I’ve read everything King has written and when he is on he is damned good. When he is off he is pretty bad. One thing that King, IMHO, has always had a problem with is endings. Sometimes they are a let down compared to the rest of the story.
I’d recommend The Tailsman(written with Peter Straub), The Stand, Carrie and It for novels.
The short story collections Different Seasons and Night Shift are great. My favorite King short story is “Survivor Type” which is just wrong. Wrong in a good way but still wrong.
One thing that I have always loved about King is that he does alot of backstory about characters. In his best works you really understand the characters and their motivations, even the bad guys.
Desperation and The Regulators (Bachman) are pretty good King novels, they are good examples of the themes he does best and summary examples of his writing style. Desperation is also coming out this year as a TV movie, so now is your chance to read it and have it spoiled by the movie… I wish a director could capture a King horror story just once.
As many other people have said, I think his early stuff was consistently excellent. The stuff in the middle was hit-or-miss; I thought The Tommyknockers was pretty terrible, but It was one of his best. Lately, things have not been so good, at least as far as the novels go. The short stories, however, are nearly all great. Everything’s Eventual had some fantastic stories of all types (if you just want a straight shocker, read the story depicted on the cover, called “Lunch at the Gotham Cafe”. Brr. Ooh, or “The Road Virus Heads North”.).
I’d start with either Carrie or The Shining (my first King book, when I was 9 or so :eek: ) for novels, and Night Shift for short stories (his first collection).
I don’t actually hate any of his stuff. But Dreamcatcher is definitely his worst. Pretty bad.
The original film adaptation of “The Shining” was brilliant. I know Stephen King wasn’t very fond of it, but that doesn’t change the reality.
I absolutely loved The Stand, The Shining, and Insomnia. Please put down your book and read one of those first.
Another King book to avoid is Dolores Claiborne. It’s been a long time, so maybe I’m not remembering it correctly, but was that whole book a single paragraph? It’s the only King book that I started but didn’t finish.
LOL! That’s funny…sorry about that! Perhaps I’ll have to revisit that novel, and give Dolores another chance. I have to agree with the “men are pigs” statement…we definitely are!!!
So, do you promise that there are chapter and paragraph breaks in that book?
Survivor Type is in Skeleton Crew, isn’t it? Cool story, either way. Jerusalem’s Lot from Night Shift is one of my favorite shorties. The only complaint I have about Skeleton Crew is The Mist. It was really interesting, but it felt too long.
No. There are definitely paragraphs, but no chapters. It’s a monologue! Dolores is telling her story to a detective, after her employer dies suspiciously, and Dolores is accused of the murder.
One of his best “straight” stories. If I remember, though, there is one little weird bit in the middle, during the eclipse.
And for any of you who haven’t read it, it’s MUCH better than the movie. (But we knew that, didn’t we?)
I have tried, over and over again, to like King. I’ve read Carrie, Salem’s Lot, The Shining, Misery, The Dead Zone, and I finally gave it up about 50 pages into Christine.
I generally like the movies made based on his novels and short stories*, I think he has really great ideas/plots/whatever, but I just can not stand the way he writes.
*In fact The Shining is the standard by which I judge all other horror movies as it’s the only movie to ever actually scare me. Still does to this day.
Except that the movie version of The Shining is nowhere near as good as the book. It’s not a bad movie. It just isn’t the book. Directors of King’s work as well as screenwriters that are adapting his work for film all fall into the same trap. They attempt to capture the horror of his stories so much so that the most important aspect of King’s stories get lost in the muck. King’s stories are fantastic (some of them) because they take time to set you up by allowing you to get emotionally involved with the characters. CHARACTERS, that is where his greatness lies. When some guy is mauled to death by the monster in a movie or lesser book we aren’t really interested because we don’t know the guy. King takes the time to personify the lines of text that become characters so that their collective lives are meaningful to us. Even though King taught me to despise Harold Lauder, I still found myself saddened by what happened. Just think how bad it was when bad things happened to the characters I loved and most identified with!
I look back over the course of my life and I think about Stu Redman and Frannie Goldsmith and Larry “Baby can you dig your man?” and I cannot remember a time when they were not a part of my life. King himself says he gets questions from fans all the time. “How is Stu and Frannie doing?” as if he gets letters from them from time to time. These people are real to us.
I can only really think of one director who truly understands King’s stories and he was the one who directed The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile. These are near perfect recreations of King’s stories. John Carpenter came really close with Christine but ultimately missed. Kubrik made a great movie, but he dropped the ball completely when it came to an accurate representation of King’s work.
Say what you will about his stories all wanting to run thousands of pages long. You still feel sad at the end of The Stand and IT because it’s coming to an end. That says a great deal about the man’s writing.
The only King I’ve ever read was The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon* one day when I had a high fever. I don’t know if the word of someone with a fever can be trusted, but I quite enjoyed it, though the little girl was too precocious for words.
That is pretty much the case with any movie ever based from a book. So knowing this, and knowing how much I loved the movie - I should have loved the book more, at least equally. But King’s style of writing was a huge turn-off for me and I ended up not really liking The Shining (the novel).
I’m not saying he’s a bad writer - too many people I know, whose opinion I respect, have said they love him for me to just dismiss him as a horrible writer. I’m just saying that, for me, I can’t read him. I just do not like they way he writes.
The Mist is definitive King! That story truly freaked me out. I stand by it as one of his best.
I believe that is the first short story of his that I read, and left me wanting more…that story was the hook that brought me back. It is one of the stories that has resonated the most for me.
I reread Insomnia recently…definitely one of my favorites.
The Dead Zone wasn’t too bad, IMHO. It’s all of the attempts at his true horror stories that fail to translate, which I believe is due to bad direction and poor production quality. A scary, visceral, dark, psychological King story has never been done justice.
I love Christopher Walken though and cherish his dead zone performance. It was one of his best early roles. I got a soft spot for this film.
Something funny: I have recently befriended a guy that has Christopher Walken’s dialect and accent (Queen’s, NY I think?) but is also first generation Italian American. So, here’s this little Italian guy speaking in the same dialect as Chris Walken, he even has the same affectations…yet all of this is over top of an Italian accent… It cracks me up! I constantly find myself picturing and quoting Chris Walken in my mind when I talk to him! My minimal linguistic training and instincts have me placing this guy within 10 blocks of where Christopher Walken grew up, I just know it!
I think part of the problem is I am not sure that Steven King actually wrote this. It is intended to be a companion to his tv show “kingdom hospital”, and it is my understanding that it is written by one of the shows writers, Rick Dooling, and not Steven King himself. I should note, when looking up this book on both amazon.com and barnes and nobles “Eleanor Druse”, the fictional character from the show, is listed as the author.
As far as which books are good, other readers here certainly have good recommendations. It is true that later works tend to be quite different and usually not considered as good (even though somehow still “bestsellers”)
Wow, that’s actually one of my favorites of his later works. I get your comment about it seeming like a single paragraph, though. Still, a good yarn.
Like so many here have already stated, start with Carrie, Christine, Firestarter, The Dead Zone, The Shining. I was in sixth grade when I discovered these wonderful books, and they scared the crap out of me. It was awesome. I still have them on my bookshelf.
ETF, if you’re still reading, don’t listen to the people who say the first book you should read is “The Stand”. They are out of their minds. On the one hand, it’s possible to get so engrossed in it that if you read over several days, as i did, you will feel like you are living in the world of the book. On the other hand, it was SK’s first flashings of the bloat that infects his later work.
I’ve read “The Stand” twice, and it always feels like four intertwined books crammed between one pair of covers. Two of the books are fantastic, the other two suck.
Get the “Skeleton Crew” or “Night Shift” short story collections. That will let you sample his style and decide if you like what he ususally writes about and how he writes about it. If you’re hooked, pick up “The Shining”. If you are still hooked, then and only then, attempt “The Stand”.
King is very uneven, and the early stuff is definitely better than what comes later. “Misery” was his last hurrah, IMO. I stopped reading him after I tossed out my copy of “Insomnia”.
