I'm in mood for King. I've read a few of his novels, mostly the shorter ones and I liked them all. He might not be the best writer but he has an awesome voice and the stories are fun. Also his books are the only ones that actually scared me, I haven't read any other horror books that would accomplish that.
Is there any order in which I should read his books? Or which do you recommend as "must reads"? I've heard a lot of his books tie into the dark tower series, so which books should I read before/after the dark tower books?
(Alternatively, suggest horror books by other writers that are actually scary.)
Andrew Foster
lol are you a liberal atheist feminist degenerate SJW sexually active braindead brainwashed brainlet cuck?
If you want my opinion on short, must read books by King, I have to recommend you the double Feature of Joyland (my personal favorite), and the first Dark Tower book, as it is self contained, and a fantastic dark fantasy wester.
Joyland is just a comfy coming of age tale that happens to fall in a bittersweet ghost story. But again, I love it.
Isaiah King
The Long Walk is all you need to read.
Samuel Ortiz
>Dude he tore his own throat out lol isn't that XTREEEEM?
Gabriel Myers
I just re-read Salem's Lot. It holds up quite well. He's really quite masterful in stage-managing and orchestrating his effects, in a slow but not too slow build, and in paying off all the multiple threads that he sets up.
And it's pretty damn spooky to boot.
Only King I've read that is better is Pet Semetary. Which is better because it's more original*, and goes deeper (deep into America the America the country and American lit) and, if you will, higher (like a crazy, out-of-control kite). PS is his most inspired work of long-form horror, without a doubt.
*The vampire of SL is of course borrowed from and inspired by Stoker's Dracula, although K puts his own spin on it. The clown thing of It is a meh horror idea compared to PS, and he didn't know how to end the story.
Charles Reed
You read Different Seasons, OP?
Jack Parker
Seconded on that rec, it's the story that made me want to be a writer. It's not the only thing by King worth reading, though, regardless of what the pseuds say. Read The Gunslinger, The Shining, the Stand, Joyland, and any of his awesome short story collections. King isn't Dostoyevski, but he is virtually unrivaled at capturing the feelings and thoughts of normal people and depicting realistic interactions between characters. And his imagination is scary and fun, like a well-made horror movie.
Nicholas Williams
>Try my first King book >explosions >lots of unessecary description of the setting >boobs >people getting chopped in half >plot goes nowhere >forgettable characters >rape >woman shits herself >cheesy dialogue >woman shits herself AGAIN
So this is the power of stephen king?
Dylan Lopez
I don’t know what book that is but put Pynchon’s name on the cover and we’ve got ourselves a classic.
Dylan Cook
The Long Walk is a must read and is great. Dream catcher is a fun little romp, Gerald’s Game is pretty good, too. It starts off being pretty good but starts to really drag on and gets ridiculous with how Gary Stu Bill Denbrough is. Salem’s Lot is kind of boring for 95% of it and falls victim to the same thing with an exit of grown up King and an expy of a child version of King that are both Gary Stu’s.
Everything’s Eventual was a pretty good collection of stories, and there’s a few from Just After Sunset that are pretty good too, The Gingerbrrad Girl being the one that comes to mind as having stuck out since when I first read it. The short story “Batman and Robin Have and Encounter.” Is pretty good, too.
Liam Lewis
I don’t get how people can say it’s spooky. The beginning is cool, but the. 90% of it is small town everyday shenanigans interspersed with a guy who’s exactly like Stephen along seducing a pretty young blonde while her Mother insists he’s the devil, but much to her chagrin, the dad and everyone else who meets him knows that deep down, he’s actually the coolest guy ever.
Then, halfway through the book, they have a “totally hot” sex scene, because the King stand in is just so attractive and good at sex, how could she possibly resist.
The only parts remotely scary are when they actually try to fuck with the vampire and it blows up in their faces and he sends them that letter that basically says “Fuck with me again and I’ll kill you.”
But then the ending is totally rushed, and doesn’t feel too satisfying because after putting off addressing it for ever it all gets wrapped up in like two pages.
Also, forgot to mention The Dark Half is alright. Also starts good, and seems like it will be cool, but then, much like Salem’s Lot, he spends most of the book dicking around with mundane shit and wraps everything up super quick when he finally gets around to addressing it. There’s some creepy dream scenes that feel like he wrote them just to try to get a movie deal out of it, which he did, so good on him for that.
I also got the feeling they were going to try to go the route of having the tumor twin grow up and be George Stark, but then it turns out it’s (I don’t know how to spoiler anymore so this is your warning) just some random tulpa thing that gets no explanation as to where or why it came about. Thought he was going to go all the way with it, and while it didn’t suck per se, I did get a little let down when I found out that’s what he was.
Liam Nelson
Was it Cell? I read that when I was 10 and it seems like what I remember. That’s and I remember him looking for his kid, who coincidentally was also 10 in the story, and refers to his Dad as “Daddy.” Which at the time made me think he was a little bitch.
Anthony Stewart
I say this in most every King thread but The Regulators is worth a read. At least it was when I was 12.
Ian Ramirez
I'm currently reading it. At times it's great. However I'm just 1/3 in and I've found myself rereading a few pages 3 times already where I've totally zoned out.
Aiden Ross
I'd say read Dead Zone and Misery.
Brody Taylor
Read his short story collections. Start with Nightmares & Dreamscapes and Different Seasons (novellas that you will recognize from movies). Then read Everything's Eventual and his older collections like Night Shift and Skeleton Crew,
Gavin Howard
>I don’t get how people can say it’s spooky. Because it *is* spooky. It successfully conjures a spooky mood. At least it did for me, and I'd read it before.
>90% of it is small town everyday shenanigans The last time I read the book, about 10 years ago, that was my reaction, more or less. The set-up, the first 150 odd pages, seemed like semi-boring filler.
That was not my reaction to this reading. Not every scene worked, but most did, and the whole thing flowed very well, I thought. As I said before, it struck me as masterfully orchestrated and stage-managed, including the ending. Maybe in part because I had in my mind a recent reading of another long vampire novel that was middling good but much less successfully 'stage-managed' ('Enter, Night').
>Then, halfway through the book, they have a “totally hot” sex scene, because the King stand in is just so attractive and good at sex, how could she possibly resist.
Not really. There are two short sex scenes. Both are well integrated into the plot, or so it seemed to me.
Other things I liked or was intrigued by. A near-throwaway beat in the story that was a prototype for the ending of Pet Semetary. And the way King did a variation on the boy, Mark, in Desperation, in particular the respective escapes each character manages (from ropes in SL, a jail cell in Desperation).
