stephen king c/d?

Bought 11/22/63 and I love it so far. I think the question I wanted to ask earlier wasn't "is it scary" but maybe is it spooky or is it supernatural bc for some dumb reason I thought it was historical fiction? Like accurate, non-time traveling, non-SK-world referencing historical fiction. But it's totally Stephen King in a good way. :)

otm

enjoy!!

Haven't read Stephen King in decades, but just requested the new one from the library.

I find the guy's prolific rate really inspiring. Also, "On Writing" was so good.

My top five:

The Stand (unabridged)
Skeleton Crew
11/22/63
It (scared the crap out of me when I was in high school)
Danse Macabre

Least favorite: Insomnia - I barely remember it

Gerald's Game is terrible but it does have a memorable scene at the end in a car that I often think of when I'm alone in a car at night. So even his worst stuff can have effective parts in it.

finished 11/22/63, gotta say, pretty awesome

Alright, y'all have convinced me to try 11/22/63 if it ranks with The Stand and It and Skeleton Crew.

it was big and chunky and satisfying. i liked it.

a hearty stew of a book, lol

yeah i've just started it, thoroughly enjoying it. there's a cameo that comes fairly early that made me cheer inside.

trying to figure out what you mean!

I like that a plot point hinges on the Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar."

slocki - derry

o yayayaya

forget about it

GODDAMN was 11/22/63 fantastic, thought he landed the ending well and the final scene actually got me pretty verklempt. not a horror novel but he definitely uses his ability to conjure up dread and terror.

ya man it was tight as hell for such a long book, not to mention a time travel story!

i liked how he has now made it impossible for me to look at photos of the book depository without getting creeped out for entirely different reasons now than I ever did before, lol

really dig the basic time travel mechanic too. the "reboot" thing. its fresh.

It's still under the front seat of my car, I should get around to reading it.

do it!

I got it at a garage sale for a quarter a few weeks ago, take that ebooks.

I never find any good books at garage sales, I need to lift my game

ha i read this on my kindle so had no idea it was 'long', blew thru it in a little over a week. whereas before it i read 2312 and it did feel long and took almost a month.

i read it on my kindle too and i noticed the percentage points moved ahead real slowly

lol i started to reread proust in kindle, they have all of it as just one big thing, and i would read for hours and the percentage point wouldn't budge. so then i thought 'maybe next summer'.

the idea of trying to read proust on one of those things is just ...

also no "i started to reread proust" in the stephen king thread please

yeah take the showing off over to ILB, lol

get out

i have been on a weird s.k. kick lately. (everyone otm abot 11/22/63.) read about six in the last two weeks. in some ways i'm finding that i havent been giving him enough credit in the 20 or so years since i last really read him. in other ways he's been disappointing as i expected. still i am going to revise my very early bitchy post on this thread to "classic but you gotta know what yr in for in some ways.)

was just looking for a list, surprised that 'misery' (in some ways his single best book) is from the same year as prime coke wallow evidence 'the tommyknockers'

i was gonna reread the shining next or tackle under the dome but i think i will reread misery instead

also i never said this in any of my previous revives but "on writing" has been a very important book to me on an inspiration-type level even if a lot of the advice is flat-out horseshit. it's like the "hang in there baby" poster of writing manuals.

'under the dome' is my favourite of his big flabby monsters, but i think i. he's been on a personal renaissance since '05 or so ii. 'cell' is actually one of his best books, so

xp i should reread 'on writing', i think

what i remember in terms of advice is basically

i. read a hell of a lot
ii. if you get hit by a truck, do not die, and take what revenge you can

yeah when i was a kid i read everything thru tommnyknockers and then stopped dead - part of it was i getting older/more pretentious (see above post) but alot of it was just that book. hadn't read anything since, still haven't read unabridged the stand for example, and then a few summers ago decided to reread IT. enjoyed it thoroughly, alot of it horrified me more now than it did then tbh (children dying somehow more brutal when you're an adult than when you're a kid), thought he did incredible job of writing the children, less so the adults. thought he did a much better job w/ adults in 11/22/63, maybe cuz he was older and sober or maybe it's just two different books. thinking about going on a stephen king kick also - any reccomendations from recent stuff (ie past 25 years) or should i just dive back into salem's lot, the shining, pet sematary, etc?

xpost - wait i did actually read 'on writing', totally forgot that. what i recall mainly is 'the way to be a writer is to write. alot.' kinda hilarious to remember him announcing his 'retirement...after 3 maybe 4 more books' - dude's an addict.

a stephen king poll

then a few summers ago decided to reread IT. enjoyed it thoroughly, alot of it horrified me more now than it did then tbh (children dying somehow more brutal when you're an adult than when you're a kid)

i totally had this reaction to 'lord of the flies' a few months ago -- liked it OK as a teen, found it almost too horrifying to read as an adult. apparently it's king's all-time favorite book.

i've never read more than a few king short stories -- all of which were v. good, but included a few details that messed with me for days. tho i'm sure they're pretty tame next to a lot of his stuff. i'm just a wuss about horror, really.

thinking about going on a stephen king kick also - any reccomendations from recent stuff (ie past 25 years) or should i just dive back into salem's lot, the shining, pet sematary, etc?

as is becoming apparent i could probably go into far-too-great-depth on this, but it's interesting how a more felt and more ambivalent humanism (occasionally so world-weary as to approach nihilistic) takes the place of the vague christian ethic of his early work (god i can't believe i just wrote that), also an interest in a sort of popular american realism that doesn't really exist anymore, also a tendency to do wacky shit

tldr but 'cell', 'tom gordon' and 'hearts in atlantis' (title story only), 'the colorado kid' to demonstrate those three things respectively, 'under the dome' for the three in combination

i wish under the dome had ended better, i was suuuuper into it and then it just fizzles out :(

Just FYI, y'all have infected me with your enthusiasm. Started re-reading Carrie last night and, knowing me, I'm likely to continue plowing through his stuff until things get dire.

just finished my reread of "the stand" and i think i'm actually gonna take a king break now. kinda wrung out after that one. in the good way.

(i do wish i still had my mom's copy of the "abridged" original version, though. i don't mind MORE MORE MORE when it comes to my fantastical epics, plot-wise. i just kept noticing all sorts of sloppy bit where he inserted "topical" references to the year of our lord 1990 that clanged hard with other bits [character's ages, song styles, atmosphere, car models, slang, etc etc] that were very obviously late 70s.)

Yeah, "The Stand" is an ordeal, in the best way.

Y'all inspiring me to get caught up on King.

i just kept noticing all sorts of sloppy bit where he inserted "topical" references to the year of our lord 1990 that clanged hard with other bits [character's ages, song styles, atmosphere, car models, slang, etc etc] that were very obviously late 70s. - thought about rereading the stand and this very aspect i'd heard about is what's prevented me.

yeah I prefer the OG stand than the expanded version

Sigh. I'm going to be the voice of slight dissent on 11/22/63. I finally finished it last night and it was okay. I was getting into it at the beginning but then it just draaaaaagged, and the whole plot was "He moves towards his goal... OH NO SETBACK! Will it ruin everything? No of course not. He achieves his goal, with ~consequences~" over and over and over again. Plus the consequences were telegraphed from ten miles away, despite being grown in a lab to be the perfect Stephen King combination of shocking but perfectly appropriate. I also got really tired of the main character calling the supporting woman character "hon" all the time. It just reads in print as weirdly condescending. And you know what? I get it. They have sex and enjoy it! I don't need to hear about every time they fuck.

One of my favorite things about SK books is that they're compulsively readable, but all of the afore mentioned issues made reading this book a chore, which was really sad! Anyway, so last night I was like "fuck it I am FINISHING THIS BOOK" and then I got to this line, which was the literary equivalent of somebody sharting at the dinner table.

MAYBE SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT SO KEEP OUT THIS MEANS YOU!

Main character is on the bus and he is helping a large black woman (who is a maid and says "Lawsy!" btw) to her feet and writing of the difficulty of doing so, King writes, "That was three hundred pounds of female on the hoof." Maybe the only black woman character in the book and he compares her to chattel. Not only is that racist as HELL and fucking offensive if you happen to think, as I unsurprisingly do, that fat women are humans and not animals "on the hoof," but it's insanely uncreative. Wow, you compared a fat woman to a cow. WOW. Is there a chapter about metaphor in On Writing about metaphor? Maybe he should review that one.

OKAY YOU CAN COME BACK NOW SPOILER TIME IS OVER

Despite all that, I didn't hate the book, but it's going on the Tommyknockers side of my SK list rather than the Night Shift side, that's for damn sure.

I agree with you.

I thought that 11/22/63 was insanely too detailed. I also hate it when the main characters of books are ridiculously perfect like they are here. It was OK overall because the time travel conceit was cool, but book really should have been less than half the length that it is.

Yeah, Jake was a total Mary Sue.

A spoileriffic flowchart of connections between King's (non-Dark Tower stuff.

Also, how did I fail to hear that a show based on The Colorado Kid has been airing for several years?

Yeah 'Haven'

It's kind of like a weird cross between a supernatural verison of Eureka and American Gothic or something. Not in a good way? I have tried to enjoy it but I alwasy find it kind of boring

on the other hand WWE's Edge is a character now :D