I also liked Tommyknockers- I liked the female character. The trip to the vet when all the animals went nuts and the boy who made his brother disappear stand out to me.
I did like On Writing but I don’t think it belonged on that list, especially not so high on it. Apples to Oranges. And although I’m not an Under The Dome hater, it should have been in the bottom 20.
But the list did get #1 right and I thought the ending was just fine.
I’m surprised they even included his non-fiction. It should be his novels we are evaluating.
Without arguing that its among his worst, there’s no way “Rose Madder” is a worse book than “Dreamcatcher.” The latter is disgusting, verbose, rambling, and falls back on that ol’ SK chestnut, the retaaaahded kid saves the day. I thought the part where Rose enters the labyrinth to outwit the Minotaur was actually kind of gripping (even if I couldn’t figure out why it was happening), and I can’t say that about any part of Dreamcatchers.
Black House is actually pretty good, but it has two things working against it:
(1) It takes a long time to get going. You have to read through pages and pages of scene-setting before the plot starts moving.
(2) It was billed as a sequel to The Talisman, but it doesn’t have a whole lot in common with that book.
Roadwork is listed as #20.
Out the the books I’ve read (most of them up to Needful Things and a few of his later ones), I didn’t notice anything that seemed obviously overrated to me with the possible exception of The Dark Half (which is not nearly as good as Thinner or The Long Walk or The Running Man, to name a few). Like Apocalypso, I thought The Tommyknockers was entertaining enough; I liked it better than Needful Things, for instance.
Also, I don’t remember where Different Seasons ranked, but it contains the novella The Body, which is one of King’s finest works.
Different Seasons also has Rita Hayworth And Shawshank Redemption.
As for Black House, I enjoyed it from the beginning. The bird’s eye view/fly through keyholes description of the landscabe was awesome, in my opinion. (I state for the record that Peter Straub co-wrote that one, and it’s not always obvious who wrote which parts. At other times, yeah, it’s obvious.)
Song of Susannah should be about 900th on that list.
#5.
The short story and novella collections are, in general, ranked too low, IMO - Different Seasons and Full Dark No Stars are the only ones I would have a problem moving upward significantly, and FDNS that’s mostly because I haven’t read it. Few of his [del]bloated[/del]full-length novels can match the quality of his short fiction.
I was really shocked Rage was ranked so low. I think it’s the best of the Bachman books except maybe for Thinner and thought Roadwork was horrible which was ranked #20.
Admittedly, I haven’t read them since junior high.
It was in the top ten so it was pretty clearly a contender.
I was really shocked that Firestarter wasn’t ranked much higher.
Of his books from that time period, it’s one of the few that had a really, really good ending.
I love his full-length novels (I’m a fast reader and I burn through short ones too quickly), but he truly does shine in his short stories. “Longer than you think, Dad! Longer than you think!”
I haven’t read much of King, sadly, but I have read The Long Walk, and if all of those books that ranked better than The Long Walk really are better, then that’s pretty amazing, since to me, that story is one of the finest ever told. I loved it to death.
My Top 5 would have to be:
[ol]
[li]’Salem’s Lot[/li][li]The Shining[/li][li]The Stand[/li][li]The Bachman Books[/li][li]The Dark Half[/li][/ol]
The remainder are in a broad range from mediocre to terrible.
I greatly enjoyed Tommyknockers.
I would tend to agree. I love SK’s work, I really do, but he really shines when he does a short story
I wish they would have ranked The Stand and The Stand: Uncut separately. Because the former should be #1, and the latter, at most, #4 or so. The stuff he put back in was cut for good reason.
Garrity, is that you?? 
Not reading the rest of the thread right now, because:
Lisey’s Story isn’t below Rose Madder, Dolores Claiborne, The Gunslinger, . . . The Talisman? Someone has their priorities seriously out of whack here.
OK, I have one question: Did the person read the same novel I did, or is there some other Stephen King who wrote some other Insomnia? I read this book in high school, so it’s far from fresh in my mind, but here’s what I do remember:
It’s far from gargantuan. I read it over the course of a few weeks at most, and more probably a few days. It is gargantuan, and this is no It.
It isn’t that closely tied to the Dark Tower mythos. I enjoyed it and followed the plot and everything, and I’ve never read a single Dark Tower book.
The abortion stuff isn’t that heavy-handed. OK, maybe my memory for this is fading a bit, but I was fairly political in high school and I went at one of the times when abortion issues were at a peak. I’m pretty sure I would have noticed it if it were laid on as thick as this review makes it seem.
So, am I off the rails or is the reviewer? For reference: Insomnia is about old people fighting little supernatural people with scissors who cut off a thread on your head to make you die, and of course on the special protagonists can see them.