Newest Stephen King books. You like?

Cafe Society
1

Let me preface by saying that I LOVED S. King’s early stuff.

I LOVED The Stand, It, 'Salem’s Lot, etc. (OK… there were a couple that were not so good, but on the whole I used to LOVE King!).

Since I moved to Korea, howeverm I haven’t been able to keep very current on King’s novels. I buy they when I see them, but I don’t get to book stores often here…

So I have noticed that it seems that every King novel that I have bought in the past couple of years is… NOT enjoyable! In fact, the nearest I can come to an illustrative analogy is this: reading his latest novels feel like chewing on tin-foil.

I just finished reading Dream-Catcher, and it was just unpleasant! Not scary… just unpleasant and left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I read Desperation several months ago… same deal!

Am I alone here? What happened to my favorite horror author?

2

WHOA… didn’t preview… sorry!:smiley:

3

I thought I had read too many of his works and was suffering from overload. But, you are right, IMHO. His latest works

GERALD’S GAME 1992.
DOLORES CLAIBORNE 1992.
INSOMNIA 1994.
ROSE MADDER 1995.
DESPERATION 1996.
WIZARD & GLASS 1997.
BAG OF BONES 1998.
THE GIRL WHO LOVED TOM GORDON 1999.
HEARTS IN ATLANTIS 1999.
DREAMCATCHER

pretty much suck. I could read any of the afore-mentioned books at night, by myself, in a raging thunderstorm, and not be creeped out in the least. I think Mr. King has been kidnapped by aliens and replaced by a pod person.

4

I don’t know, I don’t think all those books were bad.

Bag Of Bones had its moments. I thought Mike Anderson was a great character.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon was entertaining too. Although, that may be because of my irrational fear of being lost in the woods. :slight_smile:

Dreamcatcher reminded me of stories like It and The Body (Stand By Me). I always thought King did some of his best writing using the point of view of children. That’s why I liked the first third of Hearts In Atlantis, but lost interest after that.

All I know is I am still impatiently waiting for my SKL Book Club to send me Black House.

Rose

5

I’ve lost much interest in a lot of his most recent stuff, but Wizard and Glass? Sucking? Them’s fighin’ words.That series is like crack. You know it’s not good for you but you can’t quit going back to find out what happens.

6

I actually prefer most of King’s later stuff.

GERALD’S GAME 1992 - Pretty freaky stuff. I like the internalized dialogue of the main character, and I respect the dude for writing an entire book with only one character. I still look in the empty corner of my room at night and get all creeped out waiting for a necrophiliac to appear, munching on a femur or something.

DOLORES CLAIBORNE 1992 - this was actually my first King book ever, and I love it. I appreciate King’s grasp on the small-town gossip style of the book. And “We didn’t have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of” is a part of my vocabulary now, for good or bad.

INSOMNIA 1994 - definitely my favorite. A big move away from the terror genre, but I think King handled the issues of fate and destiny (as well as spousal abuse) winningly. Not to mention the best ending of any book, ever.

ROSE MADDER 1995 - The only King book I didn’t “get” and actively hate.

DESPERATION 1996 - I like this (and the Regulators) a lot, both together, with the mish-mash of characters, and seperately. But Desperation is the freakiest, scariest, and grossest of the two. I mean, who didn’t get terrified over that psycho cop and the story about the Chinese miners? I sure as hell did.

BAG OF BONES 1998 - I recall really liking this book, though I’m going to have to read it again because I’ve forgotten most of it.

HEARTS IN ATLANTIS 1999 - kind of sappy and emotional, but it was a different side of King and I enjoyed it. Looking forward to the movie with Anthonby Hopkins coming out soon.

DREAMCATCHER - awesome stuff. Just finished it about a month ago, and I loved it. I liked that the characters were so ordinary, and King delved concisely into their flaws, but they were still heroic. And Duddits was a great character.

Overall, I think King has moved away from the terror-only path and has well managed more emotional, introspective characters. Dean Koontz seems to be doing the same with the Christopher Snow series and “From The Corner of His Eye,” with great success as well. I see it as a growth of the writers, and I have no issue with it.

7

I liked Dreamcatcher – especially the parts with Jonesy and Mr. Gray.

Liked Desperation too, and Wizard and Glass, etc. Heck, the only King I really haven’t enjoyed is Insomnia and even then, I think it was because it was just too long.

Bag of Bones was a bit self-indulgent and could have used some editing at the beginning – that writer’s rant started to get old real quick.

I really liked most of Hearts in Atlantis – like Wicked Blue says, he does his best work when the POV is that of a child.

I don’t think anything “happened” to him. But it’s been what, 25-30 years we’ve been reading King? We’re getting harder to please, desensitized to shock and horror, and King isn’t pushing the gore envelope or trying to top himself. He’s just telling his stories like he always did.

8

I like most of the books on that list. I agree his writing has changed, in some ways. I loved early SK stuff that was “sleep with the light on, oh nevermind, I can’t sleep even with the light on” scary. The most recent stuff isn’t like that.

But a lot of it is still pretty good. Some of it is scary in a quiet way – Rose Madder, because the husband is such a monster, and not just in the supernatural sense of “monster.” The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is also unsettling, because while most of us will probably never be attacked by vampires, getting lost in the woods is something that could happen in reality.

One of the reasons why I like his newer writing is that I think it is more evocative of realistic, personal experiences. American experiences, if you will. The things that I am the most impressed by are often the completely non-scary parts. The philosophy of baseball in The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, the summer house in Bag of Bones, even the concept of being on vacation in Desperation. SK has a knack for articulating the fleeting, weird feelings one gets sometimes. When I am on vacation, once in a while I get this strange flash of “I’m in a completely unknown place that seems more or less like any other place, including the place I live, but yet I’m completely cut off from everything in my real life.” When I read SK, I often find myself surprised to read a full-blown description of a really off-kilter, mostly unformed weird thought that passed through my head once.

I guess I would say that the newests offerings from SK should all be labeled YMMV. They’re not particularly horrifying, but they are decent writing, and contain some interesting themes and images to ponder over.

9

I like King’s newer stuff beter than his older books. But both of them have their low pionts.

Older books that I hate
[li]Firestarter[/li][li]The Dead Zone[/li][li]Cujo[/li][li]Different Seasons (Only Apt Pupil and Shawshank Redemption were crap, the rest is ok)[/li][li]Any of the Dark Tower Books[/li][li]The Dark Half[/li]
Recent books I hate
[li]Needful Things[/li][li]Insomnia[/li][li]The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon[/li][li]Bag Of Bones (Most of is is good but it drags on and on in parts)[/li][li]Hearts In Atlantis (Low Men In Yellow Coats was the only good story here)[/li]
I actually liked Despeation, The Regulators, Gerald’s Game, Dolores Claiborne and *Rose Madder

10

Yeah, Astroboy, I was thinking of making a thread devoted to this idea, but I felt a little guilty. SK is an author I love and saying I hate his new books felt a little wrong. But it’s true.

The only one I liked was On Writing. Anyway, he’s written so many good books in the past, that we can’t really fault him. It’s just that I don’t jump out of my seat to buy his books now. I think his best books were the earliest ones…

Such as:

[li]Carrie (The very first book he published, and the very first book I read, doesn’t get much earlier than that! It’s a bit raw compared to his other works, but it has a sort of energy to it, and on a second and third read seems to get better. Plus it spawned a great (IMO) movie.[/li]
[li]Pet Sematary (Just plain disturbing)[/li]
[li]The Shining[/li]
Anyway, there are so many other good books he’s written, and I’m sure you all know them. Bag of Bones was all right, it just didn’t touch me the way his other novels have. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon was second-rate at best, and I hate to say it but I only got through 150 pages of Hearts in Atlantis. And the first bunch of chapters of Dreamcatcher. I liked The Green Mile after I first read it, but it’s a little too heartwarming for me now. As does Hearts in Atlantis look. I’ve tried reading Insomnia a couple of times, but never really succeeding in finishing. Needful Things…great start, but finished off a little badly.

Maybe we’re all really jaded, but nothing can compare to the old stuff. Now that…well, that is very special. :slight_smile:

11

With the exceptions of Rose Madder and Nightmares and Dreamscapes, I found his recent work to be not as engrossing as his older stuff. I mean, I remember reading large portions of Night Shift and especially The Eyes of the Dragon at a time-- I think I read over a third of TEotD in the first sitting. When I read Insomnia and Desperation, I finished them liking them well enough, but I didn’t love them.

I just never thought a writer who wrote stories where horrible crap happens to a character “just because” would start waxing philosophical and contemplate fate and destiny an’ all that. :slight_smile:

12

If there is a worse Stephen King book, scratch that, if there is ANY book worse than THE REGULATORS, I’d love to know what it is.

13

I liked Insomnia and Needful Things. I also thought Bag Of Bones was pretty good. I admit I have kind of slacked off in reading most of his later works. Mostly because I hated The Tommyknockers so much, it soured me on eagerly awaiting his next book. I may check them out from the library or borrow a friend’s copy, but I don’t need to buy them anymore.

14

Yes. The best writers do that, don’t they? And not just horror writers.

I don’t know how to put it – only one of many reasons I’m not a writer – but it’s a sense of being really connected to at least one other person – that someone else thinks like you do.

It’s on a deeper level than, say, being like minded about politics or religion.

15

Anyone else notice that he is writing a lot more about incest/abuse (incest in Gerald’s Game and Delores Claiborne, spousal abuse in Rose Madder, Insomnia and D.C.)? Sometimes it almost seemed to me that he had an agenda. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just wonder what was going on in his personal life that made him so much more aware of abuse issues. Did he become friends with someone who was an abuse survivor, or had abuse occured in his family? Sometimes I got the feeling that he was writing FOR someone. Being an incest survivor myself, there were parts of Gerald’s Game and Delores Claiborne that were very difficult to read. Those were both books that I had to put down and walk away from for a while as opposed to devouring the book in one sitting like I usually do. I thought that both books were very well written. The part in Gerald’s Game where the main character is talking about the Marvin Gaye song and how she couldn’t listen to it because it reminded her of abuse that had happened when it was playing in her childhood was right on the mark for me. There are some songs that I can’t listen to for the very same reasons. The most recent thing I read was Bag of Bones, and I liked it. It does seem like he has gotten away from the straight-up horror of books like Carrie and Salem’s Lot, but I agree with whoever said that it’s due to his growth as a writer. I do remember reading Night Shift when I was a pre-teen and being scared shitless by some of the stories, and really disturbed by others.

I have to say that I “didn’t get” the Gunslinger books. I read the first two, I think, and couldn’t really get into them. I thought he was trying too hard to be artsy-pretentious. Am I the only one?

16

moggy- I read the first two…Didn’t do it for me. But then I’m not a fantasy fan.

Now that you mention it, though, you’re right about the abuse thing. There was also Insomnia, where Helen Deepneau (sp?) is abused by her seemingly mild and harmless husband. Someone else on the boards a few months ago mentioned SK went from being kind of…well, sexist (as seen in The Stand, Christine, and a few others), to raising more feminist issues in his novels (Insomnia, Rose Madder, etc).

Anyway, I don’t think his new writing is necessarily “deeper” than his old stuff. It’s stylistically good, but it just doesn’t turn me on the way it used to. I agree with AuntiePam- it is remarkable when a writer can raise that connection. I still feel all tingly when I think of some of my absolute fave SK books. I still have a lot of admiration for the guy- he can write books that touch people on such a personal level. Sure, he’s pegged as the stereotype of the horror writer, the house hold name, but he can do more than just write books- he can make you care. And he’s done that for about two or three decades, and even after the accident, he’s still doing it. I love the guy. :stuck_out_tongue:

17

The expanded version of The Stand was his best book; especially the early chapters with the government desperately trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes.

(Such a coverup couldn’t get off the ground nowadays, because of the Internet.)

I get the impression that King has Serious Issues with the military though. :slight_smile:

Except for the Dark Tower books, which seemed too - well, weird and bleak - I liked everything he wrote up till Insomnia which was just plain off-the-wall.

Bought Desperation and The Regulators in hardback, then wished I hadn’t. :slight_smile:

18

But there’s that cool effect when you lay the books side by side and you see that the two covers make one picture. :wink:

19

I told someone not too long ago that I thought King was starting to get lazy and cheat in his books. Nowadays, seems to me he throws in a lot of supernatural crap that isn’t part of the problem, but is in fact a tidy little solution.

I still like his characters and their stories, I just wish he’d have stuck to more having the good guy rely on his own
wits/powers/whatever then throwing in a stupid, totally implausible subplot that saves the day.

I liked Insomnia on the whole, but I got real tired of the references to the Gunslinger books. Since I am not into the Gunslinger, I hate that I spent all that time reading a pretty good book only to find out the whole damn purpose of the plot was (SPOILER COMING)

to have the protagonist save the life of a character that would be needed in another book.

20

(I won’t spoil it for the rest of you)

Generally speaking, I’m liking fewer and fewer of his recent books. I loved “Bag of Bones,” “Insomnia,” “The Green Mile,” and “The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon,” but I did not like “Dreamcatcher,” “Desperation,” “Regulators,” and “Rose Madder.”

I read BH because I’m a full-fledged, card-carrying member of the Stephen King fan club and I felt it was my duty. That said, I didn’t take much away from this tome as I had hoped.

I regret that I didn’t read his on-line piece, the name escapes me now. Was it worth the price?