stephen king c/d?

https://www.theonion.com/bangor-police-bring-in-stephen-king-to-help-track-demon-1820848385

cute!

Inspired by this thread, I went back & re-read the early short stories (Night Shift & Skeleton Crew) after about 25 King-free years. Some pretty good ones in there - The Mist is all-time. Feeling like I should read something I haven’t read before or my brain will atrophy, though - anyone got any recommendations for mid/late-period King? I think the last book of his I read before abandoning him was The Dark Half, so anything after that would be fair game.

Out of the mists of time, I think my favourites of his were The Shining, The Dead Zone, The Stand (tho god knows what I’d think of it now). Maybe I should just pick a book of his starting with “The” and go for it.

Revival is really good. I also liked Duma Key and 11/22/63, and Under The Dome is better than the show.

i'd say 11/22/63 and Full Dark, No Stars

seconding Duma Key, especially if you were a fan of his in the long-ago. it reminded me of the style of his early work where he leads you gently through innocuous familiar stuff into a weeeeiiirirdass nightmare

i think 11/22/63 is great too but for yr needs might be better suited if you don’t want classic King with a capital K

full dark would be interesting to read back-to-back w night shift.

The talisman is great and if you dig it then launch into the follow up black house

Duma Key and Revival would probably be among my top ten King novels.

i need to read revival

Fantastic, thanks!

Oh, I forgot to check back in after finishing Revival. My dissenting opinion is that it was fine overall but ultimately an interesting failure, inasmuch as its construction hinged entirely on King sticking the landing (which, I think we can agree, is not his strong suit). It's possible that I'm judging it harshly against a lot of the early 20th Century weird fiction which inspired it and which I was reading around the same time.

Didn't know there was such respect for Duma Key. Just ordered a copy; gonna enjoy reading a book I know absolutely nothing about.

11/22/63 is a fun, easy read, but it's empty calories, and takes a long time to go exactly where you know it's going. Under The Dome was much more satisfying for me. Faster plotting, more unexpected twists (a dog that sees ghosts!), sharper writing and just this overarching sense of chaos. I wouldn't compare it to early King, but it does seem like peak late-period King to me.

Under the Dome felt like The Stand for most of the novel in structure & pacing, characters etc but with a waay worse farty ending which kinda ruined the whole thing for me

Yeah agreed. I couldn't get into it, it was totally rehash stuff imo

I've said this before but I really wish king had waited for under the dome to play his metafictional copout card rather than blowing it on the dark tower, would have been the perfect way to end that book, which has some of his best bleak comedy

His editor should just take his finished manuscripts and be all, 'looks great, Steve!' and then 'accidentally' drop like the last 10-15 pages in the wastebasket. SK is like a champion gymnast who ends every routine by clumsily doing the running man (fittingly enough).

Ehhh it's not like there's a want of clumsiness in the beginnings and middles; I don't go to king for elegance so I'm easier on his cruddy endings than most. I love the ending of IT although (because) it's total anticlimax

The climaxing happens just a little earlier

Which obv is gonna happen at that age

🤢

yeah he is definitely notorious for whiffing endings to some of his better stories

i’m not mad abt Dark Tower AS much, but Under The Dome had me in full “old man yelling at clouds” mode when I was done.

Really?

Dark tower had me out fighting haystacks at midnight

Under The Dome's ending sucked, but the book still reached a pretty satisfying payoff. 10 pages of "ah that's stupid" is an OK tradeoff for several hundred pages of earned destruction and mayhem

Lol America

yeah I don’t remember being that mad abt Dark Tower but that’s not to say I can’t understand it. especially writing that series for so long to end like that was definitely not ~ideal~

under the dome ending was some St Elsewhere BULLSHIT

Yeah, I genuinely can't believe the resolution hinged on Howie Mandel pulling an inflated rubber glove over his head.

Please no spoilers

The under the dome ending wasn't that bad but it quite CLEARLY wasn't enough like st elsewhere, I mean cmon the entire novel is literally set in a snowglobe

Under The Dome had me in full “old man yelling at clouds” mode when I was done.

― Squeaky Fromage (VegemiteGrrl), Monday, 18 December 2017 19:3

Dark tower had me out fighting haystacks at midnight

― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Monday, 18 December 2017 19:36

I've yet to have the pleasure of disappointing books giving me such powers. Keeping my fingers crossed I'll turn into an old woman who can hurt clouds with my screams.

I didn't say I won

Like it's an actual betrayal that the ending of that novel isn't a deranged jordy verrill saying "ain't I a stinker" xp to me

Darraghmac- Haha

The ending of the dark tower is fine, if we're just talking about the last scene it's one of his better endings, but the problem is the whole series is like half rubbish and the greater part of that half is in the back end - that whole last book is dogshit iirc

I was in a book queue with The Dark Half about ten years ago and - for reasons I still can't fathom - the clerk told me the ending (that is, the identity of "The Dark Half") as I was buying it.

I've never read it because of that, but is it still worth it I (kind of) know the mystery?

I think it's the only King book I've never finished

ymmv

Duma Key is SK's own favorite book of his, fwiw.

was there really a mystery in the Dark Half? if so the title kind of gives it away

Yeah, I mean, once you learn in the first chapter that the protagonist is the left side of a guy who somehow lives a normal life despite having been bisected down the middle in his youth, the denouement is fairly obvious.

(Although the reveal that the rest of his body is the rhythm guitarist in a Type O Negative cover band is kind of a surprise.)

I guess this is the best place to mention that I'll be ghost writing Stephen King's books from here on out so that he can ease into retirement, and you're all welcome in advance.

Which son are you again

I picked up "It" the other day and read a passage aboat a dick flappgni about and being observed and dull dialogue anyway and thought why do people like Stephen Kind otehr than being a story writer for films to be based on

maybe they like to read about flappgni dicks

No, you see, sir, Dick Flappgni is the name of my dog.

Reading through The Dark Tower, would it be preferable to read The Wind Through the Keyhole after Vol. 4 Wizard and Glass? I know King wrote the The Wind Through the Keyhole after he finished the series, but from what I understand without looking too close and reading about the book's plot, it is supposed to take place tied to the story Roland is telling the Ka-Tet about his past, right?

Just finished Duma Key. It was really good - barrelled me along like I want King to do. Yeah, there’s some flab that should have been trimmed and I think it would have been a much better book overall if it hadn’t turned into a monster story - I’m much more creeped out by disembodied evil than embodied evil - but I dug it. Would reco.

And he didn’t totally whiff the ending, so that was a nice surprise.

that fuckin doll creeped the shit out of me

Fuckin dolls.