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Stephen King - worth a go?

Started by touchingcloth, October 31, 2019, 10:41:21 AM

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touchingcloth

I've never read a Stephen King book, but like everyone I've seen a lot of adaptations of his work.

Is he worth a read, and if so what would be the book(s) to start with? Is he anything like Crichton, where much of his stuff is potboiler dross but when you read something like Jurassic Park you just think "yeah, I can see why they made a film", or do his books tend to be quite different from their adaptations?

Absorb the anus burn

The Dead Zone.... Great place to start.

touchingcloth

QuoteThe book was nominated for the Locus Award in 1980 and was dedicated to King's son Owen.

Owen King. Love it already, thanks.

SavageHedgehog

I think his prose is vastly superior to Crichton's; I'd say it's easily the strongest of all the prominent "airport" blockbuster novelists of the last half century or so in my experience. He's still cranked out a lot of work, and much of it wont be worth your time, and the cliche that his books are overlong and end poorly can be very true (e.g. IT IMO), but a good King book can be very worthwhile indeed.

11.22.63 is a pretty good (recentish) one which shows off a lot of his strengths and sees him working somewhat outside of his comfort zone.

gloria

Love him. Any of the short story or novella collections are worth getting. The Stand, Dolores Claiborne, Under the Dome and 11/22/63 are favourite novels. When he's great, which is surprisingly often for a writer that prolific, he's really great. Often his non-supernatural books have the edge over the supernatural stuff. I recently re-read his non-fiction book Danse Macabre looking at the horror genre between 1950-1980 and it's terrific, sending me scurrying to eBay and Abebooks to pick up his recommendations.

Famous Mortimer

I loved Under The Dome, only partly because it was obvious he didn't have a fucking clue of how to end it, so just gave it the dumbest ending possible.

Quote from: SavageHedgehog on October 31, 2019, 11:06:39 AM
I think his prose is vastly superior to Crichton's; I'd say it's easily the strongest of all the prominent "airport" blockbuster novelists of the last half century or so in my experience.
Absolutely. You can't go wrong with pretty much any of his more famous books.

Shaky

If you want an "in" I'd give his short stories a whirl. Even the recent collections have a good hit rate but Night Shift (1978) is essential and I've a real soft spot for Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993) too. There's stuff in there which really makes you recognize how good a horror writer King can be.

Mister Six

Stephen King is a genuinely brilliant, talented author. IT has a decent shot at being one of the Great American Novels, I think. If he'd turned his knack for atmosphere and characterisation towards boring fucking books about privileged white lecturers, he'd already have been canonised as one of the greats. But because he works in the wheelhouses of horror, fantasy and crime, he's allowed to be a guilty pleasure at best.

He's written a lot of shit, of course, but The Stand, IT (save for the awkward pages devoted to prepubescent children fucking in a sewer) and The Dead Zone are all proper classics. I've heard good stuff about his latest, The Institute, but I'm in a 300-strong queue for that at the library so I won't be able to confirm or deny that for about a year at least.

kittens

will be finishing the stand tonight, my first ever stevie king book. i think it's great. long though eh.

Famous Mortimer

Quote from: kittens on October 31, 2019, 03:04:05 PM
will be finishing the stand tonight, my first ever stevie king book. i think it's great. long though eh.
It flew by, for me. Bloody loved it.

Apart from "Under The Dome", I've not read anything of his in quite a while, though. Might have to get 11/22/63 at some point.

pigamus

In terms of one that isn't 900 pages long, doesn't fall apart at the end, and even his critics admit is brilliant - read Misery.

touchingcloth

Quote from: pigamus on October 31, 2019, 05:11:47 PM
In terms of one that isn't 900 pages long, doesn't fall apart at the end, and even his critics admit is brilliant - read Misery.

This could be a winner. It'd be interesting to read a book of one of the films I've seen, I think. Of the horror ones I've seen and enjoyed neither Carrie nor The Shining take my fancy to read for some reason, and the non-horrors like Shawshank and Green Mile don't either. Misery sounds just the ticket.

PlanktonSideburns

Desperation is a great one for balls to the walls horror shenanagins, - not really any decent moving pitcure adaptation of that one

NJ Uncut

#13
Quote from: touchingcloth on October 31, 2019, 10:41:21 AM
I've never read a Stephen King book, but like everyone I've seen a lot of adaptations of his work.

Is he worth a read, and if so what would be the book(s) to start with?

Shining
Carrie
Misery
IT
11.22.63
Salem's Lot
Different Seasons
The Institute
The Stand

QuoteIs he anything like Crichton, where much of his stuff is potboiler dross but when you read something like Jurassic Park you just think "yeah, I can see why they made a film", or do his books tend to be quite different from their adaptations?

No, he's a folk story teller; you get into his characters bigtime - it's his biggest strength - and he does everyman far better than he does plot, pacing etc. Quite a lot of the books are "in the characters head" - you are privy to their internal thoughts and emotions etc. which is why films are hit or miss.

Quote from: Mister Six on October 31, 2019, 01:50:26 PM
IT (save for the awkward pages devoted to prepubescent children fucking in a sewer)

I absolutely hate when people obsess over this as it's literally less than 0.5% of the book and never portrayed properly, not to fully defend it. You may as well describe it as "save for the awkward pages in which children are murdered", it's glib as fuck and shows zero understanding of what he was trying to do IMO (if you think he's failed at something, fine, but most people don't even describe what he's failed at, they're just going urgh squick!)

King himself has an explanation sticked on his official forums: sex is the last taboo, the last terrifying fear for that edge-of-teenager age, the other "it" which is mystical and unfathomable, and the only thing that can bring them together, as a last resort, a bridge to adulthood - that actually does as much to change things as even the next, "bigger" plot events, the last remaining wall hammering them through to adulthood, something they can never undo and is the last bastion of their union (hence the flashback having a mirror in the present). It's shown as an act of desperation and shock, and that's very, very lost in the throwaway objections to what it is, vs what it is meant to be. I never got the impression I was supposed to enjoy it, yknow? Being appalled is part and parcel of what is happening in the plot at that specific time.

I think if you read it maturely you'll, yeah, find it appalling in possibly the way it's meant to be, and I wonder about some of the... choices made in how he presents it, but it really isn't a LOLRANDOM scene. It should make thematic sense even if it disgusts you; and should be dismissed thematically for something other than mere taboo or squick or "lol he was coked up" (sorry, just unleashing a load of this on you, Mr Six! Not all applies to you, I now descend from my soapbox)

Mister Six

Quote from: PlanktonSideburns on October 31, 2019, 05:24:51 PM
Desperation is a great one for balls to the walls horror shenanagins, - not really any decent moving pitcure adaptation of that one

Although it does fall to pieces at the end, as so many of his books do.

I'd actually advise against the short stories, largely because his strength is in creating in-depth characters and expansive worlds, and he struggles to pull that off in the short stories. For that medium you need shit-hot ideas, and I think King is often on weaker ground here.

(Unlike Clive Barker, whose short stories are better than his long-form stuff, I think.)

Egyptian Feast

I read every book he'd written as a teenager (except Salem's Lot, for some reason), but haven't read any of his new novels since Needful Things came out. I've had 11.22.63 in my to-read pile for ages, but are there any other recommended novels from the last 25 odd years?

I read On Writing a while back and liked that a lot, particularly his description of his near-death experience. The little detail that the man who drove into him was on his way to get 'some of those Marzes bars they have up the store' is indeed straight out of one of his books. There's an extract of that section here.

A friend who reads everything he puts out reckons his writing has never been the same since the accident and the final books in The Dark Tower series suffered hugely as a result. Is that fair to say?

NJ Uncut

Quote from: Egyptian Feast on October 31, 2019, 08:24:18 PM

A friend who reads everything he puts out reckons his writing has never been the same since the accident and the final books in The Dark Tower series suffered hugely as a result. Is that fair to say?

It was true at first and for a long time and probably even overall, but some of his recenter stuff is good (Institute, the JFK novel you haven't picked up is amongst the best he's done, Mr Mercedes which is not horror and great though the follow ups not so much)

Dark Tower gets wacky meta, which was sort of in there from the start... but it definitely feels like he lost the thread. If you're offput by meta, umm, it'll fall off for you in a big way.

If only he knew he'd have two more decades to do it...

Twit 2

The Stand and IT are fucking incredible. Characterisation and imagination so good that, as in the cliche, you can't stop thinking about it long after you've read it; you feel like you know them; you wonder what they're up to now etc.

I've read both those books twice. When I was 13 I read IT at the start of the summer hols. My first ever Stephen King book and I read it in 2 days, only stopping to eat and sleep. That summer I read about 6 more, including some long ones. Then read everything he'd written. I stopped reading him at around the time of the last Dark Tower books as I moved onto to reading more "proper books".

I'd also echo how his non supernatural horror (Misery, Dolores Claiborne etc) is often his best and that his short story collections are great.

Quote from: pigamus on October 31, 2019, 05:11:47 PM
In terms of one that isn't 900 pages long, doesn't fall apart at the end, and even his critics admit is brilliant - read Misery.

Or, in the same vein, Pet Semetery.

oy vey

Another vote for Misery. Straight into it, and it breezes by. The lengthy multi-character ensemble books like The Stand or It are indeed phenomenal if you have several weeks to burn. The Shining audiobook (available on audible) is good too.

King's books occasionally suffer from weak endings but that's because he almost completely commits to making it up as he goes along. He famously hates plotting out stories. A notable exception is The Dead Zone which he admits worked well (and why the ending is solid). But there is a reason pretty much all of his books are adaptable to movies/series, etc. It's because the character work is so rich, and he's a damn good storyteller.

I don't really like short stories but Night Shift, Skeleton Crew and Nightmare & Dreamscapes are worth it for the frequent craziness. I fucking love Survivor Type. Ahhh lady fingers.

I skip the odd book because I hear bad things (e.g. Cell) but I probably shouldn't do that - it's a symptom of being a slow-ass reader. I haven't gotten to Doctor Sleep yet and I want to avoid the movie for now. Does anyone know if the book is good?

Keebleman

Quote from: Egyptian Feast on October 31, 2019, 08:24:18 PM
I read every book he'd written as a teenager

AFAIK, he didn't write any books as a teenager.  Carrie was his first, and it was published when he was 27. (I am being facetious.)

I gave up with It around page 920.  Why the hell would someone chuck aside a book when they had already slogged through it for that long?  Not sure, but I guess I felt that plugging on though the last 200 pages would be no reward at all.

Around '97 I read Desperation all the way through, and then didn't read another word of his for two decades.  I had heard how when he started a book he didn't know how it would develop and that's the way he liked it.  Well, I thought, he may enjoy that, but I find it tedious almost beyond endurance, so cheerio.

In the last few years I have returned to him now and again.  He can write with skill and his plot ideas, especially for his short stories, are often ingenious, but unlike genre writers such as Ross Macdonald, MR James and PG Wodehouse (comedy is a genre!), I don't see a reason to revisit one of his works once the outcome is known. 

I read The Shining for the first time a couple of months ago, and now I'm on to Doctor Sleep.  Reading these two more or less back-to-back show that his skill has atrophied over the decades.  The Shining is tight and focused, and one would never suspect that its author was writing blind, but its sequel has a tediously baggy 200 pages or more before it gets down to the main action, which to be fair is very gripping.

Mister Six

Quote from: oy vey on October 31, 2019, 10:29:15 PM
I haven't gotten to Doctor Sleep yet and I want to avoid the movie for now. Does anyone know if the book is good?

From what I gather, it's middling and let down by ineffectual villains.

ZoyzaSorris

I seem to be on a different trajectory to many in that I started off not liking him when I was younger (read The Shining and Christine and found them both interminable and unconvincing at the time, early 20s, might have been a pretentious little dick though) but have enjoyed some of his stuff more since. Reading On Writing and Danse Macabre both gave me a massive respect for him and as a result I read The Stand which I thoroughly enjoyed, though as often with these things I enjoyed the setup (the first half is brilliant) more than the ending. Very good at atmospherics and getting you into the characters, for sure. Somehow takes quite cliched elements and turns them into something you can really buy into.

Neville Chamberlain

Great thread!

Was obsessed with Stephen King when I was at school, to the point where my English teacher eventually banned me from reading yet another King book during the ten-minute private reading session that he always kicked his classes off with. Between the ages of about 12 and 15, I read every single one of his books, the last one being The Dark Half, which I seem to remember being very good (and I loved the cover, which was stark black on the outside and bright orange on the inside, with birds or something). By the time I was 16, however, I'd kind of lost interest and have never returned to his oeuvre since. I seem to remember loving them all, though I did have a hard time with The Stand, but only because, looking back, I think my 14-year-old brain never really got to grips with the epic scale of the story. I don't have much to add, except that this thread has inspired me to crack open a King for the first time in donkeys. Maybe I should read The Stand again. Oh, and the Bachman Novels are fucking brilliant. And Thinner, that was an oddly brilliant story, too. Oh, and The Tommyknockers. I also liked The Talisman, which he wrote with Peter Straub.

oy vey

Quote from: Mister Six on November 01, 2019, 05:08:19 AM
From what I gather, it's middling and let down by ineffectual villains.

Interesting. I'll give it a go anyway because I enjoy the Shining universe.

timebug

I came to King via a garage! Our company had a central garage that maintained he vast fleet for the entire county. One day we were 'in dock' waiting for our lorry to have something fixed, and as it was a two hour wait, I mooched around the garage catching up with the lads there,some of who were good mates.
A bloke from the northern edge of our area, who I did not know, was sitting on a box reading a chunky paperback. We got chatting, and I asked what the book was. It was 'The Stand' by Stephen King. I had never heard of it at that time, nor the author.
Then as so often happens, in my local good secondhand bookshop about a week later,there was the very same book. I got it and read it. Loved it,and discovered he had previously published five or six books previously. So I tracked them down and read them too. After that,thanks to our 'good bookshop' I more or less caught up with them as they came out.
Given his drink and drug issues, they are a mostly good assortment, with the odd clunker thrown it. Favouriyes include 'The Stand' (where I started!) 'Dead Zone' ,'From  a Buick 8' and 'Danse Macabre'. I must have read 'Danse' about six times.
So yes, give King a go.Don't go in with too many preconceived ideas about him, and the journey should be worth your while!

NJ Uncut

Bag of Bones is dead underrated

Hmm what other lesser mentioned books are good.

Insomnia is marvellous, weirdly discredited in the Dark Tower canon by, er, The Dark Tower specifically saying as much, but it suffers nought as a standalone read.

You know, Needful Things is pretty alright too. A bit like the Tommyknockers (which is a flawed, baggy mess), he's so superb at world building and crossknitting a township's individual lives, it's worth the trip maybe once.

Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Neville Chamberlain on November 01, 2019, 12:36:09 PM
Great thread!

Was obsessed with Stephen King when I was at school, to the point where my English teacher eventually banned me from reading yet another King book during the ten-minute private reading session that he always kicked his classes off with. Between the ages of about 12 and 15, I read every single one of his books, the last one being The Dark Half, which I seem to remember being very good (and I loved the cover, which was stark black on the outside and bright orange on the inside, with birds or something). By the time I was 16, however, I'd kind of lost interest and have never returned to his oeuvre since. I seem to remember loving them all, though I did have a hard time with The Stand, but only because, looking back, I think my 14-year-old brain never really got to grips with the epic scale of the story. I don't have much to add, except that this thread has inspired me to crack open a King for the first time in donkeys. Maybe I should read The Stand again. Oh, and the Bachman Novels are fucking brilliant. And Thinner, that was an oddly brilliant story, too. Oh, and The Tommyknockers. I also liked The Talisman, which he wrote with Peter Straub.

I was obsessed with King from 12 - 15 as well, I remember on the first day of school finding Christine in the library, noticing it contained a fair bit of swearing and being amazed that I was allowed to borrow it, and that led to three years of being horror obsessed and my English teacher being utterly fed up that all of my short stories I wrote for class were packed with death and misery. It was also where I learnt about sex, and often "When sex goes horribly wrong", leading me to panic that I'd be in agony when I finally had got naked with a woman.

Twit 2

#28
It's funny all the people in the thread who obsessively read him in their early teens. There's some truly  nasty and dark shit in his books. Might explain a lot...

kalowski

Quote from: Twit 2 on October 31, 2019, 09:12:55 PM
The Stand and IT are fucking incredible. Characterisation and imagination so good that, as in the cliche, you can't stop thinking about it long after you've read it; you feel like you know them; you wonder what they're up to now etc.
I read them both last year. Utterly awful. And hideously overlong. Both suffered from that classic Stephen King issue: all the characters are the same, a pop song or early sixties advert popping into their mind at every opportunity.
When I was a teen I enjoyed Night Shift, Misery and Different Seasons, and I do remember being excited by Pet Semetary but I was a teen, and I'm not any more. After reading The Stand I read some Julian Barnes and it struck me how poor King was in comparison.

File in "overrated".