Nearly a Year in the Making

So... I've been gone a while.

I'm back to blog about Stephen King and a realization that I had this weekend while dining out with my sister for the first of our two-pronged birthday fiesta.

For Christmas, my sister bought me a boxed set of the first four books in King's renowned Dark Tower series. She said that any self-respecting fan of his work should have read or planned to read the series in its entirety as King himself considers it his magnum opus. My sister isn't the first person to try to turn me onto the books, which I've put off for years seeing as I'm much more a fan of hard-core horror than I am of the fantasy genre. I read bits and pieces from critics and reviewers who insist that these are, in fact, masterworks  that weave in elements from a variety of King's other novels, and I became intrigued.

Last week, I read through the first of the series, The Gunslinger, finishing it the night after my sister and I dined on Tex-Mex at El Chico's (yet another definitive foray away from my recent attempts at veganism) and watched the new horror movie, Mama. I completed it, instantly wanting to keep going, but very confused at the language and overall mood of the book - totally unlike that which I'm accustomed to from most of Stephen King's other work. My sister had insisted that I would be blown away, but I wasn't... yet. I was left feeling that I must not be the Stephen King expert that I'd considered myself since originally delving into The Shining during the summer between second and third grades.

Was I supposed to recognize some familiar elements? Is there something important from his universe that I've overlooked or forgotten? What books or short stories have I read so long ago that I've forgotten? And which did I leave out?

My roommate gave me his Stephen King Library Desk Calendar for 2013 and it's filled with fun facts and pieces of interest related to this series and other books from his bibliography that I've never read, so I have a daily reminder that one of the greatest and most perverse minds of the past century has a plethora of tomes I've yet to enjoy and many that I'd like to go back and re-read.

2013 is going to be a big year for Stephen King. There's a remake of Carrie coming to theaters. He's about to publish a sequel to The Shining. Under the Dome is scheduled to come to television as a miniseries. And there's another novel set for publication later this year.

Why not make this 2013 blog all about Stephen King and all things horror, especially since he's my favorite writer (right up there with Bret Easton Ellis) and I have a desire to really grasp the magnitude that is his self-proclaimed "magnum opus," the Dark Tower books?

My goal is to read his entire body of work, in order of publication, beginning with Carrie and ending with the books being released later this year. I plan to even re-read the work that I've already read, and I'm going to talk about it here, every step of the way.

A blog makes someone accountable, and I'm all about accountability these days.