stephen king c/d?

now, eh, i'm sure i'd enjoy rereading some of the good ones.

oh yeah and know what's annoying? the american version of lars von trier's "the kingdom" is called motherfucking "STEPHEN KING'S KINGDOM HOSPITAL"!!! what the fuck is that shit?!

"I read the Mist today, and boy was it scary!"

If you can find it, there's a audio dramatization of the Mist available on cassete. The cool thing about it is that it's in three-dimensional sound, which gives the story an extremely spooky effect.

This is so true. His were the first "adult" books I got into reading, as a kid. (I remember learning about most aspects of sex -- except the nuts and bolts, of course, which my mom taught me -- from Stephen King books.) And I think he made for a pretty good segue into the more usual fiction, when I became a preteen... (Because, y'know, he writes about couples and relationships and people musing about their lives and all that shit... just with monsters.)

And I remember "It," which I read in sixth grade, as being one heck of a great book.

I think his stuff in the last decade or so is unbearable nostalgic crap, I still think his first 15 years had a few genuinely great novels (The Dead Zone and Pet Sematary seem to stand up the best) and a boatload of really scary scenes (the Lincoln Tunnel sequence in The Stand, Ben's Hubie Marston nightmare in 'Salem's Lot).

At this point, though, I'd wager that most of his stuff made for better movies, at least when real directors (as opposed to Frank Darabont) were at the helm. Carrie, The Shining, and Christine are all way beyond the source material. And Cujo, The Dead Zone and 'Salem's Lot are all great movies in their own right.

Dude, did you see my post upthread?

I stopped caring before the first chapter of Delores Claiborne ended (tho that movie was good).

Short stories: great. Dark Tower also good in principle (the first one was only good enough to get me vaguely interested in the seond one, which was great), but if it turns out that I'd have to read all his other books to understand the next volume, I'll be pissed off.

You have to reckon he's jumped the shark when he starts making TV miniseries of all his longer stories, including The Shining. Apparently the film was fine, but not what he was looking for.

And Christine to thread!

1. The Shining
2. The Strand was good as I recall though the middle 500 pages dragged a bit
3. He wrote some book about dragons. I forget what it was called but dragons are so awesome.
4. His short stories I think are generally excellent, and much different from his fiction. They're published in the New Yorker and other such magazines quite often. He had an excellent one about highway restroom graffiti.
5. Also he got hit by a truck, which is so crazy. Then he wrote lots of memoirs about being hit by a truck. The one celebrity we have in the whole state of Maine gets mauled by a drunk driver. I thought we should have put his giant creepy head on our state quarter, but apparently that wasn't taken into consideration.

>Anyway, 4mph isn't very fast

True. This is the beauty of the contest. The 100 starters can go on for quite a while before the 1st person is shot, which is obviously a sobering event for the remaining 99. Only after about 48 hours things start to go a bit crazy. People start to freak out, as one would expect. Dunno why that story stuck with me for so long - it's a disturbing concept.

-- s1ocki

Stephen King signing on to the Kingdom remake is the only thing that got it made; it's been in and out of production for years, so I assume they're tagging it with his name because they aren't confident in it except as a King vehicle (whereas a Johnny Depp movie is a Johnny Depp movie, and you really don't need the Inspector 13 tag.

I haven't seen Dreamcatcher and don't know if I will, but coming so soon after the extended discussion of "trunk novels" in Bag of Bones (which, love it or hate it, is considerably different in scope, tone, and approach), and King's subsequent accident and public difficulties with returning to writing, I half-assumed it was a trunk novel itself. It certainly reads like one.

(xpost)

No, we have Dean Koontz for that.

i mean the thing with stephen king is he's really good at writing really readable stuff, and he has some neat ideas, but man oh man does he repeat himself. which is kind of interesting in a way, i guess. it's like he applies whatever good idea he has to the basic mold of "writer in maine" and lets it rip.

(obviously that applies more to the novels)

Me?

I like him. I haven't read the new Dark Tower book yet, though. I've neglected literary pursuits quite badly of late. The revised version of the first volume is a big improvement, BTW.

(There goes my resolution not to post. Ego can be terrible.)

Except Rose Madder and Gerald's Game.

While on a v. short enforced vacation a couple of years ago, I tore through a couple of his early novels. Firestarter was much better than I was expecting, Carrie was OK and then Dreamcatcher was awful.

his short stories are, of course, the bomb. his novels usually have the equivalent of two or three short stories crammed in there by way of exposition or introduction. those parts are great too.

gotta agree on the endings, though. tacky! and he does have a bit of a tendency to repeat himself, both in and between works.

(I just started A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius last night and the first 50 pages are making me ill, so I need something new.)

"I Am Legend" by Richard Matheson is a good post apocalyptic story and possibly an influence on The Stand.

The Stephen King novel that I think holds up well is "The Dead Zone", I have read that one a couple of times. "Misery" is also pretty good, but the writer's novel part may get a bit long.

addictive stuff.

Man needs a fucking editor. But he can make you care a whole hell of a lot (why did that phrase just sound like a King phrase?) about his characters and their interactions (with each other and the "landscape/place").

Many classics: Carrie, The Shining, The Stand, Pet Sematary, It, The Dark Half, Misery, Eyes of the Dragon, Dark Tower series.

Indifferent: Needful Things, Christine, Salem's Lot, Thinner (great twist, tho), the Green Mile, Dolores Claiborne.

Duds: Rose Madder, Insomnia, Dreamcatcher, Tommyknockers, The Regulators, etc.

I think ultimately he'll be remembered/revered/lauded more for his novella collections -- The Bachman Books, Different Seasons, and Four Past Midnight -- than for anything else.

http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/_images/db/9/17/king1.91743.full.jpg

"Hello kiddies!"

don't really know what else to say except that i'm totally with David A in that he's a strong enough writer to make phrases like "he makes you care a whole hell of a lot" sound good, and if you can't see the charm in that we've probably got irreconcilable subjective differences.

http://www.lamerkindustries.com/

One of his short stories, a sci-fi piece about how teleportation travel has finally been invented and popularized. For it to work, you have to be sedated, because you aren't supposed to have your eyes open during teleportation, though the specifics for why aren't explained. A family is going on a trip. They all come out on the other end, but uh oh, where's the son? All of a sudden he pops out. He somehow faked the sedation and went through with his eyes open. He has been turned into a grotesque pile of flesh, a la the inside-out dog from The Fly. This disturbed me greatly for some reason and I still think about it from time to time.

Stephen King on Celebrity Jeopardy. All the other celebrities are playing for cancer research or orphanages or something, King is playing for his local library. This strikes me as incredibly cool. He trounces the other celebrities handily.

actually, he went insane.

this is in the _Skeleton Crew_ collection.

-- vahid (vfoz...), March 18th, 2004."

OTM. Of all the writers who consistently sell millions and millions of books, he's one of the few who actually has a point of view. He's written some good stuff and written some shit, but a least he has his own voice.

Of Stephen King's first 17 novels, everyone has been or is being made into a film or tv miniseries -- two of them being mini series and one of them is supposedly in the works. (see below)

'Approximately ten years ago The Eyes of the Dragon was optioned by a French company but the option collapsed. Currently Steven E. Gordon holds that option and is developing this project for an animated feature.'

The streak begins with his first book Carrie in '74. The next book to not be adapted to film is Dolores Claiborne in '92.

That lucky bastard. I think he might be rich.

Dolores Claiborne was made into a movie (or maybe a mini-series?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolores_Claiborne_(film)

thank you, I missed that when I was looking up several of the first 17 Stephen King novels on wiki. Now I have no idea when his last novel was adapted and I guess I better get back to work :/

Gerald's Game (1992) is a novel by Stephen King. It stands as one of the few properties in King's work that hasn't been adapted for television or film, possibly because the lead actress would be required to be naked or near-naked for most of the film, and the disturbing themes of necrophilia.

That means, uh, his first 18 novels have been or are being adabted to television or film.

I don't know if this gerald's game is any good but seeing a naked chick for a whole film seems kinda cool
#'_'#

after reading what that book's about, I change my mind, bleh. stephen king takes the fun out of sex.

somebody asked about his books with Peter Straub- The Talisman and Black House. both are up there with his best work, if you like SK then they're pretty much essential.

Dude's probably roffling this morning.

i just saw "an apt pupil" the other night - bonkers film, really good.

Does anyone know which book the story "Rock & Roll Heaven" is in? cuz I just read that recently and it was corny and fricken terrifying at the same time.

I don't like his novels that much but I think his short stories are very good.

That's in Nightmares and Dreamscapes and it's called something like, "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band." (I just looked at my copy of the book to double check, walked across the house, and already not sure of exact story title...)

got Different Seasons for a buck tonight - is the Shawshank novella better than the movie?

Yes, I think it is.

As are "The Body" and "Apt Pupil". (The other story hasn't been filmed, afaik.)

The Shawshank novella is better than the movie, but then again I hate the movie.

An adaptation of the winter story could be one of the strangest, most beautiful films ever if done right.

Dreamcatcher II: The Poopening

"Apt Pupil" is probably my favorite of the King novellas - the movie was really disappointing though. The Long Walk ranks pretty high too.

I got way into Stephen King when I was pretty young, like fourth grade. My parents were always into me reading whatever, which is kind of funny when they would later freak out about dirty movies or music - I read way crazier stuff in King books when I was 10. I loved the Bachman books, Different Seasons, Skeleton Crew, and a lot of the early novels but stopped reading new ones probably around The Tommyknockers, which I tried a couple of times but never got into.

A lot of the short stories and the parts of The Stand and Needful Things about society falling apart and people turning on each other and utter chaos breaking out are some of my favorite things ever.

I love love love how pretty much everyone in the world dies in the first part of The Stand. I'm sure this means I'm a sociopath or something.

Also echoing the preference for the novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption over the film. And of the four novellas in Different Seasons, The Body has always been my favorite. I've always thought I was alone in that opinion.

I was in a hardcore band in junior high school called The Stand. I still have the tapes.

<i>So, I need some easy summer reading, and I thought I'd try some Stephen King for the first time -- any recommendations?

More specifically, I kinda fancy checking out "The Stand" because the Lost writers keep name-dropping it -- is it worth it (it's long!) and should I read the old/short or new/long version?

-- Chuck_Tatum, Wednesday, 9 May 2007 20:47 (9 months ago) Link</i>

Ha, I finally finished reading this today! It's only taken me, what, 8 months? (I did take several breaks.)

Thanks for the recommendation, though. What an awesome book.

So glad you enjoyed it!

this is kind of unrelated to the revious posts but you what's really weird about "It"? that scene towards the end where the kids are in the sewer, just about to fight It, and the girl suddenly asks all the boys to "stick their things" in her. WHA?

i guess it's because to fight the ultimate evil they have to kind of lose their innocence or something, but man does it come out of nowhere

I always interpreted that as being part of Stephen King's problem with winding stories up. The endings of his books just don't quite work a lot of the time.

So no, you're not the only person who thinks that part of It is kind of... off.

Although now that I think about it, isn't that scene AFTER they have fought It and they are lost in the sewers? And then suddenly after that scene, they realize where they are and are able to find their way back...?

I should go look at my copy of the book, but I think it's the one with the Stephen King Trying To Look Cool With His Guitar author photo, and I just can't look at that very often.

On the subject of sadism, there does seem a fair bit of it in The Stand -- all those loving descriptions of (often quite sympathetic) characters' heads being shot/torn to pieces. etc. I mean, when people die in the novel, they really die. (Although I assume that also be a horror novel convention -- this is the first horror novel I've read, if you exclude a forgotten James Herbert book I skimmed when I was 12.)

I ended up reading the unabridged version, which I'm quite happy about, although I did skim occasionally (cf. the Trashcan Man and Abigail chapters). But there's so much plot, and so many great set pieces, it more-or-less justifies the length.

So many creepy genuinely terrifying images in "It". Like when they're looking through an old photo book and the pictures come to life, grainy and choppy like an old movie... they see the clown in one and he suddenly runs across the street, and thrusts his face right into the camera, his nose pressed up against the cellophane covering the photo.

Ha, I think having read my first Stephen King novel, I think it's ruined fiction for me forever. I keep starting books and thinking, "Well, this is good, but it's no The Stand."

Anyway, I picked up Night Shift, Cell, Christine and Cujo for five bucks from my local store to compensate. Are Christine and Cujo really that bad? The first chapters are pretty engrossing. I'm also shopping for Pet Sematary. I'm gonna keep away from It and Misery based on the fact that I know their stories from the movie/mini-series already.

The ponderous John A Macdonald intro to Night Shift is hilarious:

"In another story he demonstrates his good ear, the ring of exactness and truth he can give dialogue... Nice. It looks so simple. Just like brain surgery.the knife has an edge. You hold it so. And cut."

night shift has good stories in it. never read cell, can't imagine it's that good. cujo was alright. IT is very good, at least the first 3/4. The Shining is excellent; Misery is good; all those early Bachman books are good.

A friend of mine is reading and reviewing all of King's novels in order:
http://stephenking-reviewed.blogspot.com/

Yeah, Chuck, you'll miss out on a LOT if you don't read IT and Misery, storywise. IT, in particular, has subplots and relationships that a two-part TV movie could not possibly have touched on or achieved.

the relationships and backstories were the best part of IT actually. it lost me when it got to the turtle and shit, I was like, what? but king worked best with characters, etc, those have always been the strongest parts of his books. I guess maybe he's written a lot of things like that in recent years but life is too short for me to take the chance on them.

Oh I really liked "the talisman". I think that's a good companion to the Stand.

This is the conventional wisdom, and it's probably been said more than once upthread, but there was a time when SK was both insanely prolific and reliably good. But that was a long time ago, and the quality of his work has been declining ever since. His eak years were the mid to late 70s: Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Shining, The Stand, Dead Zone, The Long Walk and the stories collected in Night Shift. All good to great.

Over the 80s (the peak of his popularity and productivity), he became much more inconsistent and defined by his most well-known stylistic tics. There's excellent stuff here: Cujo, The Gunslinger, The Running Man, Pet Sematary, It, Misery, Needful Things, The Dark Half, many of the stories in Different Seasons, Skeleton Crew and Four Past Midnight. But there's also a lot of filler: Firestarter, Christine, Eyes of the Dragon, The Tommyknockers, the contunuation of the Dark Tower series, collaborations and cash-ins of every imaginable sort.

Since then, little of any real interest. He's always been readable and engaging, even at his worst, but his writing seems to have lost its focus and its animating spark. Haven't made it more than halfway through a King book in ages, and that's a shame. On the other hand, maybe it says more about me than it does about his writing. I dunno.

"eak years" hee

I heard Dolores Claiborne was also good.

Needful Things is so unrelentingly grim and awesome!

I might have said this upthread, but I re-read Misery a couple of years ago and I was literally on the edge of my seat. And I pretty much knew what was going to happen. So don't miss that one.

i do think king's prolificness (prolificity? prolificoshiousness?) has damaged his reputation in the long run; imagine if he'd stopped after Misery or IT.

therelationships and backstorieschaos and destruction at the end were the best part of IT actually

: )

Actually, my favorite parts are the historical digressions, which sure-as-shit aren't portrayed in the movie. Very much worth reading.

Prolificity FTW.

Over the 80s (the peak of his popularity and productivity drinking and coke use), he became much more inconsistent and defined by his most well-known stylistic tics

Christine is great, though, so I don't think I'd have it on your "bad" list. And I don't think you can include The Running Man or The Gunslinger into his good 80's output, at least in terms of crediting it against his stylistic behavior. The former was first published in 1982 but I believe he had had it in the can for some years; and the earliest parts of the The Gunslinger were written in 1978-1979.

I've still read all his output, but to me the last really good one, aside from a couple of the latter Dark Tower entries, was Insomnia, although the Deperation/The Regulators pair had its merits, as did From A Buick 8. Oh, and The Colorado Kid, that little novella he did for that pulp crime imprint.

I've meant to back and finish up Desperation/Regulators, which I read a good chunk of some years back, before I got distracted by something shiny over there. Seemed promising.

And yeah, I know and agree, re: The first Dark Tower book (The Gunslinger) and The Running Man. Was just going by publication date. The Gunslinger was, I think, written earlier than any of the other books I mentioned -- while he was still in college, though likely significantly revised later -- and the style is unique. Much sparer and simpler than the prose he became known for, even a bit arty. I remember liking it quite a lot, though it's been years.

http://twitter.com/VegasWalkinDude

There's a pre-teen gangbang at the end of It?!?!?!

haha yes there is

well not literally the end, the end has one of the main characters riding down a hill with his driven-insane wife on the handlebars

This is still going for all you King fans out there:
http://stephenking-reviewed.blogspot.com/

"We then follow Halleck as he begins to lose weight at a steady rate, journeying from 251 pounds to a skeletal 127 pounds. "

127 pounds, skeletal? Come on now.

There's a pre-teen gangbang at the end of It?!?!?!

It's right before they go to battle IT. I guess it's supposed to be like a weird giving-up-your-innocence-in-order-to-battle-ultimate-evil ritual.

it's pretty O_o, obviously

Hard to imagine someone getting away with writing that these days.

oh man I forgot all about Cycle of the Werewolf

That one sounds fun. The author of that blog is a friend of mine, I've never had much time for King before but a few of his posts are making me consider giving him a go. Oh, and he gave me a copy of It recently!

It is a ton of fun and a really quick read.

I think he's a little too harsh on Thinner but it's been more than 2 decades since I read that book.

Will definitely be giving it a read soon, thanks.

I've always wanted to read the Stand, but the size is a bit intimidating (one 1400 page novel equals 3.5 400 page novels, how to choose). OTOH, I'm tired of Serious Stuff right now.

whats the one where the chick is tied to a bed with handcuffs for most of it? that was the scariest one, i think

Gerald's Game

misery

It's right before they go to battle IT. I guess it's supposed to be like a weird giving-up-your-innocence-in-order-to-battle-ultimate-evil ritual.

Dude, I'm pretty sure it's after they think they've killed It. They get lost in one of the tunnels after and Bev instinctually decides to let them run a train so they could regain their bearings. Didn't bother me when I first read the book in middle school but now, YOW.

Has King ever been forced to discuss/defend this in an interview?

It's been a while since I've read the book, obviously. So maybe it's a way of bonding them all together? Or just King during one of his coked-up pervy moments?

little from column a...little from column b

a lot from column "c" too if you catch my drift

yah latebloomer gerald's game. (lol slocki). book was terrifying h8 the idea of being so helpless

ha I thought GG was boring and actually was the one that made me stop reading him cold turkey

eyes of the dragon being put into a filler list is SB temptation

My fave SK ever -- Eyes has all the good storytelling and none of the ethically quagmireish squick, as I recall, and a LOT of actually very memorable scenes, even if some slightly funny. Like the one with the tiny dollhouse loom and the room full of napkins....

it's pretty straight fantasy for king, and it's not my favourite, but i like it a lot. i like the tie-in to the dark tower, but i like those in any of his books that they appear in.

though it's maybe the opposite of the robert jordan situation- i sure wish he hadn't written the last three books of the dark tower, as they seemed hurried, rushed and frankly a big mess.

A lot of King leaves me feeling like my brain needs a shower. I don't mind being scared but I don't want to feel soiled and made less "myself" by a book. Eyes is a good, gripping straight fantasy read with the characteristic SK pacing and characters and not so much jadedness. A++!

xpost I disliked most of Gerald's Game, but there's a scene toward the end, where the main character is escaping in the car but keeps believing there is someone is in the car with her in the backseat, about to attack, that I always think of when I'm driving alone at night. Even some of Stephen King's worst books have their effective moments.

You know, now that I think about it I think that Gerald's Game is the first book I ever put down without finishing.

Whenever IT comes up in conversation, I always mention the WTF of the turtle and my wife always mentions the o_O of the preteen gangbang.

I keep meaning to do a little tour of the 70s novels but maybe a read of the novella/story collections would be the better option.

Read 'Salem's Lot immediately, that book is fantastic.

The Stand and The Shining are also awesome.

The earlier short story collections are amazing, too - Night Shift and Skeleton Crew.

^^^ yes

They're planning a big screen adaptation of It for 2011, apparently. Wonder if they'll readd the gangbang or the turtle (points to Dreamcatcher for actually including one of King's ridiculous Being Of Good Vs. Being Of Evil endings in a film)

the wikipedia description, for lols.

They finally come upon Its lair, where it resides in the form of a giant spider, and, in what appears to be the Ritual of Chüd, Bill injures It and It flees. Lost in the sewers, the Losers realize that they have lost their purpose as a group, their common enemy, and as a way to bring them together again so they can escape, Beverly has sexual intercourse with the boys.

That wiki description is what made me ask originally - one of those situations where you have to read a sentence multiple times.

trying to find an interview with king on google about "it" is damn hard

"Dreamcatcher" had the worst ending I have ever seen in a film.

this made me curious, so I looked it up:

[So, uh, SPOILER ALERT, then??] Henry and Owen arrive at the home of Duddits (Donnie Wahlberg), who reveals that Mr. Gray is headed for a reservoir to pollute the water with a Weasel. Arriving at the reservoir, Owen is ambushed by Curtis' helicopter. Owen shoots Curtis down, but dies from his wounds. Henry takes Owen's weapon and kills Mr. Gray's Weasel. Duddits confronts Mr. Gray, who finally comes out of Jonesy's body. Duddits turns into an alien creature himself and attacks, causing both aliens to explode in a cloud of red dust which briefly resembles a dreamcatcher. Jonesy, now back to normal, smashes a final larva that was about to contaminate the water. The world is saved.

ha ha, wut?

and as a way to bring them together again so they can escape, Beverly has sexual intercourse with the boys.

and as a way to bring them together again so they can escape, Beverly has sexual intercourse with the boys.

and as a way to bring them together again so they can escape, Beverly has sexual intercourse with the boys.

and as a way to bring them together again so they can escape, Beverly has sexual intercourse with the boys.

and as a way to bring them together again so they can escape, Beverly has sexual intercourse with the boys.

and as a way to bring them together again so they can escape, Beverly has sexual intercourse with the boys.

so many lols, so little time

I am going to try this out next time I need to escape from something. I'll let you guys know how it works.

Mr. Gray is headed for a reservoir to pollute the water with a Weasel.

Henry takes Owen's weapon and kills Mr. Gray's Weasel.

So, at the outset, Mr. Gray intends to pollute the water with a LIVING weasel?

Also LOL @ capitalization of weasel.

The "Weasel" is the alien thing that kills people by exploding out of their asses.

OK, shit, that is def. worth a capital W.

ha ha, wut?

― Pillbox, Tuesday, August 18, 2009 6:52 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

What they don't tell you is right after that, the Henry character simply says "Jonesy!" and THEN the movie ends.

incredible film, imo

the book is basically a silly frankenstein mashup of everything king had written to that point.

it ends up coming across as even more ridiculously batshit when adapted to the screen.

I will admit that everything I've heard about the movie has made me want to read the book more.

serious, actual mega-lols here HD & JL.

What they don't tell you is right after that, the Henry character simply says "Jonesy!" and THEN the movie ends.

― i have the new brutal truth if you want it (latebloomer), Tuesday, August 18, 2009 3:00 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

me and my friend have a running joke about this... before we even saw it we loved that line from teh trailer... the way he says it so lovingly... its amazing

I've gotta see this movie.

The orchestral score by JN Howard is pretty fun (tho not up with Howard's best).

(It's stupid how many genre films I haven't seen but have listened to their scores umpteen times...)

dreamcatcher and the mist are probably my favorite king adaptations in a sense, cuz they're the only ones that FEEL crazy in that special stephen king way. all the others are just turned into hacky thrillers or taken over by an auteur's stylistic choices.

Is it on Watch Instantly? (I can't look bcuz parent company filters NetFlix)

neither are streamed on netflix, no

dreamcatcher and the mist are probably my favorite king adaptations in a sense, cuz they're the only ones that FEEL crazy in that special stephen king way. all the others are just turned into hacky thrillers or taken over by an auteur's stylistic choices.

― da croupier, Tuesday, August 18, 2009 3:08 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ya for sure... dreamcatcher is so beautifully nuts.

while we're one the subject of crazy-ass king plots, sadly the "faithful" 12-minute short film of The Lawnmower Man from 1987 does not appear to be on youtube.

In Stephen King's short story, Harold Parkette hires "Pastoral Greenery and Outdoor Services Inc." to cut his lawn. Yet a mystery surrounding the service is that no one has ever seen the person who owns and operates the enterprise. Parkette decides to find out the identity of the mysterious lawnmower man. In the earliest hours of morning he discovers the strange and horrible truth. The serviceman is not a service "man" at all but a strange inter-dimensional being that takes the form of a symbiotic organism, a machine that mows the lawn by itself while a strange naked man follows behind the mower, eating the grass. The serviceman has the appearance of a satyr who works for the Greek god Pan. The event is terrifying and beyond the comprehension and intellect of Parkette. In a panic he tries to call the police, but it is too late, and the mower and its human slave violently turn on him.

King got $10,000 a day when New Line ignored a court order to remove his name from that rumination on virtual reality starring pierce brosnan

I remember being very confused when I saw the movie "The Lawnmower Man" after reading the book.

i just remember somethign about green pubes from that story

imagine being so successful that you could put a pre-teen sex romp at the end of a 1,000+ page best seller and NOBODY SEEMS TO NOTICE FOR OVER A DECADE

and yeah green pubes was the lingering image i had too

The best thing about that is that the train happens TWICE; once when they first confront IT as kids and once when they vanquish him as adults.

lol no it doesn't

IIRC, they all have sex again in order to get out of the cavern, as part of the "recreate the past as closely as possible" thing they were doing to get rid of IT in the first place. I'd need to look it up in the book, though.

nah, eddie's dead and they basically just split. though it'd be great if bill was like "oh shit, looks like we're lost in the sewers again, bev. let me just put my catatonic wife down over here..."

nah, she never had sex with them again the second time.

xpst she has a flashback to it while shagging bill as an adult

Okay why do I have such a clear recollection of them doing all that nonsense again, then??? Probably I was yelling at the end of the book by that point and made that up, and it stuck as an actual memory of the book.

xpost: oh maybe that's what I'm remembering

cuz they're the only ones that FEEL crazy in that special stephen king way.

let us not forget King's own directorial debut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7K44PqV2Idk

Creepshow is a pretty faithful translation of King's tone, I feel.

No.... I think Beverly and Bill do spend a night together, but there's no crazy similar scene with the adults.

Which would have been way more appropriate than middle schoolers, but whatever; this didn't disturb me when I read the book when I was 15!

The more I think about this book, the less I remember about it. wtf

I remember the kid who was found with his half-chewed head in the toilet, yeesh.

xxpost: agreed, & same goes for the relatively undersung Creepshow 2, esp the raft-in-lake & zombie hitch-hiker segments.

thanks for the ride, lady!

Which would have been way more appropriate than middle schoolers

If you can call the summer before 6th grade middle school.

Has anyone seen the Nightmares and Dreamscapes miniseries? I'm curious, as I feel like King's short stories are some of his stronger work, but I fear that it might be as crap as everything else of his that's been adapted for television.

I watched a recent haunted house mini-series. Bloody Tiffany or something like that. Really depressingly bad, like "damn, House 2 was pretty decent" bad.
"The Mist" is by far the King I have the fondest memories of. That was some exciting stuff for a wee lad.

Err, should've googled that BEFORE posting. The series in question was "Rose Red".

If you can call the summer before 6th grade middle school.

Okay, this is freaking me out totally since my son is going into 6th grade this year!

http://chud.com/articles/content_images/NICK/DUMB/aug09/jacobpappe.jpg

i re-read a bunch of the shorts recently and they were better than i thought they'd be with time ("survivor type"!) but not half as scary as when i first read them as a wee thing obviously ("survivor type" :(). dude really is incapable of pulling back and reconsidering when the opportunity to go o-t-t (as regards the prose or characterizations) presents itself. yeah yeah genre fiction and yeah yeah covert biography but did the guy really have to be a raging asshole junk-head who hates his father for the baldest embarrassed-child-of-immigrants reasons? also, for a horror writer (at least in the early days), pacing is *not* the man's forte.

kinda afeared to revisit any of the novels. and i think even at 11 or 12, when i barely had my head around the concept of sex period, i was unsettled by the gang bang starring the little rascals.

I remember The Library Policeman has a pretty graphic depiction of a little boy getting raped out back.

nb: wound up at the It wiki from the Dreamcatcher wiki because a friend texted me that she might have "pooped out a Dreamcatcher alien." (Budweiser in a can, it does a body good)

Is anyone reading Under the Dome ?

Is that porn?

still muddling through the last short story collection

I downloaded his entire oeuvre. Woohoo. Mainly interested in his seventies work.

that last story in just after sunset. oh my god

Man, I have no memories of posting to this thread over the years.

Still, just finished the Tommyknockers for the first time. Why does it seem that every King book needs a massively high body count, and a climax involving the hero suffering some massive injury described in high detail?

messiah figures?

I just recommended the shining to one of my esl students cause it's you know, interesting, but hen he showed me the first page and I had no idea he is relatively idiosyncratic as a writer (for an esl student anyway)

Lunch at the Gotham Cafe is dumb, but I did enjoy the description of the maitre d

Stephen King On Writing was very good. I've never been that big of a fan of his, but have always been interested in how the dude sits at a typewriter and constantly churns out four novels a year. Sure cocaine's a helluva drug, but to retain focus and a narrative through all of that is impressive.

He goes through step-by-step how to do it. It's not easy, it doesn't sound fun, but it makes sense. Spend three hours a day writing. Do that every day for three months. When you're done, don't read it for another month or two. Then spend another three months editing it.

He goes into more detail about the process, including where he thinks your desk should be in the room, how to find an agent, staying away from Tom Swifties. But it was a very plain-spoken how-to manual.

I'm just too lazy to sit around, imagining what a rat's tail snapping about in the nest of my throat would feel like and being bothered to sit down and put it in words from 4 - 7 am every day for a winter.

'On Writing' was an excellent read, either as biography or as manual (and I've no intention of ever writing tbh, it's and interesting sunject though)

^ this is why i've no intention of ever writing

yeah, i love his writing about writing. it's what made me want to go back and read some of his stuff. my mom was a big fan (she always says her favorite people her age are david letterman, the clintons and stephen king, lol) and i read and enjoyed a lot of his stuff as a youth. i don't think his short stories are for me, tbh.

I can name television hosts and politicians my age, but I can't think of one popular author.

S/he's probably spending three hours a day on a messageboard somewhere.

Thought this was revived because of this:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2010/09/universal-nbc-stephen-king-the-dark-tower-ron-howard-brian-grazer.html

More hoohah:

http://www.deadline.com/2010/09/universal-lands-stephen-kings-the-dark-tower-and-plans-unprecedented-featurenetwork-tv-adaptation/

Looking back, the last Ron Howard movie I've seen was Willow. What does this portend?

Val Kilmer as Roland, obv.

Loved the first three Dark Towers, found the fourth a snooze and haven't read any of the others. Maybe I'll be arsed one day, but I think it would involve ploughing through the first four again. Or I could just wait for the films!

i don't think his short stories are for me, tbh.

I think a lot of his best writing is in novella/short story format. Maybe that's because his long stories all have, well, ridiculous mcguffins. Many of his short stories are similarly batshit horror, but there's real skill and change of pace in a lot of them too.

Yeah, I'd say that maybe 3 out of 4 times, King can really nail a short story.

my husband, a book reviewer among other things, is a serious SK fan (from youth, mostly) and he just had the chance to review SK's latest book of novellas. acc to him it's REALLY good. i didn't read it yet.

the short stories in night shift and skeleton key, and the novellas in different seasons are incredibly classic. i haven't read one of his novels since Needful Things (about which I remember nothing) and never got past book 3 of the dark tower. looking forward to films of it though. I suppose one day when I'm old and bored I'll go read all the rest of his crap.

i think nightmares and dreamscapes has a good mix, myself.

I also haven't read a new novel of his since Needful Things, but there's been a lot of talk elsewhere on here about Under the Dome.

i admire the dude's discipline and rod serling-esque endless fountain of ideas. they may not all be well executed, but he sure has a lot of ideas.

that's more than i can say for people who spend their entire careers writing novels about rich people's family problems.

! different spheres tbf

i may be the only person on the planet who was not disappointed with insomnia, but maybe since then his novels haven't rocked my world (tho now i think about hearts in atlantis had some great and poignant moments)

yeah, i know, i guess i prefer imagination to a microscope
or at least i do today

favourite stephen king shrt story nomination thread and poll y/n

quickest second thoughts ever actually. sod that for work

i found a 25 cent hardcover copy of "it" this weekend at a yard sale. i haven't read it since i was a kid; no idea what spurred me to pick it up (other than the price point was right). somehow i imagine myself reading this thing in about four days, despite it being one billion pages long, and still feeling like i got swindled give when i remember about his TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE ENDINGS. though having read about 150 pages so far, in a short burst yesterday afternoon, i will say the man knows how to keep those pages turning. it's kinda fun to read something so breezy (if that's even the right word for a book about a child-dismembering ick slumbering beneath middle america) for a change, even if king's prose is sometimes O_o'ingly bad.

given WHAT i remember about his endings.

classic of teenage classics, tho

that's more than i can say for people who spend their entire careers writing novels about rich people's family problems.

― The Great Jumanji, (La Lechera), Thursday, September 9, 2010 7:50 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark

amen

yeah! i remember reading IT in high school and being freaked out and disappointed at the turtle/universe ending

i actually kind of liked the mystical weirdness. the pre-teen gang bang was pretty O_O though, of course.

it was kind of exciting to read something known for being O_O scary. I remember the school librarian told me I was brave, that it gave him nightmares and I walked away thinking, "Ha ha, what a baby."

and it was awesome when my parent's friends would come over and say "What are you reading?" and I'd show them and they'd give me that "Um, you're not right in the head" look...or flip out at how big the book was.

I was okay with the ending. It made more sense once I read the Dark Tower stuff later down the line.

xp

ah thats the point of it he's on some magical innocence or prepuberty/puberty trip the whole book tbf

not sure *anything* made more sense to me once i'd finished the dark tower tbh

ha ha...yeah, I guess 'sense' is the wrong word. But all that turtle/universe stuff sort of tied it back to IT and other stuff and it was fun fitting all the parts together.

But he is definitely one for just going 'ah fuck it I don't know how to end this' and making up some weird alien thing/mystical thing that leaves you going, okay what just happened.

haha yeah i totally stole "it" from my mom's stash of "adult books" when i was 12ish or so.

stephen king certainly never shied away from depicting a wife-beating, i will say that.

the one thing i've totally loved about the book so far -- even if they're also overwritten, as per -- is the little "derry" interludes, presented as being taken from book about the town that one of the characters was writing. it really manages to get across this sense of unease about some basic evil running through a town's history without the overloaded sentiment of the actual narrative sections. like lovecraft but, you know, tighter. ("tighter" being something you could only say about king in comparison with lovecraft.)

pre-teen gang bang

http://s.ytimg.com/vi/hKUBTX9kKEo/0.jpg

somehow i imagine myself reading this thing in about four days

That's what I did when I first read it, during a few sick days from school. It's a page-turner, that's for sure, although after re-reading the unexpurgated "Stand" recently I went back and tried to re-read "It" and just kinda lost interest. Still love it, though; King has a way with that coming-of-age nostalgia stuff, like "Stand By Me" and "Christine," that works better for me than some of his other terrain.

Yeah he always seemed to write kids really well

i thought this was the thread where i went on about under the dome but i guess it isn't

I took It to the beach, found a comfortable spot to read, looked up a few hundred pages later and realized I had the worst sunburn of my life.

Sounds like It hurt!

would have been totally worth it if the ending were better

Yeah, ending of "It" is pretty much univerally derided. Also (unless you want to avoid spoilers of all sorts) the Wiki entry for the book has a hyper-detailed synopsis that had me LOLing at just how crazy MUCH plot he crammed into it.

Best parts of IT were all the historical digressions - the Fire at the Black Spot, the Kitchener Ironworks Disaster, all that - and then the scenes of mayhem in the outside world as the kids are down in the sewers, like the shopping mall getting destroyed and the standpipe falling over, etc.

One of my friends did an extra credit project in 8th grade English where he made an annotated timeline of the history of Derry, ME as depicted in the book IT. He got like a bazillion points of extra credit, to the point where I think he was able to skip an entire unit of the class and still get an A+.

I still think The Tommyknockers is his worst ending ever ans Needful Things is actually his best.

lol the tommyknockers was the king book where, after gorging on his shit from 11 to 13 or so, i was finally like "fuck this"

xp: Where the guy just *poof* turns into a goblin at the end.

"Caveat emptor! Gree-hee-hee!"

Tommyknockers & Gerald's Game were two I definitely hated. Never gave up on him fully though.

Those were the two that made me give up on reading his books.

i read under the dome!

it was long

tommyknockers would be a good name for a strip club, tbh

I take that back -- The Dark Half came out after the Tommyknockers, and that was the final straw.

xxp

I liked the Dome, except for the weird "where did the dome come from" explanation which was just more of SK in his most baffling, dude why - mode. Duma Key was pretty good too, nice n creepy.

the dome started great but it never built to a fun enough climax.

i like when i see people still reading king books (new or old) on the train. i have to imagine even the worst ones are better than girl w/ dragon hoo-hah or the bodice-rippers that became true blood through some brand of hbo alchemy.

tears of the dragon ppl, tears of the dragon. his purest effort at fantasy, very good.

maybe it's eyes of the dragon, ppl, eyes of the dragon

i really like the anti-fun of under the dome's ending! also cell, that one too

Duma Key was a lot better than I expected.

About 400 pages into Dome currently, digging it so far - I've not read any of his books for years, had forgotten how easy his stuff is to slip into. I'm only reading it on my 20 min return bus ride and am still just panelling through it.

(wld be great if any full on "this is the actual ending" spoilers could be avoided? thanks!)

Spoiler free zone, Bill, pinkyswear :)

Eyes of the Dragon is great. I loved loved Talisman, and The Black House too.

General question for everyone: what was the first SK book you read, and how old were you, etc?

Mine was Skeleton Crew, I think I was 12 (7th grade). It felt like a major discovery, like omg what IS this. 'Survivor Type' maybe my alltime favorite story of his, just for the pure nostalgia of it. I didn't even know what heroin was, lol.

I think it was Firestarter at age 11...?

xp - I've avoided the thread for UtD, precisely because I assume it will be rich with (justified) spoilerage, so thanks for keeping things at least vague here :)

First SK? I've a strong suspicion it was It, appropriate given strongo's revive. We had a family holiday to see my Grandma who lived in Italy and there was a copy on her shelves - I would have been 13/14 I think. I remember reading the whole thing in about two days, and then my brother (who was 12) did the same and then we argued about who could read it *again* first. Absolutely loved it.

I loved loved Talisman, and The Black House too.

oh yeah! king should be forced to work with peter straub

otm

I stopped reading him due to Gerald's Game which was also the first book I never finished.

I think his scariest, most upsetting books are The Stand, IT, 'Salems Lot and Cujo (HM to Misery). Pet Sematary was weird in that the most upsetting portion had nothing to do with the graveyard/supernatural horror stuff; it was the fallout from the funeral.

i think mine was little bits and pieces of "it" and "the dark half," swiped from my mom's not-for-kids reading pile, as mentioned, when i was around 11 or so.

first s.k. story that really got to me, though, was survivor type around 12 or so. (think i mentioned this in a previous revive.) probably the most horrific concept i'd come across at that point.

It appears most people here started earlier than I did: I think I was 20 or 21, and my first was Carrie. After that I pretty much went chronologically: Salem's Lot, Shining, Stand... I'm old, so I think the first one I bought as a new release was Pet Semetary.

xp to dan

some of his short stories are more unsettlin than any of those imo- crouch end towne in nightmares and dreamscapes for instance. and the one about quitting smoking and seeing the bat people is another level of wtf awesome in the same collection

ooh I just looked it up and I realized that the ending I liked so much wasn't Needful Things, it was The Dark Half. (NT was a much better book tho)

ooh I forgot about the Bachmann books, which word for word are another level of creepy

like, Thinner and The Long Walk both gave me nightmares

Aggh the Long Walk was kinda terrify

Also, "The Fog"...or maybe it was called "The Mist"? I imagined the supermarket as the little one in my hometown and I had dreams about it for weeks. But it was a great story.

Terrifying. Jeez.

Do you remember who the last competitor was in The Long Walk? I remember I worked it out once by process of elimination like it was an Encyclopedia Brown puzzle, but it's hazy now.

oh yeah his short stories > his books, no question

he usually doesn't have to fight for an ending in his short stories

the last competitor is never definitively identified but I have my theory (ie, he crazy)

I heard Merrilee Rush's "Angel of Morning" yesterday and instantly thought of the wacko dude in "The Langoliers".

I always think of him when I hear that song on the radio.

What was the book/story that he used 'Eli's Comin' by Three Dog Night?

Hey ho, let's go

I *think* the first King I read was Cujo, but I know I was reading The Stand by the time I was in the 8th grade. I wanted to read it, and my mother decided to let me, why because it look interesting. She figured I was old enough and mature enough to handle it. (This was back in 1982, btw, so this was before the "uncut edition" or whatevs.) I've never given up on a King novel, and I've read them all; probably the lowest ranking one for me is Rose Madder, which not only was not as good as his other "abused woman" novels, but seemed unnecessarily cruel and sadistic, even for him.

I heard Merrilee Rush's "Angel of Morning" yesterday and instantly thought of the wacko dude in "The Langoliers".

― VegemiteGrrrl, Monday, October 4, 2010 4:54 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

I have four small dogs who show their affection by biting and sometimes they remind me of the Langoliers.

LOL

I haven't revisited it since high school but I rememeber that "Cain Rose Up" stayed with me for a long time, the one where the college kid goes on a shooting rampage.

This may be an old quote, or it may not even be a quote of Stephen King's, but it sounds like him...

http://i.imgur.com/oWHb5.jpg

^_^

Okay, list me some post-'92 books of his actually worth reading. I've been traveling a lot this summer and have already finished Dead Zone, Carrie, and 1/2 of Dolores Claiborne in the last two week.

which have you liked most?

dead zone / shining / talisman / black house / running man

offa the top of my head.

I'm still stuck 64 pages into Under The Dome.

i think i made it about that far before just....yeah

kingfish have you tried the dark tower? first four are very good, last three worth reading, lots of odd little links to his other books throughout.

other than that, since 92

Nightmares & Dreamscapes
Insomnia
The Green Mile
Hearts in Atlantis
On Writing
Black House
Everything's Eventual
From a Buick 8

i enjoyed all of these, though insomnia and hearts in atlantis draw a lot of hate in particular

Yup, read all the dark tower, and plenty of the other books that have the DT refs.

Reading thru Dead Zone, I was struck by how perfect it was to get David Cronenberg and cast Christopher Walken

To answer a question asked upthread, I believe the first SK book I read was _Skeleton Crew_ and I read it at the end of 9th grade, when I was 15 years old. The short story "The Mist" both terrified me and hooked me for life...

Reading 'Salem's Lot for the first time since I was maybe 10. I'm about 3/4 of the way through, but right now I'm sort of amazed at how little of this book I remember, and what I do remember is playing back differently than it did when I was a kid. Like the scenes I'm imagining now as I read it are different from the few that I can remember. I think I can attribute the lack of memory being due to so much grown-up stuff. My favorite SK at the time was IT, which had its share of adult situations that were unintelligible to my elementary school mind, but I must have been more invested in it due to the focus on children. Other favorites at the time were the first few Dark Tower books, Cycle of the Werewolf, and Eyes of the Dragon. I was also pretty into the Stand as well though, which I don't think had many little kids running around, so who knows.

i like when i see people still reading king books (new or old) on the train. i have to imagine even the worst ones are better than girl w/ dragon hoo-hah or the bodice-rippers that became true blood through some brand of hbo alchemy.

― strongohulkingtonsghost, Monday, 4 October 2010 20:58 (1 year ago)

OTM

I like Stephen King, but there are 2 problems with his books: they are almost always way too long, and he is so terrible at endings.

As said several times upthread, but it was so OTM i needed to repeat for the current page.

they are almost always way too long, and he is so terrible at endings.

Which is why I still maintain The Dead Zone and Pet Sematary are his two best books. Neither is too long and both have great endings (particularly the latter).

I've never read either book! Maybe I will some day.

Oh I hated Pet Sematery so much, the whole "family falls apart after child's death" thing was a little too real when I read it.

That is one of the only ones I didn't read -- I don't know why that seemed too dark to me when It or The Shining were perfectly okay.

Yeah. After all, doesn't It open with an allusion to a true-life anti-gay hate crime?

i actually re-read the dead zone a few months back. (thank you, .25 paperbacks from goodwill.) once i got past (or learned to love?) the usual hokey overreaching parts of his charactetizations, it was pretty damn entertaining.

i still havent tried to tackle that hardcover copy of it i found at a church rummage sale last summer.

My favorite is It. I love the structure with the flashbacks and whatnot and it was genuinely scary as a kid. I can confirm that it does have a typically King-ian horrible ending though.

The gangbang(s) ruins that book for me, it makes no sense.

Yeah the gangbang is indefensible and the way they actually defeat the monster is nonsensical and disappointing but I enjoyed the lead-up enough to give the book the benefit of the doubt.

it's definitely a king special, that gang bang. puberty, visceral glee, coke, the plot itself, king himself and what does he come up with? a mystical navigational clowncar vagina.

finding a copy of it at a suburban church rummage sale staffed by blue-rinsed old ladies is kind of a king-ian touch, now that i think of it.

lol, that's like the one scene from the book EVERYONE remembers

Reading his new one "11/22/63" - some really excellent crossover in the early part of the story - worth it if you're a longtime fan, imo.
Am bracing myself for a wtf ending, but have really enjoyed it so far.

ha i am doing the same thing after years of ignoring his stuff. it seems (so far) like a pretty solid book! i am in the homestretch and nothing dreamcatcher level stupid has shown up so far

yeah I've got 100 pages to go and I'm still finding myself in full crap-out readiness, just in case lol

girl was excited to loan me her copy of Under The Dome but damn, I think it might be worth $10 on the Kindle just to not carry that thing around

ugh tell me about it, I bought 11/22/63 specifically for my plane trip, and I cursed my nostalgic self there AND back again. Fuck carrying a motherfucking book.

well, a book THAT big. It's like lugging around the Concise Oxford ffs

Just finished 11/22/63 and loved it. I'm not sure about a few aspects of the ending, but the closing chapter was great. Enjoyed Under the Dome and Full Dark, No Stars (four short stories about revenge) too, King's last few books have been a good run.

He's definitely been on a nice late period roll lately.

didn't get into under the dome, is there any king crossover in it or can i get the new one without fear of missing anything

no real crossover in Dome; has a good "Stand" feel about it. Ending suxors but the rest is p great imo; it's def worth a read

Will rep for Duma Key as well, scared the bejabbers outta me

11/22/63 is a total standalone

I liked 11/22/63 but thought it dragged massively in the middle

i guess the new dark tower book is out? "the wind in the keyhole"? my completionist's urge is telling me to read it, but my common sense is telling me that if i hated the last three dark tower books, it's unlikely i'll be pleased with this one. to this day i'm pissed about the last three, the characters felt like flat shadows of their former selves and everyone started talking in annoying dialect ALL THE TIME.

I kind of want to read it too - I liked the last three but my objection to the new one is DUDE YOU FUCKING FINISHED IT, LET IT GO. This is like some kind of prequel/dream story or something and i'm just...I dunno.

he didn't finish it he just released his notes iirc

there's crossover in 11.22.63? does it explain some of the yellow card man / time travel stuff?

you're thinking of howard webb at old trafford

i know i'm one of the british posters but i still don't speak football

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2012/04/popular-writers-stephen-king-interview.html

he actually makes me want to read a sequel to the shining. huh

rather he did another talisman book with straub

I don't know, his comment that Danny had to be an alcoholic now because his father was bothered me.

> rather he did another talisman book with straub

i had a real struggle with the second one, trying to remember things that i'd read 17 years earlier...

The Talisman 1984
Black House 2001

amateur mistake, that. fantasy epic hedz know that you have to commit to re-reading with the release date of the new installment in mind.

would've but talisman was 90 miles away

there are secret ways to get to it quicker iirc

I read both Talisman and Black House again last year and was surprised by how much I re-enjoyed them both. Talisman was one of my favorite books when I first read it at age 15, as King and Straub managed to capture that Spielbergian "a boy's adventure" thing that was right in my wheelhouse. Despite the travails and dangers Jack faces in the book, walking across the USA lit by the glow of shopping malls and highway lights seemed very romantic to me. Re-reading it was a nice blast of nostalgia.

Black House was better than I remembered it to be, although the killing of Jack's blind radio host/DJ friend struck me as one of King's needless cruelties, topped perhaps only by the attack on the head of the women's shelter in Rose Madder.

he likes to bite, yes. but i think you're otm about the adventure/spielberg feel, think that if a screenwriter could squeeze a bit more coherency from the books they'd make great movies.

It would have to be done as an 80s period piece, I think, but I would love to see someone tackle it.

This is that rarity, a fun and interesting list. Don't neccesarily agree but enjoyed reading.

http://www.vulture.com/2012/04/ranking-all-62-stephen-king-books.html

The Talisman seems underrated, I am glad it is getting some love on this thread.

The Talisman is great. That Vulture list is mostly fine, although I definitely disagree with Rose Madder placing dead last. It wasn't his best, but it was pretty decent. And definitely better than some of his other shit (looking at you, Needful Things). Also, Night Shift should definitely be top ten. That's the one I always recommend to people who are thinking about reading King for the first time.

idk rose madder is like if he was consciously trying to write 'bad s king' by-the-numbers

The ending of Needful Things put me off Stephen King for almost 2 decades. I didn't even give him a second chance (excepting for Wizard and Glass and On Writing, both Christmas presents as Needful Things had been). I had loved everything else he'd written up until that point and I don't know, there's some ridiculous shit in his early catalog, but something about the guy turning into a goblin and driving away in a car just put me over the edge.

What should I turn to next from his 1990s-2000s output?

I haven't read Rose Madder but I have a hard time believing it's worse than Gerald's Game, which was so bad that I have refused to pick up a Stephen King book ever since

lol

Of that trilogy, Dolores Claiborne >>> Gerald's Game >>>>>>>>>> Rose Madder.

Full Dark, No Stars, btw, is amazing. It feels like the work of a much younger King.

i will rep for insomnia and hearts in atlantis, beat that.

I remember liking Hearts In Atlantis, though i've never read any Dark Tower books so all that stuff was kind of annoying

oh shit you came hardcore I am not prepared to deal with this

a highly selective stephen king poll

Don't think I've read anything post Green Mile (which I liked at the time but now am pretty sure is total irredeemable hokum).

claiborne- steven, you've let me down

Geralds's game- steven, you've let the school down

Rose madder- Steven, put the fucking pen down

claiborne- steven, you've let me down

gtfo

Claiborne is top 10 King easily.

I like The Green Mile for the devastatingly nihilistic ending - "Won't God just please let me die already?"

xp yes, it is

i think yr letting kathy bates intidate ye

Sometimes being a challops is all a woman has to hold on to.

I was interested in the idea of The Green Mile as a serial novel but when I found out that it explicitly had a literal magic negro in it, I figured that my decision to avoid/abandon King post-Gerald's Game was a wise one

full disclosure i was just riffing off phils list of the three there i liked claiborne. In fact, he hasn't used half enough > tbh

FWIW the magic negro straight up basically kills one guy and drives another one permanently insane.

In the movie those two people were Sam Rockwell and that weirdo from LOST who married that 16 year old girl last year.

aw cmon dan it worked for the shining

There is also a mouse that does circus tricks so really there's something for everyone in The Green Mile.