Dreamcatcher wasn’t necessarily his best work, but he did his job that time and provided a relatively interesting story and some characters worth spending the time with, so I’d rate that one at mid-range for him.
I liked Cell, which also seems unpopular among participants in this thread.
The Gunslinger (Dark Tower I) is the Stephen King book I like least, of the ones I’ve read (at least half of his total output, though I’ve mostly tried to avoid the “bad” ones). It put me off reading the rest of Dark Tower for way too long.
Since you asked, pretty much all of them. I sometimes wonder what’s wrong with me, considering how popular he is, but I think he’s not a good writer.
I sort of liked Thinner, but that wasn’t King anyway…
I’ve always considered myself a big King fan. Just now I Googled “Stephen King’s books in order of release”. I didn’t even know some of them existed! I wanted to see about when I stopped reading his books because at some point I kinda fell out of love. But it looks like I can’t come up with a year because there were a few here and there that I read after years of not reading. I really disliked the Tower books and any other of his fantasy type stories. I haven’t read a new King book in quite a few years. It looks like the last two books of his I read were Duma Key (I don’t even remember what it was about!) and Sleeping Beauty. Sleeping Beauty was just OK - if I remember correctly it kind of dragged on for too long.
IMO, his best work is when he is writing from a child’s point of view, as in the novella “The Body”. He can really capture the nature of a young boy or teen.
I have tried several times to make it through Fairy Tale with no success. I always get bogged down on the road to the city. Should I try again?
I loved Fairy Tale, I couldn’t put it down.
Yes, I agree. His best books are the ones that have kids in them and that’s quite a few.
Ditto. Although I thought (again!) that it bogged down in the climactic scenes.
But overall, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
ETA: It’s a LONG list
I agree too, but it also brings up a pet peeve. King refuses to give young people credible pop culture references. No, they aren’t likely to be waxing rhapsodic over Elvis and Bettie Page, Stephen. I don’t care how much TCM they watch.
Lisey’s Story is the one I could never make it to page 100. All the others I’ve read I have been able to finish, but the style in LS just irritates the hell out of me.
As for The Tommyknockers, as a person who doesn’t (and never has) drink, I found Gard’s story to be a pretty good validation for my teetotaling ways - it was the “Scared Straight” of alcohol for me (well, that and my first communion, where I puked on a representative of the Archdiocese of Atlanta). The entire story is an allegory for addiction and while it may be heavy-handed at times, I don’t feel it’s SK’s worst novel by far.
Enjoyed 11/22/63, but was irritated by the constant misspelling of “Killeen” as “Kileen”, a mistake I think has been fixed in later editions (I bought it as soon as it hit the shelves as a hardback).
Oh, I never made it through the Dark Tower series, but I finished the ones I read.
Just read Billy Summers in the past month and it had that “Haven’t I read this one before?” feeling the entire way through, but I never remembered reading it. It was OK, and… not surprisingly… I didn’t mind the Trump-bashing.
I think he’s a decent writer, and while though not my favorite, he can usually be relied on for a good read at least.
There is one thing though, especially about his horror books. The first half tends to read like a quite good mainstream novel. Then about halfway through, it’s as if he suddenly turns a switch and says “hey ho, (sigh), time to bring on the horror bit now”.
I get the point about the setup for contrast, but it seems a bit formulaic sometimes?
As big a fan as I’ve always been, I was shocked to think how many of his novels I don’t like. I haven’t read anything since, “Under The Dome,” which I gave up on half way through.
In general, I’m only reading short stories and novellas any more. He has some champion short stories.
UTD struck me as a novel where he was about 500 pages in and realized “Holy hell, I’m not even close to finishing this one yet”, so he tacked on the explosion ending so he could finish it quicker than planned.
I’m not sure I’ve ever really liked any of them. His first and second acts are generally great. His stories almost always fall apart in the third act. His endings suck, to put it plainly.
He seems to not have a plan, he just writes until he gets bored with it, then “um… aliens did it! The end!”
UTD was an excellent Simpsons movie.
For me, the best segments of The Dark Tower were the beginning of the series, which he wrote way earlier and tossed into a trunk for a long long time; and a later flashback sequence in which Roland is in love, is away from the village or town for some reason I’ve forgotten, and evil vindictive people there burn his girlfriend as a sacrifice to the harvest gods or some such thing. The “Charyou Tree” segment. Apparently this was in Wizard and Glass (I had to look that up).
I always had the impression that this flashback sequence had also been written at some earlier time, and finally incorporated here, but I’m not seeing any confirmation of that.
Some of his best writing is when nothing weird is happening. I loved the opening bit of the Institute, where some guy was just roaming the country after quitting his law enforcement job.
I agree, his best writing is without supernatural elements. He writes the horror of humankind’s evilness very well indeed. Not that I don’t love the supernatural stuff, too!
My least favorites: The Tommyknockers, Lisey’s Story (smucking!), Dreamcatcher with the shitweasels, Cell, Regulators-and-Desperation and their insideoutedness (is too a word! If King can make up stoopit words I can too!) There’s more, and I’ve read more than quite a few. At one time I could claim to having read everything he had written, but not anymore!