Currently reading: I’m about to start The Best of Bellairs 2, The Johnny Dixon Mysteries (3 stories – one book) because I bought it years ago and can’t remember if I’ve read it 🤦♀️. And yes, I checked my book list but under the “Read” column there is a question mark, so double 🤦♀️🤦♀️.
I think by now you all know that I am anal about my books and my book lists (all done in excel and everything 😁). It’s about the only thing I’m really anal about – I usually operate in organized chaos. I have my original book list with four pages: 1. Books by author (which includes books I haven’t read by my favorite authors for tracking purposes), 2. by publisher, 3. books removed and 4. King in other books and magazines (that I own), which we will come back to in a moment. Next, I have my book release list, my books I want to read eventually list, novels read by year and finally my Stephen King short stories list, which was born out of the King in other books and mags list.
As a lifelong fan of SK (I started reading him around 13) I have tried to read and collect as much as his material as possible. But when I started to track the books in my library, I realized I had short story collections that had a SK story included (so far, I have 7 collections with 9 SK stories). This led me down a rabbit whole of epic proportions one day last spring – about the third month of quarantine. I started searching for more of his short stories and found a few in on-line publications that I printed to read later. Then I decided to check his website (I know, I know I should have started there first). And did I hit the motherlode! Over 100 short stories listed – some from his collections and many first printings of his stories published in other sources. My mind was blown at the sheer volume of stories I could add to my collection! I must have spent hours poring over that page, seeing what I had read, what I needed to read, wondering if I could collect them all and knowing that I will give it good shot. Wow, just talking about it makes me light-headed with excitement.
That is the story of how, yet another book related list came into existence – the day the SK short stories list was born. That is also the day I realized how truly obsessive (probably borderline crazy) I might be about books.
As an aside, taking that particular trip down the rabbit hole that day staved off a huge anxiety attack that was building inside. Sometimes something seemingly odd may yield unexpected, yet beneficial, results.
So that is my tale for today, now it’s time for your verdict – overly obsessed or, just right? Sound off in the comments and as always happy reading!
Note: While research and writing on this piece, Amazon decided to favor me with an email of SK suggestions, many of which I have or already plan to get. 🤬 🤬 cookies!
Also – Happy birthday my sweet Monkey!
My Lemons My Lemonade 