Hi lovelies and happy Thursday!

If it isn't obvious, I'm a huge Stephen King fan/Constant Reader. 

I've noticed a lot of people lately, who either follow me or is directed to me through my followers, have asked me where should they start when diving into the world of King and I'm really happy you guys trust me with these recommendations. I'm always ready for an opportunity to talk about King for a whole entire post, so here we are.

I haven't actually read all of King's books; I'm a little less than halfway as I'm trying to savour as much content as I can as Mr. King isn't getting any younger, but I have read a fair amount - mostly King's "classics" which I'll get into a little later, but I am well educated on the rest of King's novels I'm saving for another time in the future. 

I have a couple of routes/theories on how you can dive into King because I do believe that King can be a hit or miss author, so I think you should go through the route that best sparks your interests!

With that being said, let's get into the different ways you can dive into Stephen King!

Chronological Order

This is probably one of the more common ways of diving into Stephen King. 

This route means you'd start with King's earliest work: Carrie and go through all of the books published afterwards until you've reached his recent release: Elevation (as of January 2019). 

I feel like this route is best if you want to focus on King's universe building. For those who don't know, all of Stephen King's works are based in the same universe and secretly correlate to each other in some way. You'll also get cameos from characters in their non-distinguished novels, like Pennywise in Dreamcatcher or appearances of Richie and Beverly in 11/22/63. 

If you decide to take this route, remember to add Stephen King's works under his pseudonym Richard Bachman throughout your journey as well - there are books that go hand in hand like Desperation (Stephen King) and The Regulators (Richard Bachman).

"Classic King"

This is another really popular route to take when diving into Stephen King. This is the direction I took (and really enjoyed) but it's also the top route I recommend(ed) to people who have asked me in the past on where should they start. 

If you decide to dive into Stephen King by reading the "classic King" novels, I personally feel like you're starting your journey the best way and you're able to get use to his writing and structure. 

If you decide to take this method, you would probably start your reading journey with IT, The Shining, 'Salems Lot, Night Shift, Pet Sematary, Misery, Carrie and/or Cujo. A lot of people say the books he wrote and published when he was heavily using drugs are the best, and those tend to mostly be the classic King (but are also his earlier novels for those who decide to take the previous route).

By Genre

This actually isn't as common as the other two, but there is this direction you could take as well. 

Stephen King write more than just horror; he writes other genres like Literary Fiction, Fantasy and Screen Plays to name a few. 

If you're going by genre, I'd highly suggest diving into his horror books first before diving into his books in other genres. I suggest this only because his horror books tend to be King's best work and his other genre books tend to not be as high up there, rating-wise as the horror. 

If you decide to start with horror, I highly suggest starting with 'Salems Lot, Cujo, The Shining or IT. If you decided to start with the other genres anyways, I suggest diving into On Writing, his memoir, The Eyes of The Dragon, his Fantasy novel or 11/22/63, Mr. Mercedes and/or The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon which is some of his Mystery/Thriller novels. These novels are only to name a few, like I said, King writes many genres so it's worth looking into!

By Interests 

This seems to be the more obvious route to take as you'd usually do the same with other authors, but if you're really picky with your plots and reviews under each book, I highly suggest researching each of King's novels and starting with whatever book sparks your interests. 

If you're here for the non-traditional King journey, I'd say look into all of King's book plots and start with whatever novel really sparks you interest by the plot. 

Obviously I can't give you specific recommendations this way, but I can recommend some underrated novels by Stephen King that I loved and had no prior knowledge about. For me, I personally loved Duma Key, Mr. Mercedes, Revival, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon and Desperation without knowing much of the plot or without hearing many people talk about it.

Like I said previously, Stephen King can be a hit or miss author so I tried to fit multiple routes into starting your journey in case one route doesn't seem to fit your reading interests.

Those are my four suggested ways on how to dive into the world of Stephen King!

I'm not saying you have to read King books in any of these ways in order to have a great King experience; I'm just recommending a couple of ways you can get started if you have no idea where to start.

If you end of trying any of these methods, definitely let me know! I'm curious to hear your thoughts!