Someone hold Stephen King down while I KICK HIM IN THE ASS!!!

Cafe Society
41

Can’t answer for Pepperlandgirl on the second part, but I can tackle the first.

Main characters: Roberta (Bobby), writer of oat operas and owner of ageing beagle Peter who lives in a backwoods Maine town and Jim (Gard), alcoholic poet and potential nutcase with a nuclear power fixation, friend of Bobby.

Basic plot, sans spoilers: Bobby, while walking in the woods, trips over the tiniest fraction of the rim of a buried flying saucer. Without knowing what it is - just that she’s stumbled over something huge - she starts to dig it up. Weird shit ensues.

It’s a thinly-disguised moral about humanity starting up things they don’t thoroughly understand yet, like the nukes that Gard’s so antagonistic about, and that’s it’s weakness; I enjoy the characterisation, the plot’s not too bad, but I don’t enjoy being belted around the head by a moral.

It’s not exactly my favourite King book, and never will be, but it’s not King’s worst, either (Gerald’s Game wins that one, IMHO. I finished GG with a kind of “That’s all? What a letdown” feeling).

My favourites:

Novels - The Stand, Christine, The Shining, The Talisman, the DT books, It, Dead Zone.

Novellas/short stories - 1408, The Long Walk, Ballad of the Flexible Bullet (I want a fornit), All That You Love Will Be Carried Away, Paranoid: A Chant, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.

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Just wanted to drop in a suggestion for starters, ianzin. The truth is, it depends on what you want out of a book. So, if you want:
[ul]Straight up horror–Pet Semetary or The Shining
Teen Social Commentary touched with Supernatural–Carrie or Christine
Nostalgic reflections on the power of childhood–IT (my fave), The Regulators (underrated IMO)
People stories with little or no “supernatural” horror–Different Seasons, Cujo
Semi-Traditional “Monster” Stories–Salem’s Lot, IT
“Spirtual” Magic–The Green Mile, Bag of Bones
[/ul]
I’ll second the reccomendation to avoid Tommyknockers. That’s the one I started with waaaay back in sixth grade, and it took a LOT out of me. It meanders, the characters are questionable, the moral is, as tavella pointed out, ham-fisted, and the pace is excruciating. Also, as much as it pains me to say it, I’d avoid the Dark Tower your first time around too. The Gunslinger is a quite difficult book to get into, and it is not indicative at all of King’s usual style and flavor. Now, I love DT, and after reading the later books I really enjoy going back to Gunslinger, but that first time through it really didn’t hook me at all.
And while we’re plugging short stories, one of my absolute favorites has always been The Jaunt. Enjoy!

bella

43

My favorite has always been “Salem’s Lot.” I was babysitting on the night I first read it, and I had to turn on most of the lights in the house. It was that scary. I concur with belladonna to avoid “Tommyknockers.” I don’t think it was good at all; in fact, I think it was published only because S.K. wrote it. His best collection of short stories, IMO, is “Night Shift.”

44

Now, I liked Gerald’s Game. I thought the whole premise was delightfully creepy, and her quest to get the glass of water always makes me thirsty.

I thought Rose Madder was a little muddled…and I could never figure out why she got so full of anger at the end.

Everything’s Eventual has some good short stories in it…“Road Virus” is a typical campfire ghost story, and I liked the title story. I think movies based on his non-monster stories (Misery, Shawshank, Stand By Me, Green Mile) work out the best. Didn’t I read somewhere that King hated The Shining with Jack Nicholson?

45

ivylass–what I had heard regarding King and Nicholson’s performance was that SK was disappointed that the character had been reduced to nothing more than a crazy drunk. In the book you have all this delightful tension–Jack struggling to support his familiy, to prove his worth to himself, to make up for his past failures but all the while being coaxed into madness by this outside force that is using his weaknesses against him. It was about the temptation, and the consequences of your choices.
In the movie it’s like he’s a raving loony right from the start… How can you sympathize with someone’s plight when you want them to get clobbered by a mack truck by the second scene?

46

For anyone who likes SK’s books, I highly, highly, highly, and highly recommend The Stephen King Universe, by Stan Wiater, Christopher Golden, Hank Wagner, Stanley Wiater.

[http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1580631606/qid=1025275189/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/103-3187622-6725441]

In it, the authors divide all of King’s works - short stories, novellas, novels, screenplays, etc. - into basic universes: The Dark Tower Universe; Derry, Maine; Castle Rock, Maine; and the rest.

They don’t just describe the stories, though, they show parallels and links between them. For example, it’s posited in this book (and perhaps elsewhere) that the reason the Dark Tower is falling apart is because Jack removed the Talisman from its perch in the old hotel in The Talisman.

At any rate, the book is extremely entertaining for anyone who’s read Stephen King, especially those who love the DT series.

[BTW - slight hijack. Anyone read Six Stories? It was issued in limited release a few years back.]

47

There was a website a while back that had an index of Stephen King’s continuity errors in the books…it was quite funny. I think the site was Stephen King’s Bloops and Blunders.

48

Linkey Link for ivy.
Warning–these pages contain horribly intrusive pop-ups that can be hard to close. Worth a look anyway, if you’re a fan.

49

I’m surprised noone’s mentioned this, but as I recall The Dream Catcher was written while King was recuperating from being run down in the road (a similar accident befalls one of the protaganist in the dream catcher). To me it reflected a lot on his feeling about the accident and the powerlessness of not being totally in charge of ones destiny so to speak. My Mom read it while she was hospitalized and enjoyed it.

On Tommyknockers, I enjoyed that one. It was one of the first novels where I think he concetrated more on the warts and imperfectness of the characters; very cynical and refreshing.

I love the Dark Tower series, it doesn’t bother me that he uses other books to advance certain elements of the Dark tower series. He does much the same with the Castle Rock stories.

BTW, I think the first person narratives in the Black House smacks of Straubs influence, very unlike King writing.

My favs…The Stand, Pet Semetary, The Talisman and The Shining (I hit the topiary scene at 10pm and was up the rest of the night).

Favorite Short…Road Work.

50

After reading this and the PKD thread, I went out and picked up The Stand and Ubik.

This will be my first taste of King and second PKD book (having already read Do Androids Dream…).

You people better be right about these books, or I’m going to come back and bust some heads! :smack: :mad: :smack:

51

I have not read it for years and years—it was the only SK book I haven’t read at least twice. Usually King can keep my attention no matter how long his novels are…but The Tommyknockers really put me to sleep. It was slow-paced, and I didn’t really like the characters at all. The ending was rather confusing to me—but probably because by that point I just didn’t care.
It did have some interesting elements to it, and I’ve no doubt that if he had shaved a few hundred pages the book would have been improved. It could be so bad because he was wasted out of his head the vast majority of the time when he wrote.
Wait until you’ve read a few of his other books before tackling that one.

As far as short stories go, I’ve always liked The Mist and The Langoliers.

I’d also recommend The Dead Zone–not scary, but very dark and rather depressing. Still a good read.

52

Tommyknocker plot

Roberta (Bobby) is in the woods with her dog, and trips over a piece of metal. After some digging she discovers its a space ship. She joined by her longtime friend(and sometimes lover) and acoholic/paranoid Jim in digging up her find, Unbeknowst at first, the ship begins to make seemingly benign changes to the town…

53

Glad to see I’m not the only person to dislike Gerald’s Game. From age 13 - 25 I read every Stephen King book that came out, including the Stephen King Companion and all of the Bachman books. I wanted to be a horror writer.

Then, I read 1/2 of Gerald’s Game and have not read a Stephen King book since. I’ve lately been thinking about picking him back up. What should I read that’s been published since then?

My favorites are IT and Different Seasons. I also loved Eye of the Dragon and Talisman, but haven’t read any of the Dark Tower series since Gunslinger.

ianzin, I would suggest picking up Night Shift, a collection of short stories. You’ll get a taste of what King’s about in short bursts. And the “forest killers” really move quickly - I’ve read IT at least three times, and The Stand really is a masterpiece.

54

I personally liked “Isomnia.” Took a long time for the plot to develop, but man was it a good story.

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Morgainelf, if you liked the Talisman, you should really give the Dark Tower series a chance. Gunslinger is a bit slow, but things really get swinging in book two (The Drawing of the Three).
Also–check out The Green Mile and Four Past Midnight (you might’ve already hit that one, I’m a bit fuzzy on the order they were released). FPM has two killer stories–The Langoliers, and The Library Policemen, as well as The Sun Dog which has a great pace and a nasty little attitude.
I know that Hearts in Atlantis has gotten a lot of flack from people who thought it was heavy-handed, but I really enjoyed it, and I’d reccomend it, especially if you liked The Body. One of the stories in it “Blind Willie” is a lovely example of King working a powerful moral into a story without beating you over the head with it.

56

Was I the only one who really liked Dolores Claibourne?

57

No, I really liked Dolores Claiborne. I thought it was great.

58

I have a copy sitting on my shelf. Signed #178 :slight_smile:

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Are you sure that the person who recommended it wasn’t being sarcastic? I’d only recommend that to a non-fan if I wanted them to stay that way. My father suspects that SK let his wife write the first two hundred or so pages, and while I have never read her work, the book doesn’t read like one of his, that’s for sure. I’ve read all but five of his novels (Carrie; Christine; Dead Zone; Dream Catcher; and Black House- but this one arrived in the mail yesterday) and that’d be the very last one I’d recommend.

60

Didn’t King say he was drunk out of his skull during the time he was writing Tommyknockers?