Those are the ones I was picking among, although I’d add It to the pile.
I arbitrarily picked 11/22/63 because it didn’t have as many annoying literary tics like “can you believe that happy crappy?” or “dirty bird” or “baby can you dig your man?” in it.
I don’t know why The Stand gets so much love. I think it is an average effort among King’s books. I liked Needful Things and Pet Sematary as much as The Stand. The true greats IMO are The Shining, IT, Salem’s Lot and Dark Tower 2 and 4.
Jimla!
Seeing another random made-up word repeated over and over just made me so smucking irritated.
Tak!
I’ve actually only read it the once. I plan to give it another chance one of these days.
If it helps, King has said he doesn’t know what he was thinking there either … he wrote the last 100 pages or so of IT, along with the entire book The Tommyknockers, during the worst of his struggles with drugs and alcohol. He said he doesn’t remember much about the creative process during either of those periods.
I can’t vote in this poll, because King is one of my favorite writers. It’s like asking someone to choose between ten of the favorite foods – it just depends on what I’m in the mood for at the time.
Having said that, I think The Shining is a masterpiece, along with the 1958 sections of IT and almost all of The Stand. Most of the entire Dark Tower series is exceptionally good; I hated all the stuff related to Susannah / Mia and her “chap,” which ruins most of Song of Susannah for me.
King’s strength, as I think somebody else has already mentioned, is his ability to write strong, believable characters. How those characters react to whatever situation he creates is what drives his work. He also has a flair for injecting humor where you don’t always expect it. For those reasons, I’ve enjoyed at least sections of everything he’s done, if not the entire work itself.
Hey, shitweasels were awesome!
“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” I’ll put that up there w/ the greatest opening lines for a novel of all time, right next to “It was the best of times…”
It really is one of his absolute worst novels. Maybe THE worst. That doesn’t mean it’s literally unreadable. Only that almost everything he’s written in a multi decade career is better (I never read FaB8; it sounded like a rehash of the mediocre “Christine”). The worst of King is better than a lot of what’s out there for “popular fiction.”.
I also voted for It. The ending was less than what it could be, but it was the only book I ever read that made me scared while I was reading it.
That, and The Stand are my favorite SK novels. The Shawshank Redemption was my favorite story.
I’ve read over 90% of Mr. King’s novels. The Stand is the only one I have read twice.
I think the Stand is notable for its sweeping scope, depicting the breakdown of the entire country. The character depictions in the early going are well-drawn, but in my view, the cast gets too large, and King falls into the Harry Turtledove style of assigning one device to each character and repeating it each time they appear. And Tom Cullen, to me, is Jar Jar Binks.
More broadly, I think the Stand fails on plot; the good guys don’t know what they’re doing and ultimately don’t accomplish anything, and the bad guy has no motivation and no real plan.
“It” may be tainted in my memory by the horrible acting in the mini-series, but I remember it just dragging on really long. And again, the bad guy didn’t have enough form or motivation for my taste; it was ultimately this generically evil thing that just sat there under the town.
I concur on the Shining and 'Salem’s Lot; those are probably my favorites.
I think IT stands (heh heh) alone at the top. 'Salem’s Lot, The Talisman, The Stand and Bag of Bones follow, IMO. I like most of his work even the ones where I start begging for the end.
Bag of Bones had the only written scene to ever give me nightmares. The wife under the bed {shudder}
My daughter is afraid of clowns, in a couple more years she’ll be able to read IT, then she’ll REALLY know fear. 
I’ve laughed out loud at things he’s written in his books more than once.
Regarding the argument that the bad guy in The Stand has no motivation and no plan, that’s kind of the point - he’s an agent of chaos, and what he wants is for things to fall apart and people to not be happy and for society to not get started up again.
Am I simply not seeing Hearts in Atlantis? The only King book I ever purchased to read again.
The question is ‘his best novel’; Hearts in Atlantis is a collection of novellas. They’re all connected, true (and they tie in to The Dark Tower series) … but it’s not a novel in the strict sense.
I voted for It. To me, that one is the essence of what’s good about King: children, the '50s, normal things turned into nightmare fuel…I’ve read it many times (and watched the TV miniseries, which I have on video and which I quite like except for the awful CGI at the end) many more.
I’ve read pretty much everything King has written, but I’ve reread very few of them (It and Carrie being the two most-reread).
Best single book, The Drawing of the Three. But since it doesn’t stand alone, I don’t feel like I can choose it.
I love The Stand but I’d have to give it to The Shining for sheer scariness in a tightly written package. Misery is up there too.
Do yourself a favor and read The Shining first. Doctor Sleep is a sequel and The Shining rocks.
For the best I picked IT. IT has some of the best writing about kids I have ever read. He nailed it. The ending is a bit lame, but some of the scenes in the book are so amazing I can overlook the ending.
Second has to be The Drawing of Three. Or the Talisman. Hard to pick.
The Tommyknockers (which I haven’t read in years) is a love/hate book. King’s descriptions of alcoholism through Gard are perfect, says the recovering alkie. When King describes Gard’s decent and the dumbass things he did while drinking, well, I lived that and King nailed it. The downside is the anti-technology theme that he beats you over the head with.
The Stand is a classic but it is like Mac and Cheese. It isn’t high class, but it is pure comfort.
His newer stuff seems to be coming back, almost as good as his older stuff. Duma Key was excellent, Revival was pretty good. Mr Mercedes was good as well. 11/22/63 was awesome.
Slee
He’s also one of my favorite writers. His shorts are where I really feel it. Last night I proselytized to two people about ‘‘1408’’, the full text of which is available online right here. I reread it and was like damn, you couldn’t get any tropier than a skeptic sleeping in a haunted hotel. But King can make a trope into a masterpiece.
Agreed. I actually dislike horror, and so avoided King for a long time (also assuming if he was that prolific, he couldn’t be that good.) I think he’s one of the best writers of our time. I think in our historical texts he will be compared to masters like Poe.
The Stand, without a doubt, my favorite novel, which I re-read about once a year.
I also really enjoy 11/22/63, I love time travel books.
The Tommyknockers, anyone?