Read It Again

I haven't read every Stephen King novel . . . yet.  Rose Madder, Lisey's Story, the Talisman and others still await me.  While some books remain unread, there and others I go to again and again.

Here are 8 books I enjoy re-reading.

• The Stand
• The Shining
• Dolores Claiborne
• IT
• Needful Things
• The Mist
• Pet Sematary
• The Drawing of the Three

I have heard King and others complain about Needful Things.  I thought when I read it -- and then read it again -- and again -- that it was brilliantly executed.  Only later did I begin to think that maybe some characters (Baptist preachers in particular) had been painted without much effort to dig deeper.  In fact, I began to suspect there appeared to be intentional mislabeling taking place with this work.  Typecasting takes place in every novel (that's how you build characters you can identify with!), but a reader gets leery when they suspect the writer might be doing it to cause the reader to think less of a certain group of people.  

The Stand is the book I come back to the most.  I have read the 1978 novel several times.  I only read the extended version once, as a teen.

It used to be that the books I owned on tape were the ones I listened to over and over.  Thus Needful Things, Drawing of the Three and Dolores Claiborne were easy choices.  Now I have most of King's work on audio, so I'm more picky!

And then there are those books I enjoyed -- once long ago and hope to read again someday.  

The Sun Dog (all of 4 past Midnight), Cell, Desperation, The Tommyknockers.  Some books I hesitate to go back to because I think I might not enjoy them as much as I did the first time.  Or -- I connect a book to a specific period of my own life when I was reading and don't really want to relive those memories.  As if reading a book I read would bring back those  old events.  Crazy stuff, I know!

Sometimes another persons view of a book will dampen my own delight for something I had previously enjoyed.  I loved Sun Dog!  But when I read others complain it was too heavily edited, I had less desire to go back and travel those pages again -- even though they had once held me in such suspense.

You know, some books can  only really punch you once. The twists and turns are such a surprise that they can't be experienced a second time with the same intensity.  The Stand is that way. I remember staying up late as Harold built a bomb and wondering if King would really kill off his good guys.  Yet, I come back to The Stand because I still enjoy the journey, even if it does not pack the same punch each round.  I notice new details along the path, hone in better on how King words things and builds his scenes.

Some books never get a second date.  Kind of a sad thought, isn't it? Gerald's Game, which I have read more than once, does not "call to me."  I read it before I had kids -- daughters.  Now the thought of reading what I remember to be the story of serious sexual child abuse is not something I want to do.  Strangely, Under The Dome does not draw me back -- so far at least.  That is a surprise, because I enjoyed reading it so much.  Thinner, which I also enjoyed at the time, was a one time thing for me. 

Tell me what books you love to read again.