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After King is dead his son should write a book where King keeps writing books as a ghost and lets his son publish them so loving meta you can't even comprehend it
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Jun 5, 2010 11:15
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Only if his son publishes under his own psuedonym, and King is writing as Richard Bachman.
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Jun 5, 2010 20:10
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And Bachman is writing a book about a white tower where the sparrows fly and the Regulators roam and it ties all his books together 
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Jun 12, 2010 04:20
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Oh god, is it horrible I just realised I haven't ever read a single Stephen King novel before.
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Jun 13, 2010 11:01
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Tom Ripley posted:After King is dead his son should write a book where King keeps writing books as a ghost and lets his son publish them Actually, Joe Hill has a story kind of like that in the end of 20th Century Ghosts. quote:Elena’s father died an unpublished, unsuccessful writer. But his dream of literary success didn’t die with him, and one night not long after his passing, his electric typewriter comes banging back to life, spinning new stories all on its own. http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=1535
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Jun 14, 2010 00:26
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little green jewel posted:and so far the first book has been all about a pretty typical antihero (?) on a poorly-defined chase through a dead world populated by hopeless people. This is much better than what comes later. Gunslinger is probably his best book.
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Jun 14, 2010 20:52
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muscles like this? posted:When I got to the Dr Doom and Harry Potter talk I literally said "what the gently caress?" out loud. The last books really suffered because he felt like he was forced to write them instead of just writing when he had the story in his head. This summarizes everything that I feel about this series.
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Jun 15, 2010 02:39
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poop posted:Oh god, is it horrible I just realised I haven't ever read a single Stephen King novel before. Save yourself some time and don't bother.
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Jun 15, 2010 02:39
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hello clarice posted:Save yourself some time and don't bother. Among the turds he has some really good loving books. The Shining, The Stand, Misery, Different Seasons, Hearts in Atlantis, and On Writing come to mind. None of them are perfect and some are pretty clunky, but they tell good stories full of good characters and are worth reading. At least I think so.
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Jun 15, 2010 04:03
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Also, if you're at all a fan of horror as a genre, in lit or otherwise, I highly recommend The Dance Macabre.
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Jun 15, 2010 17:10
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I might have to go with Cell. The fact that it went from something that could have been very interesting humans shaped into a new organism to a copout oh, some are still regular humans except angry and psychic was kind of sucky. Plus, the ending. I have to say I'm not really a fan of IT, but that might be opening a can of worms. *edit* Also I'd better get out of here for a while, since I'm listening to Under the Dome on audiobook. *edit2* The narrator is making Rusty sound like he is Keanu Reeves from Bill & Ted. Locus fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jun 16, 2010 |
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Jun 16, 2010 00:51
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Sporadic posted:Actually, Joe Hill has a story kind of like that in the end of 20th Century Ghosts. King did the "typewriter writes by itself" bit in "The Flexible Bullet"(pretty sure that's the title), in which an author goes nuts and kills himself after the magic elf in his typewriter is murdered by his maid's mischevious son. Not such a bad story, but obviously goofy as hell.
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Jun 16, 2010 05:32
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Protocol 5 posted:King did the "typewriter writes by itself" bit in "The Flexible Bullet"(pretty sure that's the title), in which an author goes nuts and kills himself after the magic elf in his typewriter is murdered by his maid's mischevious son. Not such a bad story, but obviously goofy as hell. I think it was "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet." But lots of King stories could be called goofy as hell in concept or explaining the story. It's his characterization that makes lots of his stuff worth reading. At least his early stuff. To me, his later stuff shows a drastic decline in quality for about the last 8 years or so. But really, there are some goofy concepts in his stuff. "Word Processor of the Gods." "Gray Matter." "The Mangler." "Thinner." "Chattery Teeth." "The Cat From Hell." All decent enough stories reading them but explaining aloud kind of sounds dumb.
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Jun 16, 2010 05:55
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Ninja Bob posted:I actually feel a lot like you do about The Gunslinger, and I enjoyed the next two or three books much more. The Drawing of The Three is probably one of my favorites, so I would push on if you're not hating it too much and see how you feel about book 2. It's definitely tonally different, and it gets away from the western thing quite a bit. Just wanted to say I'm glad I took your advice and got through book one. Drawing of Three is so good so far that I stayed up reading it until I fell asleep with my face in the book.
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Jun 16, 2010 19:35
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I haven't read many Stephen King books, but I would like to read another soon. The ones I have read are Cell, The Dead Zone, The Shining, and Regulators. I liked all of them except Cell (it was OK, but the weakest of the 4). The one thing I really like about King's novels are his characters - he develops them very well.
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Jun 16, 2010 20:48
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I'm going to go out on a different limb and say Salem's Lot. It was the first King I read, and I remember very little about it and was kind of disappointed. My mother built it up to be really scary, but I found my attentions wavering. Then I read a ton of his short stories, was totally psyched, read IT and loved it to pieces, and just tore through a bunch of his other stuff. I may go and revisit it sometime in the future. As for favourite? It, hands down. I read it when I was 11, so the childhood parts resonated deeply with me - and no, that bit at the end didn't bother me. I will say, though, I skip the intermediary bits about the history of IT in Derry, because most of them are boring as gently caress.
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Jun 17, 2010 00:13
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oldpainless posted:"Word Processor of the Gods." They did an adaptation of this on Tales From the Darkside. Mostly faithful to the original, but, man, was it ever low budget.
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Jun 17, 2010 01:46
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TonTon posted:I will say, though, I skip the intermediary bits about the history of IT in Derry, because most of them are boring as gently caress. That's too bad. I thought these were some of the creepiest and my most favorite parts of the book. Him describing all the incidents in the last 100-150 years where there is an episode of out of the ordinary violence that starts a cycle of IT feeding. I thought the best was the story of Claude Heroux who without any hint of emotion murdered like 4 people in a crowded bar dismembering them with an axe while everyone in the bar seemingly ignored it, and the guying recounting this story mentioning seeing a circus clown juggling and doing tricks for people in the next bar over.
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Jun 17, 2010 02:31
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Protocol 5 posted:King did the "typewriter writes by itself" bit in "The Flexible Bullet"(pretty sure that's the title), in which an author goes nuts and kills himself after the magic elf in his typewriter is murdered by his maid's mischevious son. Not such a bad story, but obviously goofy as hell. Maybe its a metaphor for King's drugs taking over his writing. whoa
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Jun 17, 2010 03:40
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TonTon posted:I'm going to go out on a different limb and say Salem's Lot. It was the first King I read, and I remember very little about it and was kind of disappointed. My mother built it up to be really scary, but I found my attentions wavering. Then I read a ton of his short stories, was totally psyched, read IT and loved it to pieces, and just tore through a bunch of his other stuff. I may go and revisit it sometime in the future. Salem's Lot is far and away my favorite King book. Honestly, I think it's because of the tertiary work he does building up the background of the town that I love it so much. It's small town America with Vampires, and it works.
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Jun 17, 2010 19:49
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hatelull posted:Salem's Lot is far and away my favorite King book. Honestly, I think it's because of the tertiary work he does building up the background of the town that I love it so much. It's small town America with Vampires, and it works. Totally. The town is the main character in the novel and the work King does giving it a history ups the impact of the later vampire scenes. It's also one of the better examples of a theme King plays with constantly - that is, evil as a sort of atmospheric stain that transcends its perpetrators. Really, the town was scary before the vampires ever arrived. Probably one of my favorite vampire books out there. Red Pyramid fucked around with this message at 20:22 on Jun 17, 2010 |
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Jun 17, 2010 20:13
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While I enjoyed the atmosphere of 'Salem's Lot, I was unhappy with the book because the most dynamic character of the book, Father Callahan, an alcoholic priest looking for true evil so he can define himself by its existence, leaves the story without a satisfying resolution to his character or moral dilemma. The most powerful scene in the book is the priest confronting Barlow, finding evidence of his faith, and then faltering and losing it and becoming infected by the vampire, and it's followed up by a quiet bus ride out of town with the priest staring out the window, as if we were watching a Sofia Coppola movie. Luckily, King revisits him in another series to give us closure, but I don't think 'Salem's Lot stands very well on its own.
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Jun 17, 2010 21:07
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var1ety posted:Luckily, King revisits him in another series to give us closure, but I don't think 'Salem's Lot stands very well on its own. given that 'Salem's Lot comes before all this every-book-must-be-connected stuff he's been on, i'd claim that it stands on its own better than most (if not all) of his work. janklow fucked around with this message at 08:33 on Jun 18, 2010 |
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Jun 18, 2010 08:30
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fishmech posted:The thing is he was also doing that poo poo before On Writing. I'm pretty sure somewhere in it he mentions that this is something along the lines of "do as I say, not as I do, because I have the luxury of being a famous author and you are just starting out and can't get away with what I do yet". Yeah, it crops up in almost every book. I'm reading The Stand right now, and it's dotted with just loving horrible adverbs. "He waved smilingly at the parking lot" is the worst offender so far. How did that poo poo even make it off the typewriter? Reading On Writing was strange, because it's obvious King really knows his poo poo about what makes a story work and what doesn't. It's clear he's an immensely good writer at heart, who should by all accounts be a lot better than a lot of his work would suggest. Leovinus fucked around with this message at 15:51 on Jun 19, 2010 |
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Jun 19, 2010 15:46
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Leovinus posted:Yeah, it crops up in almost every book. I'm reading The Stand right now, and it's dotted with just loving horrible adverbs. I'm in the middle of On Writing just now and just read the part you quoted a few days ago. King suggested using -ly adverbs only when there was no other alternative and he goes on to admit that he was guilty of it himself. Your example is pretty bad though. "Smiling, he waved at the parking lot" or "He waved at the parking lot with a smile", would have been better choices but then I'm not a professional writer. I suppose we can forgive King because he was most likely high on coke at the time he wrote that and by that time in his career he was so famous that his editor and publisher probably just didn't care. Remember, publishers are only interested in books that are going to sell (which is why we get poo poo like Dan Brown and Twilight on the market). A book can be forgiven its poor writing if it's a best seller (in the eyes of the publisher at least). Varicose Brains fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Jun 19, 2010 |
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Jun 19, 2010 16:07
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3Romeo posted:Among the turds he has some really good loving books. The Shining, The Stand, Misery, Different Seasons, Hearts in Atlantis, and On Writing come to mind. None of them are perfect and some are pretty clunky, but they tell good stories full of good characters and are worth reading. At least I think so. Considering how good The Stand starts out, the depths of stupidity the second half reaches makes it almost unbearable to finish. randomfatguy fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Jun 30, 2010 |
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Jun 30, 2010 01:43
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Just after sunset isn't complete poo poo. Probably because it is just short stories.
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Jun 30, 2010 03:33
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Is there any info on the interplay between Stephen King and Dean Koontz's books? I very unfortunately got exposed to a lot of Koontz writing this year in audiobook format, and I wonder about some similarities between their work. Also after overdosing on Koontz I no longer have the heart to heavily criticize anything King does. Also, I thought Under the Dome was just ok. It felt weird compared to his usual style, the whole book moved slow, and the one-dimensional characters bothered me.
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Jun 30, 2010 04:15
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Locus posted:Is there any info on the interplay between Stephen King and Dean Koontz's books? I very unfortunately got exposed to a lot of Koontz writing this year in audiobook format, and I wonder about some similarities between their work. Also after overdosing on Koontz I no longer have the heart to heavily criticize anything King does. Read some John Saul and even Koontz starts looking like a loving genius.
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Jun 30, 2010 05:11
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Rev. Bleech_ posted:Read some John Saul and even Koontz starts looking like a loving genius. Read Taken or The Taking or whatever the gently caress it's called. It has all 3 of his endings in one book. Though the frankenstein books were good.
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Jul 1, 2010 02:49
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randomfatguy posted:Considering how good The Stand starts out, the depths of stupidity the second half reaches makes it almost unbearable to finish. Honestly? I had no problem with any of it, and it's still one of my favorite books. Though, to be fair, I read it first when I was twelve (over many long nights during summer break), right around that age when you're still exposed to new things and those new things have a way of becoming your favorite things. I guess maybe because kids at that age don't yet have a comparative mind. I dunno. I still don't have a problem with the ending, which most people do: that hand of god thing. I had a problem with the television version, where the hand is an actual hand and Mother Abagail's voice makes everything better (it didn't). I pictured it like a fist. To me the ending fit the theme of the book: the Biblical sacrifice. Good guys dying along with the bad to make the world a better place.
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Jul 1, 2010 03:10
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I wish HBO or FX would redo The Stand, maybe like a 4 or 6 part version. To be fair to the ABC version, I was amazed at what they got past censors at the time. But I'd really like to see a longer version with a larger budget, better casting, and more material from the book included.
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Jul 2, 2010 17:40
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**nvm totally misremembering
Raskolnikov2089 fucked around with this message at 23:56 on Jul 2, 2010 |
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Jul 2, 2010 23:54
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Crooked Vulture posted:I wish HBO or FX would redo The Stand, maybe like a 4 or 6 part version. To be fair to the ABC version, I was amazed at what they got past censors at the time. But I'd really like to see a longer version with a larger budget, better casting, and more material from the book included. Maybe no gay anal rape with firearm barrel during handjob though, thanks in advance.
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Jul 3, 2010 00:41
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My choice for worst goes with Tommyknockers ,Regulators, and Dreamcatcher. Tommyknockers was the only book where his rampant drug use was apparent and filled with so many "What the Christ?!" moments. Speaking of drug use, if I didn't know better I would have been positive Dreamcatcher was written under the influence of drugs with the "poo poo Weasels". The only thing positive I have to say about it is that it received a fairly faithful movie adaptation. Regulators was funny for a bit when the Power Rangers archetype start going on a rampage. Then it gets loving boring. Rev. Bleech_ posted:Read some John Saul and even Koontz starts looking like a loving genius. Believe or not I actually did come across two of Koontz's books that were decent. Fear Nothing and it's sequel Seize the Night. Granted they're nothing groundbreaking but for books about malevolent super intelligent primates but I actually managed to finish them without forcing myself to.The rest of his stuff is trash though. I spoilered the last part because it's bordering on a major plot point. Cattywampus fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jul 9, 2010 |
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Jul 9, 2010 21:24
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^^I only liked Regulators in relation to Desperation. By itself, Desperation was a much better read. Loved Tommyknockers, though...hated the miniseries.zacpol posted:The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon was pretty horrible. The fact that it was later made into a children's book doesn't help much, either. The first real novel I ever read was Pet Sematary. I wanted to see the movie but my parents wouldn't let me so I thought I'd trick them with "can I see the movie if I read the book first?" I'm honestly not sure I'd love reading as much as I do if not for learning that lesson. I went on to read all of his books...The Talisman I think was close to the best. A friend of mine recently gave me the pop-up book treatment of Gordon...I enjoyed it quite a bit more than the straight text version, which is to say it really sucks as a book. Dreamcatcher was horrible. That book made me boycott King...I broke down to read Cell, which I didn't hate. I almost picked up Under the Dome yesterday, but opted for Johannes Cabal instead. Sorry, Steve.
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Jul 9, 2010 22:45
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Polygamy posted:Believe or not I actually did come across two of Koontz's books that were decent. Fear Nothing and it's sequel Seize the Night. Granted they're nothing groundbreaking but for books about malevolent super intelligent primates but I actually managed to finish them without forcing myself to.The rest of his stuff is trash though. Koontz's Odd Thomas books are pretty good too.
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Jul 9, 2010 22:56
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juliuspringle posted:Koontz's Odd Thomas books are pretty good too. I hate them. ARRRGH t  >At least they have less magical dogs than usual though. Unless I'm misremembering.
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Jul 9, 2010 23:23
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Locus posted:I hate them. ARRRGH t Read the Taken or the Taking or whatever it is. It has all 3 Koontzian endings in one book. Wolves of the Calla is where the Dark Tower jumped the billy-bumbler right? So far I have books 1-4 but I'm thinking of not getting the books after it goes to poo poo. \/\/\/ I've read the entire series but now I'm trying to catch 'em all. \/\/\/ juliuspringle fucked around with this message at 23:39 on Jul 9, 2010 |
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Jul 9, 2010 23:31
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juliuspringle posted:Read the Taken or the Taking or whatever it is. It has all 3 Koontzian endings in one book. I would at least read the parts in 5 and 6 about the priest from Salem's Lot (heck take those out of 5 and 6 and they'd make an excellent short story or novella), and definitely read 7.
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Jul 9, 2010 23:36
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