needed to by a pulp novel to read during my lunch breaks

figured horror would be as good as anything

but does stephen king suck hard or what other opinions do you have?

Um no. Steven King pretty much is the best author of his generation. Any book you pick of his is going to be good. It is one of his better ones also, Needful Things is my favorite.

Agree! How could anyone say the greatest horror writer sucks hard!

I'm a lit snob and I love Stephen King. His book "On Writing" is phenomenal. IT is a fun read, though it kind of drags towards the end...almost as if he got tired of writing it. All in all a fun read though.

enjoy.

Now mind you, I scare a bit easily, but IT was the scariest book I've ever read. Great stuff. I really liked Misery, Thinner, and Bag of Bones, too.

Did you like the movies?

I read all of his older stuff - his newer books are gathering dust as I'll get to them one of these days.

IT...Great setup but I was disappointed in the ending. Seemed kind of weak... The movie's ending was even worse.

I'd put the Stand, Firestarter and Dead Zone above IT.

Love Stephen King. My personal faves are The Stand and the The Shining....and if you get into the Gunslinger series.....they are so good it's scary.

Some of his books are good, some e.g Dreamcatcher turned my brain into mush.

Today, I think Misery is his best!

He is an great writer; an amazing ability to draw the reader into the story. Try some of his short stories. They are also great.

I like Stephen King a lot ,actually. In his younger days, he already had to ability to write excellent stories, but lacked a lot in the ending department. For example, endings to It, The Stand, Cujo, The Tommyknockers, and a lot more were weak. He got better with time.

His work on the Dark Tower, which unifies all his stories in a complex of parallel universe and around the destiny of one man and his companions, is a masterpiece which raises him at the level of the best authors ever. Especially when you realize, rereading his books, that he has been planning that in one way or another ever since his very first books. And, that particular ending to the Dark Tower and all of his universe wasn't weak at all (even if he's planning an "epilogue" book in the form of a 3rd part to the Talisman with Peter Straub co-writing).

Some PhD thesis have even been written studying him & his works.

I enjoyed most of his books. And some of the movies/series drawn from them.

Too bad a lot of the movie renditions just don't work.

I don't really understand why he's sold 8 gazillion books. I think they're worthless.

The best piece of art he's responsible for (in some way) is the film The Shawshank Redemption, and really, Frank Darabont made it his own. The film is much better than the short story.

Misery was pretty good. Thinner was a disappointment. I think it's hard to turn a book into a movie, so I wasn't surprised that neither were spectacular. I've never read Shawshank Redemption, so I don't know how much of the movie was King, but the movie is one of my favorites. The Green Mile was pretty good, too. Of course the book series was better.

I just bought Desperation. I love it so far. Anyone else have opinons on it?

You have to read its counterpart too, The Regulators (it's a Bachman book). They are linked. Well, all King's books are, but those too are closely related.

The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunsligher followed.

This being what links all his books.

OK, so I'm about 1/5th of the way through "It."

So far I've learned that there's a demonic clown that like to murder children in gruesome ways.

Solution: people should leave the town.

Lol.

i prefer dean koontz over stephen king. his christopher snow series is really good and the new frankenstein series is pretty good

Thinner is my favorite of his books, definately. After seeing the movie version of It when I was waaaaaaaay too young, I cant handle the thought of reading the book though.

Ok, this is why I don't get the big deal about his horror books. The plot to The Regulators has to be one of the most ridiculous (and bad) I have ever read. I'd like to discuss it further but I don't want to give away spoilers.

The plot to Dreamcatcher was diabolical too. And not in the good way. It's a recurrung theme in his horror novels. Stephen King horror is shit. End of story.

His straight fiction is excellent though...

I don’t read King (I find his subject matter boring), but I believe his talent to paint a word picture to be beyond all others. His talent is unquestionabl—whether you read him or not.

Edit: opps.

Yeah, I agree. But there's more to writing a good book imo. I think he hacks out a huge amount of his work, because he knows people will read it no matter how little effort has gone into it.

I think you forgot the (sw).

K. I liked Regulators a lot. But, actually, to really appreciate it you have to read Desperation, and to understand the whole picture of the King universe. Taken separately, I can imagine how the Regulators would seem pointless & nonsensical.



Dreamcatcher was a standalone horror story. Nothing more actually. I thought it was entertaining by itself. Not major fiction for sure.


Even his straight fiction is linked to the other books and the bigger picture (that being the Dark Tower cycle). Most obvious example in mind : Hearts in Atlantis. But also Dolores Claiborne or Rose Madder.

I saw the movie

.......and it wasnt scary

Dreamcatcher ? Movie sucked.

Just got done reading Desperation.... And It was a really good book. Kind of changed my view on things.

Stephen King is a great writer....best of his generation, I dunno, but I have a whole shelf devoted to just his books. It was a classic. Mini-series scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. I get a kick out of the articles he writes for Entertainment Weekly too...

His good/bad movie ratio is not pretty though. I read somewhere his theory is "they're going to butcher the book anyway, might as well just sell it, take what you can get, and let them do their damage." Not a bad idea....