Stephen King's books

...i've read and thoroughly enjoyed most of Stephen King's books, but he lost me when Tommyknockers" came out...after that i liked every 2nd or 3rd book he wrote...unlike many, i just couldn't get into the Dark Tower series not matter how i tried! "Cell" rekindled my interest a bit, and i have "Lisey's Story" at home - going to crack that one this weekend...regardless, i love how prolific he is...
my personal favorites: Thinner, The Stand, The Shining, Dolores Claiborne, Salem's Lot, and The Mist...

My favs re the novels are Salem's Lot, Misery (love the movie too, "Mr. Man!!!"), and Christine. I'm also quite fond of Carrie, the Night Shift book of short stories, and The Shining.
Ones I couldn't get through were Thinner, The Tommyknockers, and Dreamcatcher.

Andrea

When he's good, he is very good. But when he is bad, boy howdy! Someone who writes as much as he does is bound to be bad. (There was an old skit on SNL that showed him being interviewed and the whole time he was typing away. The interviewer asked him what he was writing and he had to stop and look down and read it "Oh, it's aabout a dog and a car."

I too love the Stand, but am not sure I care for the recent expanded version. I don't think it improves on the original.

And I love the Mist, even though the ending is a huge copout.

I loved The Stand, because I could so easily imagine the characters moving around Boulder. He many original landmarks in their proper spots.

quote:

Originally posted by ernieson

When he's good, he is very good. But when he is bad, boy howdy! Someone who writes as much as he does is bound to be bad. (There was an old skit on SNL that showed him being interviewed and the whole time he was typing away. The interviewer asked him what he was writing and he had to stop and look down and read it "Oh, it's aabout a dog and a car."

I too love the Stand, but am not sure I care for the recent expanded version. I don't think it improves on the original.

And I love the Mist, even though the ending is a huge copout.

Good point about the end of The Mist - definitely a cop-out. We never get to see what happened. I wish he'd write a Part Two.

And he also copped out with the end of The Long Walk. Does Garraty die? Does he get his $1 billion prize? We're left hanging. I suppose he did it to be "literary."

Now The Running Man - that's an ending you can sink your teeth into.

My favorite memory of reading a King novel comes from around 1980
when I had gotten home from working an evening shift. It was spring and the windows were open. The curtains were billowing out and I just knew Danny Glick was there hovering beyond the screen. I nearly read the entire book just so I wouldn't have to turn the light out

At one time I could honestly say I had read all his published books.
I got lost in the Gun Slinger etc and never recovered enough to make sense of it... I couldn't finish the series
Some of his best (at least to me) was some of the earliest short stories. I've always said The Stand is the best fiction that I've ever read. I read it, one year, in the early fall and took strep throat while I was reading it - FREAKY
But ther there's 'Salems Lot and other great ones.
I'll definitely give Cell a chance.

Just wanted to let everyone know that Stephen King has a new novel coming out in June, Blaze.

Actually, it's not a new novel. Blaze was actually written in the 70s. There was a toss up between Blaze and Salem's Lot as to which would be published first. Salem's Lot won, and Blaze got put on the back burner. Stephen eventually decided it wasn't worth publishing.

Until now. The proceeds from Blaze (which I think Stephen has revised), from what I understand, will go to The Haven Foundation, which supports artists in times of need. Most freelance artists and writers have no insurance, so The Haven Foundation functions as a port in the storm for them.

I can't wait for this. The opportunity to read a rare book by Stephen King, when he was just starting out, just finding his style. Fantastic.

Stephen King is one of my favorite authors and I've read most of his work. Some truly are stinkers, but his best ranks up with any contemporary author's best. I got a beautiful tan on my back and missed a couple days of a great St. Thomas winter vacation with my nose in "The Shining", still my favorite. I have in the past stayed up most of the night reading his stuff. Lately, the stuff isn't so compelling that I have to do this, though. Next to "The Shining", my favorite is "The Girl who Loved Tom Gordon" a sweet story, yet could raise a few hackles on the back of your neck. I have re-read this a few times. He really captured the voice and spirit of a plucky little girl lost in the woods.

quote:

Originally posted by improviser

Just wanted to let everyone know that Stephen King has a new novel coming out in June, Blaze.

Actually, it's not a new novel. Blaze was actually written in the 70s. There was a toss up between Blaze and Salem's Lot as to which would be published first. Salem's Lot won, and Blaze got put on the back burner. Stephen eventually decided it wasn't worth publishing.

Until now. The proceeds from Blaze (which I think Stephen has revised), from what I understand, will go to The Haven Foundation, which supports artists in times of need. Most freelance artists and writers have no insurance, so The Haven Foundation functions as a port in the storm for them.

I can't wait for this. The opportunity to read a rare book by Stephen King, when he was just starting out, just finding his style. Fantastic.

Great news - thanks!

I never did "get into" Pet Sematary, The Shining, and all of his scary books but I LOVED Delores Claiborne and Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. Maybe because they weren't about the occult. Funny how Shawshank was such a short novel and such a long movie! But no complaints here!

I wonder if "Blaze" will be reminiscent of the style of the "Bachman Books."

Just finished reading "Cell". I was grabbed by the first paragraph but not pleased with the ending. I thought that it left a lot of unfinished business with the rest of the characters. Oh well, I guess every story can't be perfect. Can't wait to read this "new" novel coming out but I think that it might be a prelude to "Fire Starter"? have to wait and see. I am excited to check it out!

David O.

According to The Lost Work Of Stephen King (an interesting book about Stephen's very rare work, including his unpublished first few novels written while he was in college), Blaze is about a mentally deficient criminal who kidnaps an infant and holds it for ransom while struggling to care for the child.

I wanted to let people know that you can read the first two chapters of Blaze here: http://stephenking.com/pages/faq/future.php

Stephen King? As a Roadfood subject? Me, I like 'em van-tenderized, road-aged, sauce on the side...

Okay, here's my take on King. He's an honest writer with some real merits. I believe he's entered the canon -- that as long as people are reading, someone's gonna be reading King. He's not one of the greats, but he is, in fact, one of the goods. Is he Twain or Dickens? No, he ******* (hey, what's the cuss policy here?) well is not. But if you were to compare him to someone like, oh, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Damon Runyon, you'd be in the ballpark.

I think his real strength is that he knows what's important in life, and he knows how to threaten it. What's important? The people we love, and how we treat them. He knows this on a bedrock level, and that's something many more skillful artists need to learn.

Dude needs editing. He needs someone to stand on the back of his neck and make him cut chunks out of his novels. The facility with which he can produce words is a blessing, but it needs to be controlled, and he doesn't seem prone to that type of self-control.

He's one of those Ellison types where much of his casual writing is so personal, so conversational, that you start feeling as though he's a pal... and I read his stuff on a pal basis. I'm less critical because I like him.

I think he has chops he hasn't used yet. Stuff like his New Yorker piece on Little League, Bag of Bones, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon -- hey, maybe you like his earlier stuff better, but what we're watching here is a creator who's still reaching and growing, and whose best work may well be in the future. I think that he's capable of moving himself up a notch or two, and he seems to be working towards that end.

He has dreadful moments. Nothing in his imagination is as frightening as some of his phrasing. I read The Stand once, but I will carry to my grave the moment the Magical Old Black Lady looked at one of the female characters, and in the process of analyzing her fertility, the phrase 'pretty good porch door' was used to refer to the, uh, channel of birth. For Pete's sake, Steve, did you get that out of the five-for-a-dollar bin at Euphemisms R Us? This kind of thing crops up periodically, and it hurts, it burns.

The Mist is also my favorite of his short fiction. While the Human Values mentioned above mean a lot, the EC comics/B-movie tone of a lot of his short fiction is a blast. He loves that stuff, and it comes through...

My favorite book of his? Dance Macabre. That, along with Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Fiction, is the essential jumping-off point if you're interested in horror.

And maybe I better shut up before I start talking about the way he and Koontz have ruined the alphabetical balance of the field and other matters more obscure... but while we're talking about writers and food, has anyone else noticed that William Gibson writes about eggs like he wants some?

Nobody tells a story like The King! Some I haven't seen mentioned: Rose Madder, Black House, and Everything's Eventual. Some better than others, all good!

I really liked Black House, lunasatic, and there are some really strong stories in Everything's Eventual as well. My favs: All That You Loved Will Be Carried Away and The Man in The Black Suit.

I ordered my copy of Blaze, should be here on Friday.

Some news I found from the Stephen King website.

He's got a new story in this month's Esquire, "The Gingerbread Girl", something like that anyway, which comes out on Friday.

On the site, www.stephenking.com, there's a link to contest where you can win a free copy of Blaze and some other goodies.

quote:

Originally posted by improviser

I really liked Black House

If you've read "Black House" I wonder if you read his first collaboration with Peter Straub, "The Talisman". "Black House" is actually the sequel to "The Talisman".

Two of my all time favorite books!

Yeah, I've read the Talisman. I think Black House works on its own as a standalone novel, though the references to Wolf and Speedy, etc., would be a little confusing.

I read Blaze last night. I really liked it, it's really more of a crime novel, with just a slight hint of supernatural happenings. A short story is also included in the book. Duma Key, King's next novel, is an expansion of this story, "Memories". I liked the short story well enough. I wonder how it will work as a novel. The main character is a little unpleasant and you understand that his circumstances have made him so, but he's not nearly as likeable a protagonists such as Ben Hanscombe or Bill Denborough from It or Johnny Smith from The Dead Zone.

In the foreword to Blaze, King clears up a mystery surrounding a novel that never was. In The Lost Work of Stephen King, a novel called The Cannibals is mentioned, a King novel set in a building where the residents are all forced to eat each other (like Ballard' High Rise though I've never read that). King mentioned The Cannibals in interviews but it never saw the light of day. Apparently, the sole copy of the manuscript in progress, some 200 pages, disappeared and was never found. Too bad.

I wanted to let everyone know that Stephen King has a new story, "The Gingerbread Girl" in this month's issue of Esquire. I read it last night and really loved it. It's kind of on the long side but well worth the read, imo. I hope it's in his next short story collection.

My friend Michael Brown recently reviewed Blaze for our local alternative weekly, The Beat. You can find his review here: http://www.metrobeat.net/gbase/Expedite/Content?oid=oid%3A4542