Is anything by Stephen King worth reading or is he just a meme?

nothing is worth reading regardless of author

The Stand is the only thing worth reading.

sorry, The Drawing of The Three is worth reading too. that's it

i read the stand. stay away it's not that good.

Survivor type
The jaunt
I am the doorway

All shorts, all great

The guy is a better idea man than writer.

Watch the movies.

Kubrick was the better artist of the two. The tv miniseries that is suppose to match his vision of the book is utter garbage.

>The Stand
It could've been his best novel were it not for the that stupid as fuck ending.

Misery
Different Seasons
The Green Mile
Dolores Claiborne
It

The whole "King is a hack" meme doesn't run as deep as most would lead you to believe. He's written some great stuff.

I liked Salem's Lot, The Shining and The Stand.

I have reread his “on writing” memoir three times, love it

I’m not a huge horror fan but I thought misery was amazing and love his novellas.

...

The Gunslinger is the only good thing he's written

He is a terrible writer. Anyone saying that even that he has "one good work" is objectively wrong.

The drop in quality from The Gunslinger to Drawing of the Three is so huge it's absolutely baffling.

>Different Seasons
This and Hearts in Atlantis are still my favorites from King.

Apt Pupil

I really enjoyed It. It's definitely too long and pretty messy but it's a great, thoroughly enjoyable story about what gets lost between childhood and adulthood.

The first half was good.

I really did not like the shining. For a while it's pretty ambiguous whether he's going crazy or if he's possesed by the hotel but then he turns into a creature and bashes his face in. The kid was the best character. The mother was annoying.

Wrong

Lots of good stuff in his catalog.
IT. Very good, lost its touch a little towards the end.
The Shining. Just classic.
The Stand. Another classic.
Salems Lot. Not amazing, but a solid read.
11.22.63. People gave it shit but I really really enjoyed it.
Currently on Book 4 of The Dark Tower series. Its a bit strange but I dont dislike it.
Short stories are his best work by far I believe.
N.
The Mist.
The Body.
All classics.

Salem’s lot is one of my favorite small town stories ever, but also I’ve lived in Bangor maine my entire life so maybe I’m biased. My grandmother used to stick old King paperbacks under her unbalanced furniture

get a load of this fagot

I think he gets a lot of shit for being mainstream but he's pretty good as far as "fun" genre fiction goes. Some of his short stories are legit excellent literature too. Also Pet Cemetery is fugging spoogy

I enjoyed “On Writing,” but mostly the memoir portion.

Misery and The Jaunt

Read Abt Pupil.

Salem's Lot is unironically my favorite book of all time. It's like genre lit comfort food for me.
Pet Sematary is probably his best, but I can't bring myself to like it more than Salem's Lot. Pet Sematary is much more psychological than I ever expected to be, I thought it was just gonna be zombie baby slasher book but it's much smarter than it lets on.
The only book of his I've read that's disappointed me was The Shining and maybe Firestarter, though I haven't read anything he's written past IT.

>Cujo
That book would be incredible if it was condensed into a short story. All the parts that don't directly involve the dog feel extremely superfluous.

>superfluous
yeah, that's king alright
You'd think he gets paid by the word

if I'm getting this right, you're saying that the subtleties of drama are horrific when picked up by a keen eye and sensitive emotion? and that dummies don't possess this quality?

or is it that only dummies would enjoy being scared tactilically? I'm aware that's not a word.

"In his analysis of post–World War II horror fiction, The Modern Weird Tale (2001), critic S. T. Joshi devotes a chapter to King's work. Joshi argues that King's best-known works (his supernatural novels), are his worst, describing them as mostly bloated, illogical, maudlin and prone to deus ex machina endings. Despite these criticisms, Joshi argues that since Gerald's Game (1993), King has been tempering the worst of his writing faults, producing books that are leaner, more believable and generally better written. Joshi suggests that King's strengths as a writer include the accessible "everyman" quality of his prose, and his unfailingly insightful observations about the pains and joys of adolescence. Joshi cites two early non-supernatural novels—Rage (1977) and The Running Man (1982)—as King's best, suggesting both are riveting and well-constructed suspense thrillers, with believable characters."

i read gerald's game, it sucked so fucking bad, i sure hope he changed his style up, on the other hand the bdsm aspects of it showed he has a good sense for what the readers of pulpy genre fic want

Coked out King is best King

dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1178151/Stephen-Kings-Real-Horror-Story-How-novelists-addiction-drink-drugs-nearly-killed-him.html

I did the majority of my King reading as a teenager. The Stand, IT, and The Talisman stand out. Ignore anything after the mid-90s. Desperation / The Regulators was okay, if very bloated, and at least it had some callbacks to The Talisman iirc.

t. mid-30s user

king fucking blows
you want good horror, read m. r. james

you're an idiot

The Talisman was the first book I read on my own as a teenager outside of requirements for school. For an entire summer between my Junior and Senior years of High School, it was my Catcher in the Rye. Every so often, I'll go back to it. It's more cringe-inducing every time I re-read it, but it still has a soft spot in my heart.

Hes an absolute cultural and literary icon and seems a cool dude to hang out with for a day.

The Shining book is fucking awful especially if you've seen the film which shows you how vastly outclassed Stephen King is by actual artists. Christ the book ending is abysmal and the whole thing is so sterile.

>also I’ve lived in Bangor maine my entire life so maybe I’m biased.
Does Maine celebrate King in any particular way? Like sometimes a village or town will have artwork or statues dotted around referencing their heroes.

gb2reddit

What's with all the reddit plebs in this thread? King is trash except maybe by the lowest normie standards. He writes dumb pulp fiction that's bloated, extremely pseud, and isn't even well constructed from a plot standpoint or scary. He's a level below people like George RR Martin who isn't even very good in the first place.

your snobbish trolling bores me.

It's sad, but he was kinda better.

Hearts is fucking amazing and more people need to read it.

>I am the doorway

Reading now. His writing seems better

Sorry I struck a vein, redditor. Not being "snobbish" is how brainlets justify their love of Stephen King so I'm not surprised to see you use the word here.

The 1979 film version of Salem's lot was one of the few genuinely creepy horror films I've ever seen.

I feel like Salem's Lot, IT and The Talisman are ones with semi-decent endings.

>IT
>decent ending
Not really, honestly his son (Joe Hill) is having a better track record thus far of at the very least writing actual conclusions to his stories.

dude hes not even a meme

You could say this about every King book ever.

>You could say this about every King book ever.
Definitely not Dreamcatcher

Update: it was good

Stephen King. Pop culture claptrap. Proof that, just because he wrote a book, doesn't mean it's literature.

The Dark Tower is worth the climb.

It's to sci-fi what Tolkien or George R.R. Martin is to fantasy.

It's so bizarre and haunting. It's mesmerisingly gothic and morbid. It's flat-out nonsensical. It's inaccessible and has two fucking compendiums to accompany it.
But if you can get through a lot of the strangeness, you'll find an absolutely fantastic series full of memorable characters that live and breathe through the books.

I liked it. Probably more than King himself liked it, finishing the series with a deep regret and presented the ending with a flourish of anger.

"There, there you have it. There's the damn finale. Leave me alone, stop coming to my house and leave me be. I'm not critically acclaimed, I don't have awards and this is what I have."

But it's fine. It's seriously fine. The ending worked, and allows you a degree of interpretation.

Personally, I like to think it's a tragedy.
Roland's never going to leave the cycle.

i loved some of the dark tower but a lot is so retarded. the gunslinger, the wastelands, wizard and glass were all great though. oh, and wind through the keyhole. wind through the keyhole was cool.

The Shinig is terrible. Most of his books are, though.

The Shining was fuckin cool bro.
The Shinig however, thats not even a fuckin word dude

Nah he's going to leave the cycle, the end was pretty optimistic about that. I enjoyed the end, and the series as a whole, but there were huge chunks of it that I basically slogged through because I wanted to see how everything turned out, not because it was enjoyable.

The Dark Tower series spun out of King's hands and he had a hard time getting it back. This is a bit of a common theme with King's longer works (e.g.: It and The Stand off the top of my head). It is why plotting his stories just a little, or at least having a ruthless editor, would benefit him greatly. His short stories and novellas are great though.

>just because he wrote a book, doesn't mean it's literature
Has he ever referred to his books as literature? He's a modern pulp writer.

I know he hangs out here sometimes.

Hey Stephen, I read Desperation recently while I was on a trip. It got me thinking about God a lot. I know God or the idea of him appears in a lot of your books but this is the first one that really made me think hard. Does Desperation contain your personal philosophy about God, or whatever is closest to it? I am in a not very good place right now and it felt like the words in that book absolutely came from someone who has been in a similar one. Sometimes when you talk to pastors or even just people, specifically involving faith and struggle, it seems like they have never actually experienced suffering when they act like they sympathize with you, and it seems like you have suffered.

...

8

I saw how IT was over 1,000 pages long

How? Could someone explain this please. Does he just ramble on or is there a meaning to this madness

I thought Desperation was kind of fun when I read it.

the clown is gay

it's just fucking horrible. unreal how long his pulp trash is.

Not him
But Maine loves Stephen King. He's a local treasure. Probably the most famous person from Maine past and present.

i think joshi is kind of a faggot but he's pretty spot on with that.

The Bachman Books
Night Shift
Different Seasons
The original version of the first Dark Tower book
The Stand
Eyes of the Dragon
Joyland
Lisey's Story
The Colorado Kid
Danse Macabre
The Plant

I liked The Stand and several of his short stories
I'd stay away from a lot of the novels though, he can get long-winded and tangential and he sometimes puts in weird sex stuff
people will mention "IT" here but there's a lot more to it than that, like "The Kid" in the unabridged version of The Stand plus a sort of brief dream sequence, or basically the only supernatural part of his incredibly dull short story Dedication, or a few other things

no, different emotions are at work
drama can make you feel tense, but it's not the same kind or degree of tension you'd feel with horror, and drama is definitely not supposed to make you feel scared

>his unfailingly insightful observations about the pains and joys of adolescence
King does seem to do a good job writing about children and the struggles they go through. Some writers come off as codgers when ever they have kids in their stories but King treats them as adults that are never safe from being offed.

>Rage (1977) and The Running Man (1982)—as King's best
Really? I enjoyed Running Man but come on now, has he only read the Bachman books?

the ending where it goes "yeah everyone just went on with their lives after that and they were kind of hunter-gatherery but eventually they formed civilization again, oops" or the one after that where they went "RF still exists because reasons and he's plotting something"?
because both were kind of underwhelming but they fit the themes and tone of the book and of his writing overall in a lot of ways
I just hope it was about what's good for that world and those people rather than what's good in a broad sense, because "God doesn't like you being civilized" is a fucked up thing to believe

or judging by other posts, the mushroom cloud part? I thought was more fitting than what happened afterwards, if still awfully on the nose

>awfully on the nose
I don't hate the ending of the book but that is a very valid criticism.

>Nietzsche on "mediocre artists being more interesting than great ones."
Few adaptations don't improve and overachieve within their medium compared to the source texts-as-texts.

>Some of it's pretty off the wall due to his cocaine use.
This being the exception(s)

Having the quality of ideas to be so readily implemented - and successfully - into film and television series is the most exceptional feature of his writing. Not what most would aim at, but definitely a sign.
>technically meh writing, more of a film director trapped in a novelist's body (inverse: Ridley Scott. Great interpreter/delegator, lost if having to furnish script duties/source material ex nihilo.)

If you read "It" you probably read all his work. He uses every trope from that novel in all of his books.

Shame it pass from really good (The Gunslinger, The Wastelands, Wizard and Glass) to awful (The Drawning of the three, The Dark Tower)

you can stop reading after 2004. His best works are It, The Dark Tower, The long walk.

The Dark Tower is fantasy tho

how does he manage to consistently shit the bed with the ending?

He just starts to write with only an idea but no plan or ending. After some time he writes himself in a corner und just kills everyone and or lets everything explode so he don't have to came up with an actually ending or explaination. After you read some of his books you will see through this shit and see what King really is, not an good edgy writer with dark endings but just a guy that got lucky to find a niche in his early career to built a mindless fanbase that likes everything from him and will continiue to buy his books just like fans of YouTube stars.
But even worse now, King became a whiny feminazi soyboy that will only srite about old ppl that somehow push lefties propaganda. Mark my words. Sleeping Beauties was just the beginning.

He has a lot of books "worth" reading if you don't value your time and just want to be entertained.

His novels are bloated with episodes that don't really forward or complicate the plot in any way. Also, King is bad at letting the reader infer what a character and their lives are like from a few details so he just explains their whole story and daily routines and so on. His books are just filled with useless information. People say his books are just fun to relax with but I'd much rather read a solidly plotted short mystery novel than a bloated King tome.