>be me>want to read some horror/thriller>realize I've never read a single Stephen King book cover to cover>look up his bibliography>it's massive, full of absolute classics and complete trashWhat is /lit/'s consensus on King? What are his actual top 3 books where the ending doesn't completely fall apart?Currently leaning towards Pet Sematary or Salem's Lot. Convince me otherwise, anons.
different seasonsthe shiningthe stand (doesn't follow your guideline but it's still a romp)
The Shining and It are his real best works.Salem's Lot, The Tommyknockers and Christine are my underrated faves.
>>25303400I've read one (Misery). I found it very slow for a "page turner".
>>25303400I liked that one about a school killing but I forgot the nameMaybe I liked it because I was an edgy teenager
>the shining >pet sematary>misery >cujo>The Tommyknockers
>>25303400Very hit and miss, has some amazing books and some that are so bad I just physically couldn't continue reading them.One thing that is consistent in all of them is that he sucks at endings. Even the best ones have mediocre endings
>>25303400I read Pet Sematary recently and thought it was hot garbage. King's prose is horrendous, like semi-literate high school student level bad.
>>25303400Night Shift was a good collection
>>25303400It's basically AI slop.
>>25303400Never read a king book. Probably never will. Don’t feel like I’m missing out.
King at his best? really really good. His short story collections (esp night shfit) and his first ten or so novels are excellent. Salem's lot is my favorite.
>>25303400I've liked him since I was a kid, which probably contributes to me liking him now. Seconding other anons who are pointing you to his short story collections, he really does shine best in that format.
>>25303448Misery was supposed to be a Bachman book. Hollywood saved that one.>>25303927Rage / Get It On. It's in the old Bachman collection but King removed it from print because too many incels like me were reading it.
>>25304465You exaggerate for meaningless /lit/ cred.
>>25304858I thought the Hollywood version was too shallow and at the same time lacked some cheap thrills, like Annie killing a cop with a lawnmower. It did fix the pacing though.
>>25306039I thought Misery was too long at 350 pages but I still consider reading IT. Is reading those 1100 pages worth it just for the kid orgy?
>>25306166So you admit anon (I'm nta) was right. Good to know!Pet Sematary's job was to make us care about the family and make us believe that everyone in it would gladly commit a blasphemy against the law of nature to keep it together.But Stephen King deep down resented Tabitha who was nagging him about his drug use and boozing. So he didn't write that family. He wrote a family where the wife was a bitch.Also the narrative was bloated, until the kid gets buried. That might have been forgivable if everyone in it wasn't so unlikeable.
>>25304465This. I picked it up after hearing people praise the guy over and over again but it fucking sucked so much I couldn't even be bothered to finish it.
>>25306315>So you admit anon (I'm nta) was right. Good to know!I'm nta but no, he wasn't right.
>>25303400The settings and atmosphere are often fun and interesting. Too bad he can't write for shit.
>>25303400He's a terrible writer prose-wise but him and his editor are very shrewd and know exactly what they're doing. There's just no way that some those sentences aren't just let go to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Also way too reliant on shock value and lewd sexuality.He does get points for writing Cujo in like a month on such a cocaine and alcohol-fuelled bender that he can't even remember writing it, though. As I recall it was still a best-seller.He's obviously jealous of Stanley Kubrick doing a superior adaptation of his work and Stanley totally cucked him with those 3AM phone calls asking him if he believed in god/ghosts.
>his actual top 3 books1. Pet Semetery 2. It3. The Stand>where the ending doesn't completely fall apart1. Pet Semetery 2. The Long Walk 3. Salem's LotThe Shining is his most overrated book.
>>25306431I don't even think he's jealous. He feels personally insulted because his redeemable self-insert became a total psychopath.
>>25306455Yeah, because it's truly believable that had he not gone to the hotel he eventually wouldn't have hacked his family to death, instead of the fact that he was just stewing beneath the surface the entire time beforehand and the hotel/isolation finally made him crack. Kubrick got it right, and understood human nature better.King is such a fucking hack. He appeals to people's fantasies about what they think life should be like, so I get the popularity, but he definitely fried his brain with coke and booze. If the character was redeemable there wouldn't be a book, because the worst that would have happened is he would have got better after drinking or at worst killed himself or gone to jail after fucking up again, or Wendy would have finally clued in or got a divorce. It's not believable that he wouldn't have turned murderous if he wasn't always capable of that on some level. It's fine that he doesn't like the adaptation, but I refuse to believe that King doesn't know deep-down that Kubrick is just a better artist and intellectual than he'll ever be, and he can't even show some humility at the honor of having one of the best filmmakers of all time adapting your work, even if it's not your preferred rendition.
>>25306296I'd say so, it's my personal favorite. The spooks are imaginative and extremely varied.
>>25303400>try multiple times to read Stephen King novels>try all the big names like The Shining and It>can't get through a single one because it's so crude and tasteless Stephen King stories reads like some middle schooler's homework. When I dwell on the extent of his popularity and influence it inspires sincere terror in my soul's estimation of humanity.
>>25306490>spergKing is simply mad because a better storyteller than he took something he wrote and made it a lot better than it was. It's very telling of what kind of guy he is that, with all the countless shitty adaptations of his work, the one he's still seething about, decades later, is Kubrick.
>>25306445>The Shining is his most overrated book.Most people who claim to have read it, haven't. They watched the movie. The book is quite different from the film, so much so that many fans have actually spoken to King about their favorite parts of The Shining only for him to instantly realize they never read it.
>>25306768From that perspective I can understand being eternally bitter.
>>25306431Cujo somehow was near-perfectly plotted and paced. And the internal family dynamics (wife was a bitch again) made sense there.
>>25306445The Long Walk and The Running Man were two of my favorite King books growing up. I haven’t seen either of the new movies because they both look terrible, but I still love those two books, The Long Walk in particularly.
>>25306039Needful Things is a great book
>>25306768>Most people who claim to have read it, haven'tI've read it and it was extremely underwhelming. >The book is quite different from the filmCorrect. It's better. >>25306778See: >>25306756. King is bitter because Kubrick elevated his material.
>>25303400Don't waste you time with that hack. Start with The Castle of Otranto.
>>25303400He sucks.His best book is The Eye of the Dragon or whatever. I read him a lot when I was a kid and that is exact demo/reading level for which his shit is written.
>>25306794Speaking about the movies, The Long Walk was pretty good but The Running Man was terrible. I honestly had The Running Man as #3 until I remembered Salem's Lot was good and had an interesting ending. But yeah, go ahead and skip tRM but check out tLW.
>>25303400
>>25303400Hit or miss (more miss than hit for like 40 years now though) and habitually weak endings but he does a few things reliably well, first and foremost descriptive language. He uses it pretty well on average but sometimes his writing has an almost Dickensian quality, especially when describing people or places. When he's on point, it's fantastic. The Body is one of the best stories about male friendship that I've ever read, hands down, and a lot of that comes from the texture that he manages to put into everything. The personality quirks, the weather, the fear, etc. It takes on a very intimate quality.I'd say try out The Long Walk, The Mist and The Body for short stories/novellas and for novels I'd go with Salem's Lot and Pet Sematary.
>>25307784My two main criticisms of King are his weak endings and his tendency to make the protagonist a self-insert so blatantly that half the time the protagonist is just literally a writer from Maine. That said, he’s still a great storyteller and he was one of my favorite authors when I was a kid. I devoured his catalogue growing up, and who knows, if my dad hadn’t handed me that old paperback copy of Nightmares & Dreamscapes when I was like 8 I may never have fallen in love with reading.
