The fifth annual Stephen King's Summer book club starts June 1st, and I know I say this every year,

but I think this is going to be our best summer yet.

Together we're going to read two novels, one classic and one modern.

We're going to watch two movies in the first episode of a TV series

adaptation. And basically we're just going to spend three months deep diving on the work of

the greatest living storyteller. Now, I started the Stephen King's Summer Book Club in 2021 as a way

to not only celebrate my favorite writer,

but to convert people who don't read Stephen King because they think they don't like horror.

But they think they don't like horror because they don't want to be scared or they don't want

to read things that are graphically gory. And readers are always surprised that

Stephen King books are not scary and are not all that gory. Like a lot of horror, Stephen King's

stories are mostly psychological. They are deeply character-driven and they are wildly

different in book form than what you know from

his work on the screen. This is one of the reasons we do the movie and TV watch-alongs, even though

I call Stephen King Summer a book club, because it's important to illustrate how different

watching horror is from reading it.

It's also important to note that some of the cultural touchstones that are associated with

Stephen King, like the clown from it or the axe coming through the door in the shining

or Carrie being drenched in blood at the prom.

They really play out differently in the novels.

The conversations that we have in the Stephen King Summer Book Club meetings are always some of the best I have every year.

Because while we're talking about Stephen King and his storytelling and his throne in pop culture,

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