As an adult, there isn’t an author whose work I’ve enjoyed more than Stephen King. I decided to immerse myself in some of his lesser-known work. But the main reason why I chose these books was because of their spines. They form a rainbow, and you know how I obsess over cohesion.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite get into Dolores Claiborne, so I swapped it out for a Brian Keene book I’ve been dying to read.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

There are certain things that turn me off books. Three of them include child protagonists, survival stories, and baseball. Yet Stephen King, master storyteller that he is, wove all three together to create a novel that I thoroughly enjoyed. Nine-year-old Trisha MacFarland deviates from a family hiking trip and finds herself lost in the unforgiving woods. On her harrowing trek, she imagines Red Sox pitcher Tom Gordon guiding her along the way. Survival stories can get tedious, but this kept my attention (for the most part), finishing strong with an ending that has stuck with me.

The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King

If I had judged this book by its first three paragraphs, I might have put it down. This fantasy novel is told in a fairy tale style that I thought would grow tiresome, yet as I read on, I found it endearing. Swaths of the novel are told rather than shown. He employs a hint-then-elaborate style of narration that makes it quite the page-turner. King created something special in a genre known for its redundancy. There was no great quest (besides a quest for justice) and even though he borrows heavily from fantasy’s tropes, this intimate fairy tale style breathed life into it.

The Long Walk by Stephen King

How do you make a 400-page novel about walking fascinating? You set it in a dystopian future where 100 young men must endure a forced march until all but one dies. You then turn those young men into strong, living, breathing characters that you genuinely care for. This novel brought me close to tears at one point and kept me riveted from the first sentence to the last. The only thing that held me back was the sheer number of characters (there are 100 after all) and I confused some of the lesser characters at times.

Ghoul by Brian Keene

This book is about a ghoul as you’ve probably guessed, a slimy, carrion-eating ghoul, but it’s about so much more. It’s a story of coming of age, a subject I’m not fond of, but one that Keene handles masterfully, with parallels to Stephen King’s It. Like most everything Keene writes, it’s ridiculously readable, immersing you so far into the story that you forget you’re reading. Yes, there’s a ghoul, but there are plenty of human monsters as well. The author goes unflinchingly into abuse and alcoholism, making it a tense read. I sat on the edge of my seat, fearing how it might end.

The Running Man by Stephen King

After reading The Long Walk, I thought this book would be redundant. After all, they’re both about death games set in dystopian futures—even the titles are similar. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The Running Man sprints from beginning to end. It may have been one of the fastest books I’ve ever read. Still, one flaw ruined the book for me: the main character. He’s reprehensible, beyond unlikeable, and an overall jerk. With no one to root for, it made the book fall flat.

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Keeping reading!

Tchau,

Zé