 Welcome to Church of the Chair where we love variations on a theme. I'm your host E and today we got promises to keep. This is going to be a discussion video so there will be no edits beyond the intro. Today I'm talking about my favorite Stephen King books to reread books that I have read more than three times because I want to go with that because every single one of his books I have read at least three times so that was one of the things I went into this with is like books that I keep coming back to over that three time mark. This topic was requested by a viewer named Derek Jones, he's also a member of the channel so thank you for that Derek. It was also the inspiration for a video I did a couple weeks back, books that I love to reread so this time we're doing it again but I am only talking about Stephen King's books. And because this is a discussion video I want to see you guys down there in the comments filling up the doobly-doo with all of your favorite Stephen King books to reread, let's go ahead and jump into it. The first one, also if you're a fan of the channel or a viewer for a while none of these books are going to be a surprise except for maybe one or two. We're going to start right off with the obvious ones. Revival I have read at this point in time I believe five times it could be more. You know it's six because I did end up reading the limited edition that I had. If you watch the live stream on Saturday you will have seen it so I'm not going to pull it down again. If you haven't you can go back and watch that. I do a complete bookshelf tour of all of my Stephen King books, it's a super long video. But yeah Revival is one of King's most, it's one of his darkest especially because of the ending. What I really enjoy rereading are the opening sections and then the sections when Jamie is on heroin, that whole sequence. I love it. Of course there is a, I believe it's a traveling carnival that he's with at one point in time and I enjoy stories like that even though it's a small bit of the story I do enjoy reading it. Charlie Jacobs, every time I read it the character of Charlie Jacobs gets better and better. So yeah this is one of them and this isn't like a top five or anything like that. In fact I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. A very odd number which my OCD is probably going to hate me for. Let me put this over here. Alright, next up we have Cycle of the Werewolf, illustrated by the amazing legend Bernie Riteson. Unfortunately Bernie Riteson is no longer with us but his artwork is man and it is something to behold. It is absolutely gorgeous and sometimes ever since I was a kid even before I read the book even before I had read any books I remember flipping through this and just looking at the pictures. The most striking one is when I'm going to try and find here it's the one that gave me nightmares forever because I had no idea what was going on in the picture but it was so striking because it was a woman and an animal I guess you would say. Of course it's an animal but a werewolf is also a person. Anyways, this is the most, this is the one that stuck with me the most. I remember seeing that as a kid and thinking in my little kid brain, oh what the fuck is this? But this one holds the place for technically the first Stephen King content I had ever witnessed, consumed, whatever because I would just flip through this book as a kid. If you don't know my mother had what I call the Great Book Closet where she kept all of her John Saul, her Peter Straub, her Stephen King, her Dean Koontz. These were all quote unquote adult books that she thought were too evil for her little baby boy to be reading but I ended up getting into them anyways and this is one of the books that I found. She would work a lot and my dad didn't pay a lot of attention to me when I was a kid. So I would just go in their room, go into the closet and look through the books even though I had no intention of reading them. I didn't really get started reading hardcore until after 9 or 10 years old when I found the Fear Street books. I did read the Goosebumps stuff also but it was after the Fear Street stuff and I was like I have to read everything by this author but I don't read Arlstein anymore but he was a very big part of my childhood. But this I give this credit for starting my obsession with dark literature and horror in general. So next up we have one that I quote constantly if you watch any of my writing videos or the From a Desk series or any of that stuff, I'm always quoting this book. The first time I read it I was a young caregiver, that's what I did before I hurt my back and the publishing stuff took off. I don't want to say this was before I met Shell so it had to be before 2001, before I turned 21. But I was sitting with a woman with dementia at the hospital. I was being paid to watch her because the family couldn't and I had just picked up on writing. This is the exact copy that I picked up. It's probably other than It and the Green Mile, this is the oldest Stephen King book that I bought personally, brand new off of a wire rack. But anyways, on writing is of course Stephen King's memoir disguised as a book about writing. He does give some advice but it's very loose stuff, like on the topic of being talented. He says, if you wrote something and someone gave you and someone sent you a check for what you wrote and the check did not bounce, I consider you talented. This book, if you're struggling with writing, if you're thinking, if you have an posture syndrome, if you're wondering what to do next, so on and so forth, King covers all that stuff by telling his own life story. One of the things that stuck with me the most, other than the guy with green coming out of him, if you've read it, you know what I'm talking about, is him talking about his toolbox. Basically write what you know. All the stuff that you've experienced in your life you're going to put into a toolbox and then you're going to use it piecemeal throughout. That's what writing what you know means, not writing about your life story but taking those real life instances, those real life experiences and putting them in your fiction to make your fiction more believable. But yeah, on writing, I've read this at least 10 times. It's super short with insanely big font. It's like an old Bentley Little or Richard Lehman book. And it's like 200, yeah, it's 290 pages. You also have stuff him editing his own work, just stuff that he had laying around all the marks and scratches. He also has editorial stuff from when he was doing, what was it, the, oh I can't remember the newspaper that he wrote for, the college newspaper that he wrote for. It was like Stevie's Garbage Cycles. I don't know, it's something funny like that. But the editorial marks that his professor taught, showed him or the guy who's working for at the paper, showed him that changed the way he wrote forever. It's a very cool story. If you haven't read it because it's nonfiction, definitely get on that because it reads like fiction. Stephen King can just tell a story. He tells the hell out of a story and that's why so many people love him because it's like sitting down and listening to an aged story teller tell you about these wonderful things and the part with the green coming out of the guy. It's just the little inflections that make Stephen King so special. It's like, it comes out of nowhere, it's like boom, now let's move on. I love that about him. Next up we have of course Pet Cemetery, second favorite Stephen King book of all time, Revival would be third. This book, I love the opening line, I'm going to read it verbatim because I love it so much. It is, Louis Creed, who had lost his father at three and who had never known a grandfather, never expected to find a father as he entered his middle age. But that was exactly what happened, although he called this man a friend, as a grown man must do when he finds the man who should have been his father relatively late in life. I love that I had a very tense relationship with my father. He passed away in 2011 I believe, last time I saw him was 2001. So that line especially resonates with me, and of course he's talking about a Judd. If you've read the book that's who he's talking about. And this has in my opinion the best final line of any book ever written, conceived, or otherwise. It's an amazing final line and it is perfection, it is super short line, it's a line of dialogue. And I believe there is, yeah, the thing that hits it so hard is, I'm going to go ahead and read it if you haven't read it, it says darling it said. It's the it said that does it for me and the darling, what we do for our loved ones, that's pretty much what this book is about, not being able to let go. And to have that that term of endearment come out of the mouth of whatever the hell this thing is at the end of the book is absolutely, it's, it gives me shivers just thinking about it. And I'm stumbling on my words here because I love it so much. You guys know I always have more problems talking about things that I like than I do things that I don't like, I can always articulate what I don't like better. But anyways, there's a pet cemetery. It's up, you know, it's it, I mean I've read it 18 times, I'm looking forward to trying my 19th time after taking a couple years off of rereading it and instead rereading the goldfinch over and over and over again. The reason why, the reason how I can do this and still read other books is because I literally read this in small bite size sections. There's only two chapters that I read in full, like I have to read the entire thing at one time, and that Stanley Iris gets a phone call, and the section with Mrs. Kirsch, that section of Bebs. Those two I read all in one go because they don't feel right if you break them up, but usually I only read three to five pages a night, sometimes as few as two pages. But there are times when I forget that I have other books to read and I'm just reading this one. So that's why I stopped rereading it. Also it got to a point where I knew every single beat of it. I could damn near recite verbatim the opening after the flood. I could, I could almost, I had it almost completely memorized. But anyways, you know it, you love it, I love it, everybody loves it. Anyways, next up is a twofer. These are my two favorite books in the series. So I'm just going to put them both up at the same time. And that is the drawing of the three and the Wastelands, whereas the Wastelands is in my top five Stephen King books of all time as a standalone book. It is my favorite book in the series. This is a very close second, but this is where the series really gets going and then you slam on the brakes for four. But we're not going to talk about Wizard and Glass today. The Wastelands, to me, is perfection. I was watching A Great Undertaking. It's a YouTube channel here run by Mr. Doyle. I highly suggest that you go and check him out. His video about this book is astounding. It's perfection. I highly recommend you go and check it out. He's kind of like me in that I don't like when Stephen King writes about sex. But he has an especially bad time with the semen demon that Susanna has to hate fuck as he puts. And I got a kick out of that. I don't mind the scene. I don't understand why it's awkward and upsetting to some people. To me, I'm just going to let fiction be fiction. If King says that's what happened, that's what happened. But drawing of the three, I'm going to be honest with you. I do not reread the whole thing every single time. I don't bother with the opening. I jump right to Eddie's stuff. And then I read all the way up until the pusher. And then I stop reading when I do reread these. Because nothing in this book is as good as the shootout. Ditto, Ditto, Susanna's story, all that. That's the meat and potatoes of this book. And I've always called The Gunslinger an extended prologue. This book is an extended character introduction. So we use, what is it, 400 or 500 pages? Yeah, it's 463 pages in this edition. And it's just introducing you to the characters that are going to be going on this epic quest. And in this book is when the quest really, truly gets going because Jake comes back, all that good stuff. But yeah, these two, I love rereading them. I've read them probably, well, like I said, the drawing of the three not in full. But I've probably read them seven or eight times at this point. I've completely lost. I used to keep little cards. In fact, in this one, I have the card back here. It says read 2004, March 1st to the 3rd. Read 2008, August 10th through the 20th. I used to keep track in these. And it's gotten so out of control with my rereads that I've forgotten to keep track of them. And put these back in order because, like I said, I'm OCD, I'll put that up there. All right, next up is different seasons. This is, if you wanna talk about short stories, I'd have to do a whole other series. So let me know down there, short stories, I would have to do a whole another series. Let me know down there in the doobly-doo whether or not you want me to go through and do this topic, my favorite short stories by King to reread. Or my favorite, maybe we do two episodes. Let me know down there if you wanna see that one. But if I did, we'd be here for a while because there's at least 15 short stories. I was going through them like the John, Poppy, Popsy. There's so many that I love to reread, Battleground. So many, we could be here forever. But I had to pick this one. This is of course different seasons. It is my favorite novella collection. It's also the first novella collection from Stephen King. And they are mostly, I would say they're all can happen fiction. Let me make sure before I'm thinking at people, I'm thinking Rita Hayworth, I'm thinking the body. Yeah, the breathing method, it's on the fence whether or not there's something supernatural going on. But I'm pretty sure what happens in there is 100% possible. It has to do with the brain firing after death. But anyways, my favorite story in here is the breathing method. And I've read that more than any other story in any other novella in this collection. I've read, it's funny because the body, I've only read probably three times, but I've watched Stand By Me. This is of course the movie Tying Cover. I've watched Stand By Me in my lifetime, probably 50, 60, maybe more times than that. In fact, I just got through rewatching it once again with my youngest kid. My oldest kid has seen it with me several times. But App Pupil is probably the only one that I don't fanboy over. It's still good. I still give it 4.5 stars. But it's the only one that I skip when I go back. But I've still read it at least three times. This is absolutely classic iconic collection from Stephen King. Next up, and the last one on this list is a book. This is the very first Stephen King book that I read. Again, Cycle of the Werewolf. I just looked at the pictures when I was younger. But my mom was a member of the Stephen King Book Club and I've told the story numerous times, but I stole this out of the mailbox. And I read it over the course of three days. Nowadays when I read it, it takes me a single day, same with on writing, to get through it. And that is Dolores Claiborne. There is something addictive about this book and I don't know how he did it. It is relatively chunky. It is not a 200 page book. It is 372 pages in this version. And the first edition hardcover is another 300 pages. Yeah, it's 304 pages, five pages, something like that. But any time I start it, I have to finish it. And I don't know if it is a case of once again OCD, but there's no chapters. There are some page breaks, but it's all written as one long interview told solely from the point of view of Dolores Claiborne, the main character. There are questions from other individuals, but there's no real dialogue. The questions are usually just Dolores responding to the person who's answering, who's asking the questions. Like what do you mean by that Mr. Man or whatever? Kathy Bates of course, Jennifer Jason Lee, absolutely fantastic in the movie adaptation. It has one of the coolest one shot scenes where Dolores is looking down into the well and there's the eclipse happening behind her and it's an amazing scene. I love that movie. Seeing that movie dozens of times also. But this one, this one I have reread more than any other of Stephen King's books other than it. I think the last time I checked I was up to 14. There was a time in my life where I would read it twice a year at the beginning of the year, at the end of the year. I just love reading this book because it, once again, it feels like you're sitting down and you are listening to a experienced storyteller spin you a yarn right then and there, especially if you read the book all in one go, it feels like that. But that's all the time I have for you today. I would love to hear from you guys, especially you Derek, especially you. The books, the Stephen King books that you love to reread the most. Derek, if you haven't reread any of his books, I completely understand. But if you have, I expect to hear from you because you asked for this one. But until next time, I'll hail the chair.