2020 has been a rough year. This might be a surprise to you; it’s not very well known. I’d say most folks have a pretty favorable view of this year, but I’m one to court controversy.

I’m lying, obviously.

But it’s true that I’ve been struggling, as many people have, in several personal areas. My writing has been sporadic at best, and I had a goal to read 50 books this year, and I’ve read just under 20 so far. Even sitting down to watch movies has been hard. I’ve been much more likely to veg out in front of the TV and binge Bob’s Burgers or Schitt’s Creek for the seventh or eighth time. I’ve been craving stuff that’s comforting and reliable. Which brings me to Stephen King.

I first read Stephen King when I was around 10 years old. My mom was a huge reader, and I think she read 4 authors more than any other: Mary Higgins Clark, Danielle Steele, Dean Koontz, and Stephen King. Stephen King was the biggest name on that list to me, and as a kid that loved creepy, macabre stuff, I was intrigued. I don’t remember which is the first book of his I noticed. I have vague memories of my mom reading The Regulators and Nightmares and Dreamscapes, but when I actually read Stephen King myself, there were two books I picked up: The Talisman, and It. I read It first, and I remember the thrill of seeing the word “fuck” in print for the first time. It felt dangerous, like I was getting away with something, but my mom is who recommended those two books to me. Still, I felt Very Adult. I tried not to giggle too much at the swear words and just take in the story.

I didn’t finish It at the time — it would be probably ten or fifteen years before I finally would because undiagnosed ADHD is a son of a bitch — but I devoured The Talisman in nearly one sitting. And thus my voracious consumption of Stephen King began. The first Stephen King book I ever owned myself was a copy of The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon, which I received a hardcover copy of for my birthday that I still own to this day.

I didn’t have an order in which I read the books, I just devoured every one I could find. There were some I found more intimidating than others — I never did get around to The Stand because it was So. Long. But I ripped through a lot of his early works. In middle school between the ages of 10 and 13, I can remember reading The Talisman, Misery, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Christine, Cujo, The Dead Zone, Black House, Dreamcatcher, Desperation, The Regulators, and Needful Things.

I honestly think the two most significant to me were The Talisman and Black House. The former was a fantastic 80’s style fantasy adventure about a boy that had to flip back and forth between dimensions in order to fetch a talisman that would save both his mother and the queen of the Territories, her other-dimensional twin. I cried when I finished it because it was so emotionally warm, overflowing with love and hope. I loved the latter, too. Not the same way. Returning to a character after so many years (in story) was an odd head space to be in. I was still a kid myself, but I was fascinated in Jack’s story, how he’d grown, how he’d changed. Things that seemed like a tidy HEA in the first book were complicated, sadder, much like growing up. I think it may have been one of the first books that really let me experience that.

That book also discussed the Tower and gunslingers. Speedy Parker’s twinner was himself gunslinger-esque, although he said there weren’t anymore gunslingers since the world moved on. That exposure to the Tower and the Breakers and the Beams was my first exposure to King’s magnum opus.

A couple of years later, they started re-releasing the Dark Tower books in illustrated hardcovers in preparation for King finishing out his saga with a rapid-fire release of books 5, 6, and 7 — six years after the release of book 4. My family, the sweet enablers that they were, bought me hardcover copies of the those illustrated, revised editions, and I dove heard first into the lands of Gilead, of Arthur Eld, of the evil sorcerers Marten and Walter o’ Dim and Flagg, all distinct people, but also all the same person.

Reading the books lead to watching the movies, and I watched every thing even tangentially related to Stephen King. All of the Children of the Corn movies up through 6, the Lawnmower Man movies (yes, both), at least two of the Sometimes They Come Back movies. Both Pet Sematarys. I developed a favorite portrayal of Alan Pangborn — Michael Rooker in The Dark Half for sure, though I do love Scott Glenn’s portrayal in Castle Rock season 1, too.

As you might be able to tell, I love Stephen King’s books. They are a part of my DNA — a fundamental building block of who I am as a person. I haven’t read every Stephen King book, but I’ve read a lot, and I’ve seen a shit ton of movies. But what’s the point?

Well, 2020 sucks, and I need comfort. I’d been toying with the idea of doing a complete Stephen King re-read for years now. I was an avid reader of James Smythe’s “Re-reading Stephen King” articles in the Guardian before he finally abandoned them. (Mr. Smythe, you should pick those back up if you can find a venue. I loved your analyses.) Eventually, I found myself thinking that it’d be nice to revisit some books I read as a kid, fill in the gaps that I didn’t and often still haven’t read (The Stand), and just…float in a warm pool of nostalgia, you know?

What deterred me was this: I do my best to read new authors, and particularly marginalized authors as much as I can. I didn’t want to be that guy who’s like, “Hey, I know there are amazing, ground-breaking, transformative works of horror out there by extremely exciting new talents, but have you heard of this old white guy?” But it reached a point where I wasn’t reading anything, and then one day I thought, “Fuck it, let’s turn on the Carrie audiobook and listen to Sissy Spacek read.”

And just like that, it was like someone flipped a switch in my brain. I listened to Carrie like it was an oxygen mask on a crashing plane. And once it was done, I flipped over to ‘Salem’s Lot and ripped through that, too. I’d expected when I started that I’d be binge-reading King for a while, but to my surprise, I found myself wanting to read other things, too. My desire to read and to write rekindled for the first time in months.

So that’s the current plan: to re-read Stephen King, in order of publication, starting with Carrie and working my way through to the newest release (I think it’s If It Bleeds as of this writing). I won’t be reading exclusively him because that’s ridiculous, but…I dunno…it just feels sort of nice to indulge in a bit of passion that I haven’t really explored in a while.

I don’t know if I’m going to do a write-up of every book, but I definitely had thoughts about Carrie and ‘Salem’s Lot, and I’m working on writing those out and trying to wrangle them into something resembling coherence. If you’re interested, I’m totally happy to have people offer their own thoughts and opinions as I finish them, too.

2020 is all about self-care, and one of the ways I’m trying to take care of myself and keep my internal coals burning is diving headlong into things in which I find joy, and this is one of them. Look forward to a Carrie write-up soon-ish!