stephen king c/d?

i was going to say the parker books by richard stark

which are much shorter than stephen king books but there are like 20 of them

I want to say Michael Crichton hits a similar 'quick & entertaining & requiring minimal effort' sweet spot but I haven't read his stuff in decades.

Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series fits this description as well.

Yeah no coincidence that Crichton, King and Grisham were the ones I read in middle school. They're all pretty unchallenging.

Those Jim Butcher books look like something I'd be way too embarrassed to read at an airport, unfortunately

That seems silly to me in a post-Harry Potter world.

(but then, I can't think of a single book I've read that I was embarrassed to be seen reading so maybe that's just me)

yeah I'm not above admitting I'm self conscious about that stuff. But I'm not a Harry Potter or really a fantasy fan either so that might be part of it

i'd add Jonathan Franzen. obviously not horror/crime/mystery/thriller, but he's imo an excellent world-builder and Freedom is a serious page turner, and a really beautiful book. Not challenging. Another lesser realist writer who's p good is Jonathan Dee - I'm reading his most recent one, The Locals, which is p good, & worth reading if only for the first 50 pages set in Manhattan on 9/12/01.

I recently read Lawrence Block's Getting Off and felt like I had to cover up the cover on the train. xp

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51IZpv51wIL._SY346_.jpg

Elmore Leonard and Richard Stark OTM, but (Stark's real name) Donald Westlake even better if you're looking for hang-out-iness. Try a couple of the books about Dortmunder.

ohhh forgot about Franzen. I've had a copy of The Corrections sitting on my shelf for years so maybe I'll finally queue that one up once I finish King's JFK assassination time travel one

loved crichton as a lad, and even started a thread on him, but gotta give credit where it's due, he is not half the writer king is. crichton's stuff definitely goes down easy but mostly that's because the overall situations he comes up with are interesting, and the sentences are very basic, like chapter-books-for-kids level. he really relies on you filling in for yourself what a dinosaur looks like and how scary it would be if one was attacking you. king has a much stronger sense of prose, character, pacing, suspense, atmosphere, mise-en-scene... not to say he doesn't have numerous faults and annoying tics and a real problem with editing as i've stated repeatedly but there's just a lot more to his stuff, at least his best stuff.

I'd put The Terminal Man up there with King's stronger efforts.

yeah if i ever bump into that one or the great train robbery at the thrift store, i'd totally reread. i remember both being more substantial than his later stuff.

I also remember Congo the book being much, much more entertaining and darker than "Congo" the movie.

that wouldn't take much! but yeah i remember being generally creeped out by parts of it. i should give that one another spin but i'm always afraid the dark-continent themes will really squick out Adult Casino.

1922 is one of my favorite things SK has written. Doesn't mean the adaptation will be worth a hoot, of course.

The dinosaur had torn him open. His guts had fallen out.

all time HOF for that one obv

re Evan's request for recommendations

Tana French's Dublin Murder Squad is the most addictive series I've read in forever. They're not exactly your brain off material, but by god they're compelling. There's six of them to date

Try Don WInslow. His new book The Force is great.

ooh yeah, Winslow is also a good pick. Looking forward to reading The Force

Robert Crais & James Lee Burke
King’s style to me is very laid-back & unfussy and the stories spool out in a very natural way that rarely takes you out of whatever “world” he’s put you in. These 2 have that same feel & they put a lot of personality into their stories that makes them v enjoyable imo

Richard Russo
Maybe a little folksy but the way he builds a whole town of personalities reminds me of King with Castle Rock etc

I always seem to be recommending Lawrence Block - but Lawrence Block! Burglar series - 'light' crime, very elegantly done - or the Scudder series - darker PI stuff.

King's Derry is modelled, sometimes quite specifically, on real-life Bangor, including the statue of Paul Bunyan which attacks Richie Tozier in It.

The Google street view photo of the statue utilized its standard face-blurring technology.

http://i259.photobucket.com/albums/hh310/yodelagogo/bunyan_2.jpg

oh yeah, someone just recommended Richard Russo's Straight Man - is that any good?

Don Winslow's earlier stuff is better imo. The Force was pretty hackneyed and familiar I thought.

xpost I really liked it!

Straight Man is great, Nobody's Fool is great ...

sweet, i'll order it... saw it in an airport news stand, almost bought it but i gotta get through some stuff for work first...

John Sandford for me

There is a great interview with Crichton's editor Robert Gottlieb, talking about The Andromeda Strain, where he's like "Michael your characters suck, let's just avoid characters altogether."

http://www.sarahweinman.com/confessions/2008/11/the-art-of-edit.html

GOTTLIEB: When Michael wrote THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN he assumed he had to fill out the characters of all those scientists and make them real people, as in a conventional novel. But that wasn't where his interest lay, and so he had only done it at the surface level. Somehow it occurred to me that instead of trying to flesh out the characters further and make the novel more conventional, we ought to strip that stuff out completely and make it a documentary, only a fictional one.

I'd add Richard Price to the list above - Samaritan is a really easy read.

Price is another excellent choice

Those Reacher novels by Lee Child have a King-ish feel sometimes, and a King cross-over (in Under the Dome the main character dude says he used to serve in the military with Jack Reacher.)

Heh, I was going to say maybe check out some of the authors that King himself reps for (ie like Richard Stark, or Lee Child), but then I remembered he's pretty much the most generous other author blurb-giver of all time.

In Danse Macabre and On Writing, King appended lists of some of his favorite books. While these recommendatiosn might not all meet the "go down as easy" criterion, there's a lot worth looking into here.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/26941.Stephen_King_s_Horror_Recommendations_Danse_Macabre
https://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2014/03/04/stephen-kings-reading-list-for-writers/
https://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2014/04/10/stephen-kings-reading-list-part-ii/
https://www.aerogrammestudio.com/2014/07/16/stephen-kings-reading-list-part-3/

That last link is just a list of his recommendations from twitter in late 2013 - early 2014.

People do joke that he'll blurb "scared the hell outa me" on anything.

https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1492596876l/18716296.jpg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71bPuFFQGIL.jpg

http://horror.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/king-witch-quote.jpg

I bought Alex Marwood's Darkest Secret after Sarah Weinman recommended it. It is not good. Like Gillian Flynn with even more awkward prose.

I like to imagine Stephen King as the most easily-scared man in America, constantly jumpy and uttering little yelps as his imagination reveals itself on the page.

http://ew.com/article/2008/03/20/stephen-king-art-blurb/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YrDQ18P9x4

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5179%2BzRP6zL.jpg

Btw I didn’t read the same Richard Russo as VG did but yeah it had that goes down easy while actually being pretty damn good that I usually rely on genre fic for.

I read the EW article years ago and didn't care for that Filthy Critic that he links.

Love the Elvis Cole books mentioned upthread.

Also enjoyed The Force but not sure I'd go quite as far as this:

Don Winslow's THE FORCE (coming in June) is mesmerizing, a triumph. Think THE GODFATHER, only with cops. It's that good.

— Stephen King (@StephenKing) February 24, 2017

Oh, and Gerald's Game seems to be getting very good reviews