S.K. in chronological order (ish)

As with most of my Stephen King books, ‘Carrie’ is a charity shop rescue. It’s King’s debut novel, published when he was 26 (just a bit older than my dissertation subjects). I like it, I like King, but from a technical perspective, it is so different from his later books. Let me explain.

First of all, as a fellow short story writer, I’m pretty sure that King was feeling the pain of trying to write long-form, hence the fragmentation. Secondly, he goes back and forth in time, adding a lot of backstory, which he advises against in ‘On Writing’. The novel seems to lack that technical beauty that I appreciate so much in King. Other than this, the plot is excellent, the characters are interesting, and anything else that might be of interest for a less theoretical reader is there.

I have loads of S.K. books and I aim to have and read ALL OF THEM! The main problem with this is that I usually prioritise the most ‘popular one’ and I find it slightly challenging to pick when I am all out of ‘popular ones’. Therefore I have decided that from now on I’ll read S.K. in chronological order. Ish. Because I don’t have all his books yet, so I might end up jumping in time and then coming back.