Back in April of 2024, I listened to an episode of the Book Review podcast from the New York Times featuring journalist-turned-author Grady Hendrix. He described a project in which he read 38 novels, 15 novellas, 111 short stories and five poems by Stephen King–The Great Stephen King Reread .
I was generally captivated by Hendrix’s engagement with King’s ouevre, but one thing especially caught my attention. Of all of the books he read, Hendrix wanted to talk about three and to encourage others to read them: Cujo, Duma Key, and From a Buick Eight.
My ears perked up here. I have read a lot of Stephen King. At least seventeen of his books sit on my shelves at the moment. This tally does not include books in storage, titles on my Kindle, copies lent out and never returned, or those I borrowed from the library.
I can’t remember the first King novel I read. I just recall it being thick and probably recommended to me by my friend, Jake. Jake had a liking of all things horror and also lived for a time in an apartment that had the longest hallway I had ever seen. Truly, it might be the longest residential corridor in the state of Illinois. Maybe the Midwest. It was the type of hallway straight out of a scary story. Sometimes we would each be reading Stephen King books in his bedroom late at night, nature would call, and I would have to traverse that dark expanse to use the bathroom. It seemed to stretch into a different zip code. My imagination ran wild. Doors with who knows what lurking behind them were between me and my destination. Both ways. I walked with haste.
Anyway, as a long-time reader of King’s work I was surprised to hear Hendrix recommend three titles I had not read and two I had never even heard of before (Duma Key and From a Buick Eight).
The podcast episode inspired a little mini-project of my own. I endeavored to read all three at some point.
I can now report that I have completed the assignment. Of the three, I most enjoyed Duma Key. I had long avoided Cujo, simply, I think, because as a dog-lover myself I wasn’t interested in a story where a principle villain is a St. Bernard. (I’ve also never watched the screen adaptation.) I liked the novel more than I thought I would. Hendrix was absolutely right; Cujo is about so much more than a rabid dog terrorizing people. From a Buick Eight wasn’t for me.
I’ll also remember this project fondly because of how two of the books came into my possession. My son, Bryant, gifted me Duma Key for Father’s Day. He found it at a used book shop as part of the Rock Cities Book Crawl in Little Rock and North Little Rock. I found my copy of From a Buick Eight at the same event a year later at a different location in company of family as we visited the five participating bookstores.
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