Is this Stephen King's best work?

Is this Stephen King's best work?

If not, then what?

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Is that a JoJo's reference?

Thought the same

I liked the Green Mile but that's the only one I read so ...

>reads king

It could well be.
My personal favourites are The Stand and 11.22.63. Although the latter is just a personal preference, i dont think its nearly widely as praised as The Stand.

I guess I'll comment first. My personal favourite is Different Seasons. It's four novellas, and three of them are god-tier. Any one of the stories alone would have come near the top, but when they're all packed into book...

Other than, The Stand, IT and The Shining are all contenders for the the number one spot, which is unsurprising since they're his most popular books.

The Green Mile is a weird one. Most people love it but it lacks critical acclaim, which is how I feel about it: really enjoyed reading it but wouldn't say it's his best.

Come on man, it's nice to take a break from literary fiction sometimes...

11/22/63 lacks cult status but it's definitely one of his best. Might be because it's fairly recent...

Nothing wrong with King

I'm planning on reading this one. Never read any of his non-fiction (don't even know if there's much of it other than this) but he seems like an interesting character so despite him not being known as amazing writer this should fun.

Anyone read it?

I’d say The Long Walk is his best, The Girl Who Loves Tom Gordon is really good too. As a rule of thumb, his shorter fiction tends to be the best. It’s more distilled and doesn’t give him time to meander and dilly-dally, it’s just straight to the point and entertaining. When you do read his longer stuff, the thing to keep in mind is that he’s a character writer, not a plot writer. A majority of his ability goes into fleshing out his characters and giving them a distinct voice, not making a harrowing, page turning thrill ride.

It’s pretty good. It’s way more of an autobiography than it is a book about how to be a writer, but that is sprinkled throughout the beginning a bit, then when you get towards the end he finally hits the good stuff and starts giving you actual advise.

Considered reading 11/22/63 or Under The Dome next since I've had them sitting on my shelf for a while. Cell left a bad taste in my mouth but I've heard those are decent for Nu-King.

I read the Stand last year.

I don't really get why everyone loves it. I don't really understand the point of the book. Like near the end there's such a big deal about the four dudes going to Vegas, like these four dudes going there is so prophetic and profound that it's such a massive deal in the grand scheme of things, especially that it's the four of them and no women just the four. But then none of that actually matters because the Trashcan Man comes and blows up everybody anyways.

It seemed like such a waste of time. I also read the unabridged version, possibly that's why I didn't like it. Too many unnecessary scenes that really added nothing to anything.

I loved IT though, so I think that's a much better book.

I think if I had to chose one King book that would be studied it would probably be IT. There's a lot of surprising depth in there when you think about it compared to his other books.

It gets really meta at the end, which I liked. About how all the characters begin to forget the details shortly after the whole ordeal ends, and really more and more fades away over time, until they only remember the feeling they had when they went through that, and even that is fuzzy.

Much like what you the reader go through after finishing a book. I thought it was a very cool touch.

Your nails disgust me whore

He really did die in the van accident, didn’t he?

I was really digging The Stand up until the point of the deus ex lightening strike, god it pissed me off so much for him to work up such a great story just to end it with that. The first few Dark Tower series books are pretty good as well, but for the rest of them, he starts tying in the rest of the books in the series with some of his other works with wacky plot maneuvers and just kinda kills the story with all the sub characters going on. Almost felt like he was just trying to get you interested in his other books so that you'll go out and read those as well, rather than focusing on the main plot. After reading those, I can't bring myself to read much of his anymore. His books just seem to leave you feeling empty if you are hoping for a well planned ending. I would say the first dark tower book was some of his best work. The walking dude from The Stand also ties into the dark tower series if you were looking to read some more King that is similar.

is that fucking WHITEOUT as nail polish?

Cell was bitterly disappointing.
I would highly recommend both 11.22.63 and Under The Dome.
11.22.63 for me was better, very well paced and a solid read.
Under The Dome was quite good too, really good take on small town American life in a crisis.
Both are solid bro.

Yeah I guess 11.22.63 hasnt had the time to gather a proper fanbase yet but yes, definitely one of his best.

Cell had a great concept and an interesting take on "zombies" but King really fucked it up badly towards the end.

>I don't really get why everyone loves it
When you look at rankings from major publications The Stand is always #1 (sometimes #2 behind IT or The Shining), but when you actually read comments or user-submitted ratings, it doesn't fair so well. One explanation is that the more popular a book gets, the harder it is to sustain universal acclaim simply because you can't please everyone.

If you take some of his lesser known works that are generally very well liked, and force them into the spotlight, suddenly you'll see haters. The Stand has stood the test of time and will go down as a classic modern horror.

Although I agree that IT was so much more captivating I didn't think twice about its length, whereas The Stand was getting tiresome near the end.

Summary: He talks about how HP Lovecraft wrote shitty dialogue because he never left his home to listen how real people talk and how The Exorcist book is shit because it doesn't have enough Marvel jokes in it and humor like his books do have.

Yeah, nothing wrong with his idea. I just feel it had great potential and instead it went a different direction and suffered because of it.

dark tower book 1-3

book 4 is shit, then it goes off the rails after that.

>Is this Stephen King's best work?
That's not Hearts In Atlantis so no it's not.

American Vampire

What's his stand name?

No.

Was the first book I decided to read after almost 8 years of not reading. Put it down about 3/4 of the way through.
> ~1300 pages
Too much filler if you ask me. Wasn't the worst book I've read.
>I give it 3/5
>Masterpiece

Oh man, I’m reading different seasons at the moment. It is really good.

lol The Stand fucking sucks. the ending is inexcusable.

>anything but Skeleton Crew or Night Shift
Wrong

aw too bad, you missed out on the thrilling, scintillating, heart-stopping, 1300 page awaited, three sentence climax!

Pet Sematary. I've always felt it's horror pulp but looking back it was very entertaining so idc.

how come r/books love King so much?

On Writing

Pet Sematary is by far his scariest but Misery is overall his best. Disregard his really long stuff; his shorter and more concise books are his best.

You need to understand how reddit works to see why that's inevitable. reddit's voting system means that the majority rules - if someone makes an elitist comment it will be downvoted or ignored by by the plebs that constitute 90% of /r/books. Elitism isn't necessarily negative: something like "my favourite book is Ulysses" will be seen as pretentious; posting a link to something scholarly will be ignored by the majority of users in favour of some tabloid article about how awsum libraries are! -- so yeah, Stephen King is upvotes, serious stuff becomes invisible through downvoting or lack of interest.

Same thing would happen here if we had upvotes and downvotes.

youtube.com/watch?v=7Hr6i98sBg0

just fucking read

King is one of the few authors whose audio books you can follow.

>upvoting Stephen King over literary fiction

that place really is plebbit

>Memen King

Is it just me or do all of his books start out really strongly and then go to shit?

>The Shining
>Starts with cool spooky stuff
>Eventually turns into...SCARY ATTACKING TOPIARIES

>Dreamcatcher
>Starts with cool spooky stuff in the woods
>Eventually turns into....SCARY INTERDIMENSIONAL BEINGS xDDDD

seriously what the fuck

Is this the one where it ends with the bad guy TPing out into a jungle tribe or some shit

That's pretty good, but no.
Carrie is his best; in my opinion.
>Hearts In Atlantis
Are you retarded? That's probably his worst. Hearts In Atlantis is a fucking horrible, and boring as sin. Seriously shit with no redeemable qualities.

And fuck all you idiots who shit on Stephen King. Sure he's not the best, no shit. He drags out alot of stories too long, too (Tells about something in 100 pages which should only take 50) but it's fun to read his novels. You seriously don't believe you idiots constantly read ""smart"" literature. Reading stuff that's not as deep and thought provoking is just as important as reading the classics. Stop being retarded elitists.

> when a rip off is better than the novel that inspired it

I've just read all of Kings 70s output with the exception of the now out of print Rage. The most enthralling experience I've had was with The Shining. Everything he was writing about shame and Jack Torrance trying to cope with addiction and failing hit close to home. The way King describes the experience of shame and relapse was masterful.

I enjoyed and would recommend reading The Stand, The Long Walk and Night Shift.

>The way King describes the experience of shame and relapse was masterful.
Elaborate on this? What's his thesis on shame?

this
>mfw i wrote a paper on the long walk for 7th grade summer school english class

Am I literally the only person in the world to appreciate Dead Zone more than any of his other books?

this guy gets it

Did he die?

Yes but he proved his point.