Stephen King’s Summer Reading List
Posted by: Misha Stone
Stephen King stopped being a regular Entertainment Weekly contributor last year. I really miss his monthly essays about all things pop culture. I think my only nitpicky issues with his columns involved his habit for calling himself “Uncle Stevie” and any of his writing about music (which, I thought, always pigeonholed him as being a total boomer). Those crabby critiques aside, I just loved hearing what King had to say about books the most. So I was extra pleased when my issue of EW arrived (June 3/10, 2011) as a double issue including Stephen King’s Summer Reading list!
Since it’s not yet available online (I will provide the link when/if it’s available), I will provide the list and highlights. First off, Stephen King does what he does best–poking fun at those who take summer reading and themselves too seriously. He makes it clear that his idea of summer reading does not include War and Peace or, as he quips, A Complete History of Canada in Very Tiny Print. Stephen King’s summer reading will not “insult your intelligence, but all will take you away to new and interesting places full of excitement, danger, and maybe a few laughs.” That sure sounds like summer reading to me, too!
Here are King’s suggestions, broken down by month:
June:
Buried Prey by John Sandford
Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson
The Five by Robert McCammon (subterraneanpress.com)
The Fifth Witness by Michael Connelly
July:
The Sentry by Robert Crais
The Silent Land by Graham Joyce
The Cypress House by Michael Kortya
Dog On It by Spencer Quinn
August:
The Accident by Linwood Barclay
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
A Test of Wills by Charles Todd
The Terror of Living by Urban Waite
May 29th, 2011 at 9:42 pm
You can just about always say this for Stephen King: he’s pretty good about using his status as a cultural behemoth to try and get other writers’ works read. I definitely want to give McCammon’s “The Five” a read at some point, and I’d imagine a lot of the others on King’s list would also be well worth my time.
June 6th, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Very glad to see Urban Waite’s terrific first novel, Terror of Living, on King’s list. It’s on Booklist’s top 10 crime fiction debuts of the last year, and it was certainly one of the most memorable books I’ve read this year. Looking forward to seeing what he does next.
December 7th, 2011 at 7:24 pm
Stephen King The Tommyknockers…
[...]Book Group Buzz – Discussion of Book Clubs, Reading Lists, and Literary News – Booklist Online » Blog Archive » Stephen King’s Summer Reading List[...]…
March 25th, 2012 at 7:39 pm
Read The Silent Land after saw King’s reccomendation. It was a page turner, kind of frightening and also heartbreaking. Worth the read!
August 25th, 2012 at 5:29 pm
Thank you for so many good book recommendations. Got one for you. Those Across the River by Christopher Buehlman. Very scary.