I know Stephen King is kinda plebby, (but I love his books anyway.)

I know Stephen King is kinda plebby, (but I love his books anyway.)

What's your favorite Stephen King novel, Veeky Forums?

Pet Sematary scared me the most, but Misery pulled me in the most. Either one of those, I suppose.

The Long Walk

i just bought the stand, should i try to read it?

well if you bought it you may as well.
I read it in highschool for the AR points, it was a good story but overall unmemorable.
longest book I've ever read, if that award is worth anything.

only memorable line I can recall was the old black lady saying "a man doesn't feel quite right unless he's moving forward". That felt deep at the time

Rage.

Everything else is drivel.

I've read a lot of King and I don't have a stand-out favorite. Right now, off the top of my head, I'll say The Shining. It very effectively gives you a sense of mounting dread. And as opposed to the film (which I watched before I read the book) it actually gives you a chance to empathize with Jack, who is slowly allowing his demons to destroy him literal and figurative demons. Any King book that involves alcoholism (he never does it halfway) resonates with me, being an alcoholic myself.

You should read Doctor Sleep then.

I did! I enjoyed it a lot, although I don't think it's nearly as good as The Shining.

Needful Things.
It was the first King novel I'd ever read, and the last one I really enjoyed.

Rage, The Long Walk, It, The Stand, Under the Dome (even though the ending sucked), and 11/22/63.

The corncobby one. I read the next one in the series, about lobsters I guess, didn't quite do it for me.

I liked On Writing, and The Shining the most.

11/22/63

>even though the ending sucked
The ending of every King novel longer than two hundred pages sucks.

Only pretentious, contrarian plebs don't like King. He's popular and that's the only reason anyone shits on him. He sells because goddamn can that man tell a story.

The Drawing of the Three is my favorite. I really liked Wizard and Glass, too.

I love the first half of the Dark Tower, up to Wizard and Glass. The latter three are good, too, but they felt rushed to me. I also really enjoyed The Wind Through The Keyhole, for its imitation of traditional folk tales. In fact, I'm starting to feel an itch to reread the series, even though it hasn't been that long since I read it.

I completely agree...

Those first four are INCREDIBLE. The Gunslinger is a completely unique adventure. Just a great book. The Drawing of the Three is perfect storytelling. The Wastelands definitely continues that. Wizard and Glass takes you somewhere new but somewhere you've been curious about (Roland's past) and King nailed it.

Those last three are... I don't know. The Wolves of the Calla I barely got through. Just TONS of massive stories from the POV of characters I don't give two shits about. I was so glad when Callahan's story was done. It's the worst Stephen King I've ever read. Song of Susannah was pretty good. I liked it much better than most. The Dark Tower was amazing, imo. Perfect ending. People hated it but I felt like he really nailed it. It answered a lot but completely left you to ponder a lot.

That series is just so good. I think it's King's best work

>Only pretentious, contrarian plebs don't like King.

How can someone be both patrician and pleb at the same time? Take it easy with the memes there, son.

>He's popular and that's the only reason anyone shits on him.

No. I simply have no interest in taking up literature that isn't going to seriously challenge me. This isn't any kind of challenge and I could glean little from it, so I dismiss it.

I like a lot of popular music/movies and the like - but that is passive media - yet I see no point in investing time into literature that reads like a passive form of media transcribed to text.

Where did I say it was patrician?

Also, I get what you mean but I don't care about being "challenged" by something. I just want to get carried away in a story and enjoy myself. I don't read to seem intelligent to people. I read because it's fun. I don't watch TV really. I just read all the time. Me and my wife like to read together.

I've read the classic literature and all that but I read mainly fantasy. I like to be whisked away into some crazy world. I like a good page turner. That's what's good to me.

We just read for different reasons, I suppose. I just get annoyed by the people who act like there's something wrong with that or that they're more intelligent because they read this and not that. It's pretentious as fuck, you know? Not accusing you of that, of course, just made me think of it.

I feel you on Wolves of the Calla. Especially with Callahan. It feels like King was developing a sequel to Salem's Lot from Callahan's perspective, but he decided, fuck it, I'll shoehorn it into the Dark Tower book I'm working on. On top of that, the book is full of superfluous pop-culture references Dr Doom robots and golden snitch grenades, what the fuck?. To be fair, he was recovering from his accident and subsequent painkiller addiction, but that's no excuse for publishing a half-baked book.

The Dark Tower, I loved for the most part. It mirrors The Gunslinger in the trek across the wasteland, which is perfect. Where it lost me, and where most people gripe about it, I think, is one: the death of Randall Flagg, during which Flagg crumples like tissue paper, despite his development as a complete badass, and two: the final battle with the Crimson King, who somehow morphs from an immortal interdimensional spider beast-horror into evil Santa tossing said Harry Potter snitch grenades at Roland. The actual ending, I agree with you, is perfect. But some of the events leading up to it are half-baked and just disappointing.

>Where did I say it was patrician?

Misread that line. Fair play.

>Also, I get what you mean but I don't care about being "challenged" by something.

That's a shame, because literature is just about the greatest avenue possible for this. Particularly in your formative years when ideas really shape who you will become in later life. You can watch a show or something if you want to zone out and relax. I like my chill time too. But you should be approaching literature with an active mind and a desire to challenge yourself at least some of the time.

People who hassle you over this in real life (if they ever do) probably *are* pretentious as fuck. The really switched on ones gave up the need to make others feel stupid and small a long time ago. If someone is taking keen pleasure in making you feel stupid then chances are they are a pseudo and they are secretly insecure over their own intelligence in kind.

Alright, I get you. I can absolutely agree with all of this. I didn't say I don't challenge myself with literature. My wife and I both do but not with everything we read. She was an English major who's now an editor so she definitely brings in the *real* literature side of things for us to read.

We don't watch TV so I guess we use books for both. Some are to zone out and for leisure, others are to challenge our minds. I just don't feel you have to do that to enjoy reading.

Solid post, senpai

Ugh... I couldn't agree more about The Crimson King and The Man in Black. What the fuck was he thinking? People complain over him putting himself in the books but I feel like those two things were far worse.

Hell, him being all meta and in the book was kinda cool. I didn't look at it like it was our Stephen King, really. I looked at it like a character, or even a god in that world. I thought of him as "the writer" and as a character King made up that he happened to name after himself.

I really thought he showed talent in his technique by telling you someone was going to die as "the writer" and then it still having suspense and impact when it happened.

The man is a solid writer. That's my whole point in this thread. I'm sure he'll be remembered for generations. There are complaints with his work but the same can be said for any writer ever. He has some shit books, too. He also has some masterpieces though.

Oh, I didn't even consider his self-insertion as a complaint. That never bothered me either. I have to imagine he had an opiate and pain-induced fever dream in which Roland approached him, and I respect him for including that in the story, and including it well.

He is a solid writer, no argument. I mean, my complaints and yours are about relatively small portions of a seven book epic he wrote. How many authors have written series that long, not to mention the rest of his bibliography, that are as consistently engaging as King?

Gah, you're so wrong about Man in Black/Flagg's deaths and Crimson King's impotence being a narrative misstep.

Flagg's death is kind of perfect, in my view. He's a schemer whose eventual undoing is one of his risky/convulated schemes eventually collapsing in on itself.

The actual text does a great job of skewering the Flagg legend, showing him as being just a 'man too full of his own exploits'.

Think of it this way: what would a satisfying 'stand-off' with Flagg look like? Flagg can't shoot like Roland, and Roland can't scheme. Far more effective that Flagg fucks himself through overreaching.

(But don't get me wrong, I was sad when he left the narrative. Always an entertaining character).

As for the Crimson King...that's a somewhat trickier call. I'm sure the CK only came about since King needed to slap some Sauron-esque totem of villiany in; something mythical yet humanoid to put a 'face' to the chaos that engulfs the Tower.

Again, the CK's legend exceeds his ability to satisfy expectations. He's basically been neutered by his own desire for the Tower, like Flagg (and Roland, to a degree).

Where I wish S. King had done something differently is flesh out the sketch of madness that is the Crimson King. What is he, really? What is his deeper connection to Roland? He just sort of pops into the narrative out of a need for a 'Big Bad.'

I would have liked to have read the scene where he smashes the Bends of the Rainbow and condemns his entire court to drink poison.