Carrie

King for a Year 2025

I devoured Stephen King when I was a kid, but many of these classics I have not read since my school years. This year I am going to (re)read as many Stephen King books as I can get my hands on. Even the mediocre ones.

This book is the perfect example of why I have decided to read (or reread) Stephen Kings works this year. When I joined Goodreads and started marking books I had read, I was sure I had read this book back in middle/high school, but after reading it in 2025 I doubt this belief. This book was so much darker than the movie. The relentless bullying Carrie White suffered was brutal and Stephen King predicted school shootings years before the first one occurred in the US.

My sister graduated from Richland High School one year before Jamie Rouse entered the school with a 22 caliber semi-automatic shotgun and killed two people (one teacher and one student) and severely injured a second teacher before being wrestled to the ground by a teacher and student. This was one of the first school shootings in the United States. Jamie Rouse has said in jail interviews that he was bullied for being small and quiet and for dressing in all dark clothes and listening to heavy metal music.

Apparently we have learned nothing about preventing bullying in schools since Carrie was published in 1974.