Rage is a complete train wreck. King wants us to sympathize with a school shooter, and he offers hints that the kid’s home life isn’t ideal, but he was always just a psycho to me. And the way the class turned on the one kid who saw through his bullshit (like 80% of the book was the shooter telling the other kids, “Adults suck, amirite?”) was disgusting.
King is great at disturbing, but all the stuff that happened in Rage could never happen.
My take on Insomnia was pretty much the same as Needful Things: It took him waaaaay too long to build up. IMO you could have cut at least the first half of both books out pretty much entirely and they’d have been better.
Then again, I kind of started to dislike Kings “Demented Norman Rockwell” scenes at some point around 15 years ago. It feels played out and stale to me now. I also have a hard time with his overuse of repeating single phrases or words (redrum).
What I liked was the framing device: the weird club where the men gather to tell stories. I don’t know how that could translate to film, however.
^^^^^ This.
Now you’ve got me thinking about it, and I think we could come up with a very interesting episodic tv series - each hour-long episode is one of Stephen King’s short stories, so “The Breathing Method” becomes one episode, which I think would work with that story and so many of his fascinating short stories. Hey, tv land - get on this, would you? 
For me, *The Stand *still ranks high, because despite the Deus ex machina ending, everything prior to it is amazing. And for me, it’s one of those “meh” endings that manages not to poison the rest of the work. He told an incredibly intriguing story with great characters, and couldn’t quite come up with a finish that came up to that standard. I’m OK with it. (Though as I think about it, I don’t think I’ve read it since I became an atheist. I might have more of a problem with the whole God thing next time around.)
On the other hand, I have no idea how I would rank It. How do you assess a novel that is more than 90% brilliant terror and poignancy, but that wraps up with an ending so stupidly offensive and offensively stupid that you would like to pretend the author never thought of the idea, never mind writing it down in words and publishing it?
See I slightly prefer It to The Stand and it has nothing ( much ) to do with the endings. Both endings are pretty poor, but I think It at its height is King at his very best. The history of Derry passages may be the most evocative of writing he has done. Also The Stand starts to totter as a story a bit earlier for me, basically with the congealing of the community in Colorado. It may have a little deeper bottom, but it is a quicker dive :D.
All that said I’d say The Shining is his most complete novel, so I’d probably give it top billing. Though a compendium of his best short fiction would beat that as well.
Sweet! I think I knew about that, but I don’t think I caught any episodes. That said, I won’t be happy until ALL of his short stores are filmed.
To me the ranking is pretty hit and miss…
The Long Walk is way too low,
The Shining is what introduced me to King, so it’s still one of my favourites
I enjoyed Firestarter more than the ranking would indicate, and as for Chistine - I found it every bit as good as The Shining.
Full Dark, No Stars is way scary as well.
I’ve only read a few Stephen King books and mostly can’t remember them.
However…at the end of Pet Semetary I could taste earth in my mouth. What an awful book and what a writer!
Apart from that his short stories are magnificent.
One thing I wanted to mention about The Dark Half: I’ve never really believed it was a Stephen King book for some reason. I keep expecting him to confess it was some sort of hoax along the lines of The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer.
The original. King has a tendency to ramble and throw in stuff that doesn’t belong, and drags down the story. As he became more and more successful, editors became more and more reluctant to cut out sections, because they understandably thought the public would demand more rather than less.
FWIW I no longer consider myself a King fan, and have not read much if any of his work since I was unable to get into The Dark Tower stuff and unable to finish From a Buick 8. For my money, his best work was The Dead Zone, with The Stand, The Shining, Misery, Carrie, and 'Salem’s Lot nearly on the same level. Eyes of the Dragon was a good fairy tale. Some of this short work is good. Everything else was dreck.
Regards,
Shodan
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer was never a “hoax,” it was a spinoff novel of Rose Red, a miniseries that was most definitely written by King. He can’t really be blamed that people thought he wrote if he never actually said he wrote it, right?
I think my biggest surprise was 11/22/63 being ranked #22.
Personally, I liked Duma Key, but the ending was a typical “King psychotic spiral”
Would have moved “From a Buick 8” up, and “Under the Dome” way down.
That broad idea is the framing device of approximately 75% of anthology films.
Do the framing story. Once the storytelling starts segue to the story shown (with voiceovers or not)…one can drop out of the story for elements of the framing story when desirable (don’t remember ever seeing an anthology do that, but it worked for The Princess Bride)…once the story is finished segue back to the framing narrative for the reactions.
As to how to make it a workable movie…combine it with The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands (set at the same club), and another short story or two which lend themselves to adapting into the framework. (I think Strawberry Spring would serve well as a third because the twist could add a suitable discomfort to the framing narrative.)
I would put Pet Semetary and Misery in a top-5 list - I think PS is possibly his finest horror work, with the feeling of dread and hopelessness so palpable you could almost see it.
Misery was his best “this could really happen” book (i.e., one w/o any supernatural stuff in it), and I found the ending of Misery, with Paul, nearly broken from the experience but finally finding his voice again, to be the best closing passage(s) of any of his novels.
Something to keep in mind: being on the bottom of this list does not necessarily mean bad. I’m sure a lot of writers would kill to write any book that’s as good as King’s worst.
Agreed, I was wondering why PS wasn’t mentioned for most of the thread. It absolutely deserves top-tier placement with Shining, The Stand, Misery…
I can accept most of the list, even those I don’t agree with, as just different tastes for different folks. The one I would argue over, though, is Cujo. It doesn’t deserve such high placement, and if written in his modern era, would be as lambasted as horribly as Dreamcatcher.