The Book: The Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King, by Lisa Rogak

The Story: This is an unauthorized biography of Stephen King.  She said within the book that while Stephen King didn’t do interviews with her, he didn’t object to her writing the biography and told his friends and family members to go ahead and talk to her.

What resulted was the story of Stephen King’s life from the time he was born up until late 2008.  She covered the stuff that is common knowledge: him pitching Carrie and his wife fishing it out of the trash, his drug addiction and his car accident in 1999.  She also included little antidotes about his private life including stuff about his house and about his wife and kids.

What I Thought: I know the fact that I read a giant Stephen King book and his biography in one week looks a little “fangirl”, but to be honest, I kind of am.  I’ve liked Stephen King since I was young and when Under the Dome came out the same week that this became available at the library, I was perfectly fine with that. So. Go ahead and call me a fangirl. I’m fine with that.

I thought this book was a waste of time.  Even in the introduction the author sort of implied that her research didn’t include reading Stephen King’s books.  And it shows.  She didn’t even seem to have a base knowledge there, but was pretty up-to-date on the movies.  What?! I thought that was a little bizarre.  Seems like that would be step one in research, I don’t know.

One thing that got under my skin was how there were entire sections that showed up in more than one chapter, almost verbatim. I thought I was having deja vu or that I had skimmed through and seen this before, but then I flipped back and, no, there were repeated sections. The first time it kind of made me laugh, but after that I was questioning why I was continuing to read.

But what made me really dislike this book is that there was nothing new.  It was all regurgitated stuff.  Most of it right from Stephen King’s own book On Writing, which was wonderful. I feel like she was just trying to cash in on Stephen King’s name.

Conclusion: Skip this.  The life of Stephen King really is interesting, especially if you are interested in writing popular fiction. Read On Writing. It’s amazing and not a waste of time like this.