I think part of what stopped me was knowing what novel was next. I have read Insomnia before and I remember thinking it was not a bad story at all, but one I didn't truly enjoy, and one I didn't relish the idea of returning to. I also knew, if I planned to keep on making this a blog about an interconnected Stephen King Shared universe, that this was one I couldn't leave out, for reasons that will become clear when I talk more about it. At any rate, I have just completed it, and I will be doing a full post on it right away here.
This morning I also read, for the first time, "The Man in the Black Suit", which isn't my first story fully read from Everything's Eventual but it is the first one I've read that didn't seem to be tied to The Dark Tower. So I have already read "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe", "Everything's Eventual" and "The Little Sisters of Eluria", the latter two being obvious and the first being because I heard there was a connection between the insane waiter from that story and the Crimson King. And there is. Kinda.
"The Man in the Black Suit" feels like breaking new ground, and I like that in this collection King tells you some background information on the stories, something I believe he does for all collections going forward. He didn't do this in his previous collections, except for Four Past Midnight, which I thought at the time had mostly to do with the fact that these are four full novels packaged together. I'm thinking that posts on the short stories will still be shorter write-ups collected together, as I've done in the past.
For Insomnia, I'll do a post for it separately, as I said, but I think it won't be a review proper and more just thoughts and impressions I have about it, which is likely how it will be overall here. If something is in need of being filmed, or remade, I may talk about that in brief, but if I cast it at all it will be through the page mycast.io, and will consist of "who I pictured while reading" rather than a full explanation of my cast.
There will also be more posts coming on my Kingian viewing, and would you believe I haven't had a chance to watch the first episode of The Stand? I have it queued up and ready, and I'll definitely expound my thoughts on that one.
Meanwhile, as my picture shows, I also got some new reading material, which at some point will be included on this blog (though don't ask me when). This is reading material that goes beyond "did King or Hill write it". and is more tangentially related to my Kingian studies. For starters, I broke down and bought two Owen King Books, We're All in This Together and Double Feature. I know I said I wouldn't bother including his works, but I was intrigued by both, so I will be reading them, and I'll let you know what that was like. I still don't think I'll be seeking out Tabitha's works. They just sound really dull.
I already talked about having Rocky Wood's Stephen King: Uncollected, Unpublished, and to add to that I now have Feast of Fear, which sounds like a fascinating dive into King's thoughts and ideas, and finally I have an unexpected addition to my reading list.
I did not know that there was a "novel" of Storm of the Century, and really, there isn't, but King did have the full screenplay published, in paperback, and it looks from the outside just like one of his novels, and has been counted among his novels by Constant Readers for years. I saw the miniseries, and wondered if I should try and pick up the book. I struggled with this, because I've always considered scripts and screenplays to be different from novels, and felt like in those cases seeing the filmed product was likely enough, but then, thanks to having a copy of Nightmares and Dreamscapes, I had read the screenplay for Sorry, Right Number, King's original story for Tales From the Dark Side, which was published years after the episode aired, and I'd also seen the episode, so why would I not want to also have this published screenplay? Well, in part because an episode script included in a collection vs. a full book struck me as two different things. Second, because the copies I found on Amazon were pretty pricey, and I couldn't really justify it. But then, while having a look in the horror section of my local used bookstore (all this happened before my son's COVID diagnosis) I found it. And I wasn't gonna let that moment pass, I can tell you!
Whether I'll read it when I get to it, I haven't decided. I saw the series and I know I'll be talking about it. I think a full read and then post on both the screenplay and the series is warranted.
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