stephen king c/d?

A Post-It note, but in very small handwriting.

We all know he must hire people to write his outlines, right? He just leans back in a recliner and dictates to whomever is within earshot.

"Take a memo: a police detective tracks down a serial killer, who is trapped ... in his mind."

"Two police officers race to solve a series of crimes that turn out to be a twisted scavenger hunt devised by a serial killer."

"A detective is called out of retirement to solve a strange murder ... on the moon!"

"One dark and stormy night, a small town is beset by lightning. Ghost lightning. Like, the lightning is haunted. Anyway, you'll figure it out."

I've never read James Patterson.

You weren't far off.

James Patterson books always have really large print too, I guess to make ppl go "this has 500 pages but I read it in an hour, it must be a real page-turner!" He is the worst. Bet king has praised him tho

SPECULATIVE TITLES OF FUTURE THRILLERS BY JAMES PATTERSON.
BY MATT SULLIVAN, mcsweeneys.net
- - - -
The Farmer In The Dell
Gently Down The Stream
Jack Be Nimble
…Was His Name-o
Skid-a-Marink
His Wife Could Eat No Lean
Hush, Little Baby
On Top Of Spaghetti
…May Break My Bones
Hi-ho, The Derry-o
The Cheese Stands Alone
His Name Is My Name, Too
And The Dish Ran Away With The Spoon

Somebody who’s a terrific writer who’s been very, very successful is Jodi Picoult. You’ve got Dean Koontz, who can write like hell. And then sometimes he’s just awful. It varies. James Patterson is a terrible writer but he’s very very successful.”

ugggggggggggh James Patterson

Oh you know what, if that's from his Paris review interview I've actually read him saying that! He does rep for some shite tho xp

From a USA Today interview, I think.

No, maybe that was the Guardian?

Anyway:

What do you like to read when you’re not writing?

I read a lot of weird stuff…like Thomas Merton’s letters. I got hooked on Merton a long time ago. Somebody just sent me his letters. I read a lot of kids’ stuff. I have very catholic taste. It’s really all over the map. Oh, and Stephen King. I read his stuff. I like breaking his balls by saying positive things about him.

Do you ever talk to him?

No, he’s taken shots at me for years. It’s fine, but my approach is to do the opposite with him—to heap praise.

He cant even fuckin write a bad review ffs

Back in the pre-Harry Potter era when SK was the most popular writer in America, someone of note (I can't recall who) said, "As a country, we could have done a lot worse than Stephen King being our most popular writer" and boy was that person right.

if only we'd listened :(

that was dfw, i'm almost certain

i mean, who else of note would say that

yeah there's writers who are as or more prolific, who also wind up with their work becoming 'airport novels' -- but guuuuh so many of them are SUCH dreck. my husband's uncle used to travel for business, and would buy like, 5 airport novels for a trip and blow through them - once a year he'd give us this box literally overflowing with James Patterson et al. So much blandsville

at least King can write a halfway decent story.

Ardent defenders of shit are almost as good as Amazon reviews of classics that are all "One star, this was depressing, why would anyone read it?"

You know, I can honestly say that he doesn’t see what is good about Stephenie Meyer. I think she is a great writer… You don’t have to use every single vivid word in the english language in order to be a great writer. It takes emotion and love for the characters you write. She writes in first person, which in itself can make or break your career. She pulls it off so well! I love all her books and I can’t wait to see what else she has to give us.
In all honesty, I’m not the biggest fan of King. I tried to read his novel, Desperation, but couldn’t get into it. Sure, I may be a teenager but that doesn’t mean I don’t know what a good book is. For me, if I’m not drawn to a book so much that I’ll sit for hours reading it at a time, it isn’t very good. And I couldn’t do that with his novel. I love Harry Potter and Twilight. I also love the Inheritence Cycle by Christopher Paolini… I’ll read anything including the classics.
I’m confused as to why King feels its alright to bring Meyer’s writing down when he writes around the same level she does, of course he has more experience than she does. He shouldn’t judge an author who hasn’t been in the business as long as he has.
Also, he shouldn’t judge a novel the way he has hers when it is GETTING KIDS TO READ!!!! I feel you should support any novels that get kids and teenagers to read. I’ve always loved reading but I have friends that don’t like it, but they’ve read Twilight and loved it. As long as it is drawing kids to literature, it has to be good!

She writes in first person, which in itself can make or break your career.

She writes in first person, which in itself can make or break your career.

She writes in first person, which in itself can make or break your career.

When Dean Koontz is on, he fucking rocks fyi.

As long as it is drawing kids to literature, it has to be good!

this sentiment always quickchanges me into harold bloom it's the worst feeling

xpost otm, there are a few Koontz books that are badass

I read one as a teenager, The Bad Place? I remember that one being really good

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/2/20/Phantoms.jpg/200px-Phantoms.jpg

I kind of do, but OTOH I worked with a woman who was dumb as a box of rocks, hadn't read a book since high school (if then), etc. - over the course of 2-3 months she worked her way through all the Twilights. That's some kind of win, imo.

That was an xp to feeling Bloomy.

phantoms is a blast, yeah, but it's also the only koontz i've enjoyed

lol koontz

Haven't read Koontz since I was a kid, but remember tearing through The Bad Place in a single day and loving the first half of Twilight Eyes (but not the second). The hierarchy of horror was definitely King > Koontz > John Saul.

Mine was King, then Peter Straub/Dean Koontz

never read Saul

No Clive Barker stans?

only Books of Blood were really worth reading IME

Barker and Straub are probably the best of the bunch, but, for me anyway, they came a bit later.

Imajica was alright. The Great and Secret Show was a big ball of crazy. This paragraph from the Wiki summary covers the first, like, 50 pages:

While working in the dead letter office in Nebraska in 1969, a disgruntled postal clerk named Randolph Jaffe discovers hints to a mysterious part of society known as "The Shoal" that are ostensibly practicing what seems to be a form of magic only vaguely known as "The Art". His search eventually brings him to Trinity, New Mexico, where he encounters the mysterious "Kissoon" who claims to be the last of the Shoal. From Kissoon he learns of the mystical dream sea Quiddity and the islands within it known as the Ephemeris. Quiddity, as it turns out, is visible exactly three times to an ordinary human: The first time we ever sleep outside our mother's womb, the first time we sleep beside the one we truly love and the last time we ever sleep before we die. However; this simply is not enough for the megalomaniac Jaffe, who wishes to actually visit the dream sea in person and gain control of it. Jaffe flees when Kissoon tries to bargain for his body, and later teams up with a scientist named Fletcher who is able to create a liquid called the 'Nuncio'. Nuncio is theoretically able to enable a human to evolve to a state that would enable him to physically reach Quiddity. Fletcher has second thoughts however, realising that Jaffe will only use Nuncio for evil, and destroys his laboratory. Jaffe arrives and both are exposed to the Nuncio. The two battle each other for a year and their spirits arrive in Palomo Grove in California in 1971. There, they rape and impregnate four teenage girls. One of the girls is infertile and fails to give birth while another kills herself and her child after giving birth. The third, Trudi Katz, moves away with her baby Howard while the fourth, Joyce McGuire gives birth to twins, Jo-Beth and Tommy Ray.

~ scans thread ~

hang on .. reprints of stephen king books get the remix/update treatment ?

i mean, are they glaring trying to remain relevant updates, i mean, for example do the references to the ramones get replaced with greenday ?

that's a bit unusual isn't it ?

do other authors (who are still alive and kicking) do this ?

I'm trying to remember which Clive Barker book I tried to read, maybe The Damnation Game? I thought it was super super boring.

xp: AFAIK this updating only happened to The Stand

my gf got 'the stand' as a present a while back and i've been thinking of giving it a go. never read any king except for the 'on writing' book and a few of the short stories. unfortunately, it's a new paperback so i'm pretty sure it's the updated version -- does it make a huge difference?

stephen king is cool but he has pretty untrustworthy taste. i think he rated carrion comfort by dan simmons as one of the best novels ever and i couldn't make it past fifty pages.

also

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygWMy-QQNbw

oh shit I forgot Barker

Great & Secret Show (and sequel? am i remembering right?) was awesome, and I love Weaveworld

King himself described the film as a "moron movie" and stated his intention to never direct again soon after.[4] In a 2002 interview with Tony Magistrale for the book Hollywood's Stephen King, King stated that he was "coked out of [his] mind all through its production, and [he] really didn't know what [he] was doing." In spite of this, King stated in the same interview that he "learned a lot from the experience," and would "like to try directing again sometime."[5]

my gf got 'the stand' as a present a while back and i've been thinking of giving it a go. never read any king except for the 'on writing' book and a few of the short stories. unfortunately, it's a new paperback so i'm pretty sure it's the updated version -- does it make a huge difference?

I loved both versions in high school.

the odd thomas stuff from koontz is a pretty fun fast read, ive been digging it quite a bit. i will also throw down for several barker things (great and secret show, and weaveworld for sure) but man when he sucks he really really sucks.

Weaveworld is my favorite Barker, followed by the Books of Blood.

I really liked On Writing, though I'm always a bit surprised by how *much* other people like it. There's some great stuff in there, and the biographic bits are ace. But the sections that are just like "don't use adverbs" are kinda disposable, aren't they? Danse Macabre, on the other hand--now that's a book that will change a kid's life if he grew up in an isolated small town in the 80s. I'm still tracking down all those books, movies, and TV shows.

Would dig some koontz recommendations since I've never. Phantoms and Odd Thomas = noted.

Straub is always super interesting but is also one of the strangest most misshapen storytellers to ever make the supermarket. Like, the dramatic architecture/narrative skyline of his novels is deeply, deeply odd in a way that sometimes strikes me as just plain bad but then I'm not sure and wanna go reread the whole thing.

Also Straub has legit awesome taste in other writers.

apparently DFW (seriously) ranked 'the stand' at no. 2 in his (kinda amazing) list of top 10 favorite books:

http://emdashes.com/2008/09/david-foster-wallaces-reading.php

The Stand is absolutely one of my favorite books, I basically recommend that everyone read it in any form

xpost jon: I agree with you 100% about his odd style. He's certainly not as easily digestible as King, and in a weird way he feels very old-fashioned, like I feel more like I'm reading Henry James at times. not that his style is similar, but it's just a ~feeling~ I get

I remember Koontz's Cold Fire and Hideaway being good too, but god it's been so long since I read any

No Clive Barker stans?

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Thursday, July 11, 2013 12:02 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

only Books of Blood were really worth reading IME

― "Post-Oven" (DJP), Thursday, July 11, 2013 12:03 PM (54 minutes ago)

had the same E. loved the books of blood, but bogged down in the damnation game, weaveworld AND imagjica.

ang on .. reprints of stephen king books get the remix/update treatment ?

i mean, are they glaring trying to remain relevant updates, i mean, for example do the references to the ramones get replaced with greenday ?

that's a bit unusual isn't it ?

do other authors (who are still alive and kicking) do this ?

mark e wrote this at 2013-07-11 19:07:28.000

Only The Stand, as far add I can tell. It was a tenth anniversary edition or something?

VG otm re Straub - James vibe.

I've seen Maximum Overdrive more times than I've read Stephen King in 25 years. Is there a book equivalent of a basic cable staple? The kind you come across in a vacation home? Leave a book, take a book?

So am I correct that the original "Stand" is not in ebook form? Because screw reading the longer one.