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nate fisher posted:Just curious have you have read salem's Lot and/or Cujo? I read 'Salem's Lot. Granted it was a long time ago but I don't feel the need to re-read it. I haven't read Cujo, just because the premise doesn't really sound all that appealing to me. So Needful Things is worth reading if I just don't expect it to outshine anything else I listed?
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Oct 15, 2013 01:57
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I don't want to sound like I'm nitpicking, though, at this point looking for his weird gun stuff is like a tradition for me.
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Oct 15, 2013 04:06
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SnowDog posted:King hates the gun culture in America and I'm pretty sure he's trolling us intentionally at this point. Yeah, and joe hill is an even bigger political whackjob than his dad.
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Oct 15, 2013 04:24
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Damo posted:I read 'Salem's Lot. Granted it was a long time ago but I don't feel the need to re-read it. I haven't read Cujo, just because the premise doesn't really sound all that appealing to me. Needful Things is its own little category. Except for possibly that spider scene with Alan, it's not scary. It veers more to humor, I mean it's a practical joke war gone insane. I like it quite a bit. Let's look at the rest of the list: quote:Roadwork, It, The Shining, Pet Semetary Except for perhaps The Shining, I like Needful Things more than the rest. Perhaps because of its absurdity, on some days I like it more. Whereas the latter three from your list are rooted in horror, Needful Things isn't. Roadwork, on the other hand, is a realistic mental breakdown. It's a Bachman book and serious in tone.
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Oct 15, 2013 07:12
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iostream.h posted:Yeah, and joe hill is an even bigger political whackjob than his dad. Unless all the anti-nuclear rants in Tommyknockers represent King's own views, he just strikes me as an old hippie. His essay about why he should pay more taxes was great. I haven't heard anything about Joe Hill being crazy either. Do we talk about his books in this thread? Horns was great.
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Oct 15, 2013 09:03
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Damo posted:So Needful Things is worth reading if I just don't expect it to outshine anything else I listed? Needful Things is a lot of fun and is worth your time.
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Oct 15, 2013 12:55
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As a lifelong King fan (we're both from Maine, not that that means anything other than I can recognize the character of some of his settings), I really love a lot of his books, but there have been plenty of disappointing ones. I'd have to say that my least favorite novels are Dreamcatcher and Rose Madder. The former was just insane and absurd, but the latter really bugged me because of the lack of catharsis. The antagonist kills a bunch of people in the process of hunting down his wife, and then basically disappears via magic. Really, Steve? One of the biggest problems I've noticed in King's work is he has really amazing ideas, but very frequently has trouble writing an ending for them. The Stand, Needful Things and Cell all have pretty ridiculous endings. (Needful Things' movie version had a much better ending than the book.) 11/22/63 is my favorite King novel now, in large part because it holds up through the end. In the afterword he admitted that he has problems with endings, and so had his son Joe Hill help him with it, and that's why it turned out so great.
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Oct 15, 2013 18:13
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Count Chocula posted:Unless all the anti-nuclear rants in Tommyknockers represent King's own views, he just strikes me as an old hippie. His essay about why he should pay more taxes was great. I haven't heard anything about Joe Hill being crazy either. Do we talk about his books in this thread? Horns was great. He was anti-nuclear at the time he wrote the Tommyknockers but he was also hopped up on all kinds of drugs and generally paranoid at the same time. He's not anymore, so far as I've heard.
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Oct 15, 2013 18:19
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I finished Doctor Sleep and I think it's one of my least favorite of the recent King books. I liked 11/22/63, Under the Dome, and Joyland more than that. I enjoyed reading about Dan's recovery but the True were boring villains and the bit at the end where he decides that Dan and Abra's mom are related was just unnecessary.
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Oct 16, 2013 15:51
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Damo posted:I read 'Salem's Lot. Granted it was a long time ago but I don't feel the need to re-read it. I haven't read Cujo, just because the premise doesn't really sound all that appealing to me. Needful Things is actually pretty hilarious. It's hardly a horror or thriller novel; I got the sense that he was enjoying destroying the world he created.
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Oct 16, 2013 16:28
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Damo posted:Out of these older SK books, are any worth skipping or is my reading list worth the time? Roadwork, Needful Things, It, The Shining, Pet Semetary, and the 4 short story collections (Night Shift, Different Seasons, Skeleton Crew, Nightmares & Dreamscapes) I can never make it through It even though it's near the top of everyone else's list. I think it's a combination of the book being overlong (at least half of his books are, so this usually is surmountable for me) and a bit of a mess narratively with the constant flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, and shifting character perspectives. The actually scary parts of the book are as good as anything he's written, but I find it a slog to get to those parts. I mostly agree with what others said, though I'd like to specifically mention that I really loved Bag of Bones, which tends to get lost in the shuffle of all the mediocre-to-lovely stuff he wrote in the 90's and early 00's. I'd say it's more eerie than scary, but it's really well-written. You might also want to check out Duma Key if you haven't, as it's probably the consensus choice for when he really started to return to form.
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Oct 16, 2013 17:08
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Schlitzkrieg Bop posted:I can never make it through It even though it's near the top of everyone else's list. I think it's a combination of the book being overlong (at least half of his books are, so this usually is surmountable for me) and a bit of a mess narratively with the constant flashbacks, and flashbacks within flashbacks, and shifting character perspectives. The actually scary parts of the book are as good as anything he's written, but I find it a slog to get to those parts. Same here, and I also have the image in my mind of John Boy methodically stabbing the creature when I try to read It. From a Buick 8 is also a terrible slog. Very little ever happens, and it just goes on and on and on.
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Oct 16, 2013 18:51
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Is "The Gunslinger" worth reading on its own, or does it just kinda end up going nowhere without the rest of the series (which I understand only gets worse)?
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Oct 16, 2013 19:17
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M.C. McMic posted:Is "The Gunslinger" worth reading on its own, or does it just kinda end up going nowhere without the rest of the series (which I understand only gets worse)? The first 3-4 are all really good, but if you read that far you will probably end up reading the bad fifth book or even, god forbid, the sixth. I think just reading The Gunslinger is your best bet for not getting sucked in to the whole thing, but The Drawing of the Three and particularly The Waste Lands really are the best in the series.
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Oct 16, 2013 19:45
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Greggy posted:The first 3-4 are all really good, but if you read that far you will probably end up reading the bad fifth book or even, god forbid, the sixth. I think just reading The Gunslinger is your best bet for not getting sucked in to the whole thing, but The Drawing of the Three and particularly The Waste Lands really are the best in the series. For me now that I've read them all, I look at the overall experience and I would tell people that it is worth it. Yes there will be a book or two that you may not like(I happen to like Wizard & Glass a lot while others hate it, so its obviously subjective) but I think everything the series offers makes it a journey I'm glad I took. That's one of the main strengths of the series I'd say, by the end you really feel like you've been along for the ride on an epic quest, and you can appreciate how rundown and physically/emotionally exhausted the characters are.
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Oct 16, 2013 21:06
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Yeah, I definitely think that on the whole it's worth it, I just meant if you don't want to stay for the entire ride number 3 is probably where to stop.
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Oct 16, 2013 21:17
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M.C. McMic posted:Is "The Gunslinger" worth reading on its own, or does it just kinda end up going nowhere without the rest of the series (which I understand only gets worse)? I honestly think that a pre-revised and expanded copy of "The Gunslinger" is a great standalone read if you want it to be. It feels like a nice standalone 1970's Dying Earth novel - it has that bleak, muted tone, the fun little post-post-apocalyptic hints, and it ends in a spot where you're comfortable moving on if you want to. I really hate the revisions that King did, though, even if you're planning on continuing with the series. They feel very awkward and "Star Wars Special Edition" to me, like they've been clumsily shoehorned in, and are very unsubtle and attention-grabbing in an off-putting way.
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Oct 16, 2013 21:21
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Honestly, except for the meta-fiction poo poo, it isn't a bad series, and really does a fine job shaking up the standard Norse/European/Tolkien-derivative garbage that's clogged the fantasy market for the last thirty or so years. That said, when it nosedives, it doesn't gently caress around; it goes from sex to sticking your dick in a blender in record time.
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Oct 16, 2013 21:59
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Cry thy pardon, Eddie-san! Just let me get some hunch-think from my magic raccoon! D'ye ken hunch think, commala?
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Oct 16, 2013 22:30
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Greggy posted:Yeah, I definitely think that on the whole it's worth it, I just meant if you don't want to stay for the entire ride number 3 is probably where to stop. Then go on to read the short 'Little Sisters of Eluria' (I actually think this fits better in between books 2 and 3 even though the events preceded those in 'the Gunslinger') and finish up with the last book and most importantly STOP WHERE STEPHEN KING SAYS TO STOP.
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Oct 16, 2013 22:44
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3Romeo posted:Honestly, except for the meta-fiction poo poo, it isn't a bad series, and really does a fine job shaking up the standard Norse/European/Tolkien-derivative garbage that's clogged the fantasy market for the last thirty or so years. It's just so goddamned good through #4, too! 
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Oct 16, 2013 22:55
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jfjnpxmy posted:Cry thy pardon, Eddie-san! Just let me get some hunch-think from my magic raccoon! D'ye ken hunch think, commala? gently caress you, Oy is awesome.
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Oct 16, 2013 23:15
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3Romeo posted:That said, when it nosedives, it doesn't gently caress around; it goes from sex to sticking your dick in a blender in record time. OK that's funny right there.
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Oct 16, 2013 23:22
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I have a 3 hour round trip commute every day, so I spend a lot of time listening to audio books. I had never read King (either as a kid or during the last 4 years of audio book listening), but 11-22-63 intrigued me, so I gave it a go. It ended up being one of all time favorites, so now I'm on a King binge. I just finished The Stand last week, loved the hell out of it, and now I'm about 1/6 into Under the Dome. For someone who really appreciated The Stand, what would be a good novel to hit after Dome?
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Oct 16, 2013 23:42
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eyebeem posted:I have a 3 hour round trip commute every day, so I spend a lot of time listening to audio books. I had never read King (either as a kid or during the last 4 years of audio book listening), but 11-22-63 intrigued me, so I gave it a go. It ended up being one of all time favorites, so now I'm on a King binge. The Stand, The Shining, Salem's Lot, and It are typically regarded as his best.
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Oct 16, 2013 23:44
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Those are all good choices. I'd also recommend: The Long Walk and The Running Man, both of which were written as Richard Bachmann. Night Shift and Skeleton Crew are two short story collections, both of which are really good. ladyfingers they taste just like ladyfingers The Dead Zone is one of his best. The first four Dark Tower books(Gunslinger, Drawing of the Three, Wasteland, Wizard and Glass) are all really good, but you probably want to stop reading after book 4 and just pretend that he never finished the series. A few posts above this, somebody says they go from sex to blenderdick in no time at all, and that's pretty loving accurate. You've been warned.
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Oct 17, 2013 00:02
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jfjnpxmy posted:Cry thy pardon, Eddie-san! Just let me get some hunch-think from my magic raccoon! D'ye ken hunch think, commala? Hahaha! Yeah, this. It ended up being a parody of itself by the end.
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Oct 17, 2013 00:18
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It would be weird as hell (for me) to have a series of 8 books, read the first 3, enjoy them, and then stop because some stranger on the internet said the rest suck. You can read the Gunslinger alone and enjoy it, but you'll probably want to read more, and the 2nd and 3rd books are the best in the series as far as I'm concerned. The series has some low points (the 6th book is pretty much liked by nobody) but it's worth reading the whole thing overall, if you ask me!
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Oct 17, 2013 00:21
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Well, yeah. The main reason you tell them that is so that you can say "Told you so!" after they read the last three and come in raging about how horrible they are.
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Oct 17, 2013 01:28
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ConfusedUs posted:The Stand, The Shining, Salem's Lot, and It are typically regarded as his best. Out of interest I searched Goodreads' lists feature and there's a "Best of Stephen King" list with 1705 people voting on it. Top 20 are: 1. The Stand 2. It 3. The Shining 4. Misery 5. Salem's Lot 6. The Green Mile 7. Pet Sematary 8. The Gunslinger 9. Carrie 10. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption (Goodreads lets you put novellas apparently) 11. The Drawing of the Three 12. 11/22/63 13. The Dead Zone 14. Bag of Bones 15. The Waste Lands 16. Needful Things 17. The Talisman 18. Wizard and Glass 19. The Long Walk 20. On Writing Man, I need to add some books to my to read list. edit: "Worst Stephen King" list, 313 voters: 1. Gerald's Game 2. The Tommyknockers 3. Cell 4. The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon 5. Lisey's Story 6. Dreamcatcher 7. Rose Madder 8. Cujo 9. Insomnia 10. From a Buick 8 Hedrigall fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 01:31
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Khizan posted:Well, yeah. Or because the guy who started the conversation specifically asked if he should read the first one and not the rest. I know you mean generally and you're spot on for that, but I only said "read the first 3" because MC McMic asked about just reading The Gunslinger. Greggy fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Oct 17, 2013 |
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Oct 17, 2013 01:33
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Hedrigall posted:Out of interest I searched Goodreads' lists feature and there's a "Best of Stephen King" list with 1705 people voting on it. Top 20 are: I'm surprised at Misery and Bag of Bones being so high on the list. I barely remember the former and actively dislike the latter. I agree with the rest of them!
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Oct 17, 2013 01:35
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Khizan posted:The first four Dark Tower books(Gunslinger, Drawing of the Three, Wasteland, Wizard and Glass) are all really good, but you probably want to stop reading after book 4 and just pretend that he never finished the series. If you can find them and are so inclined, look for the first three audiobooks read by King himself. His hilariously bad Detta accent is amazing.
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Oct 17, 2013 02:09
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Hedrigall posted:Out of interest I searched Goodreads' lists feature and there's a "Best of Stephen King" list with 1705 people voting on it. Top 20 are: I don't agree at all with Gerald's Game being the worse, but Cujo? Cujo and it's sub-story about the disintegration of a family was well written despite King being drunk during the writing. That said the list of the best is not bad, but My top 5 would be- 1-The Shining 2-The Stand 3- Salem's Lot (which is my favorite King novel despite not being the best) 4- It 5- Pet Sematary Only thing that would change that would be if we could count Different Seasons or Night Shift as a whole.
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Oct 17, 2013 02:14
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A top 20 Stephen King list that doesn't include the Running Man can't be trusted, imo.
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Oct 17, 2013 02:32
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Hedrigall posted:
Those bastards. I really liked Lisey's story. It's kind of like Doctor Sleep, where I would have been fine if the conflict of the novel was excised and it focused on the two characters, but something about that book was so compelling.
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Oct 17, 2013 02:51
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Khizan posted:A top 20 Stephen King list that doesn't include the Running Man can't be trusted, imo. Bingo, The Running Man and The Long Walk are both awesome on their own. When you compare them to the other books in his collection though, it really shows the diversity in King's writing. Also, totally don't agree with Tommyknockers being on the worst list. I really like it, and reread it every once in a while. As other's have pointed out, it pretty much avoids all of King's crutches and weaknesses.
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Oct 17, 2013 03:11
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So what was changed in the revised Gunslinger?
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Oct 17, 2013 03:45
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Blade_of_tyshalle posted:So what was changed in the revised Gunslinger? It was made into one continuously flowing story instead of what was clearly several connected short stories written over several years. Additionally some things were added to foreshadow later events more clearly. The first story of the book had been started in 1970 - the final one in it had been finished in 1981 and the whole 5 story set had been partially patched up into novel form for the 1982 release by adding a small amount of transition text between stories.
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Oct 17, 2013 03:53
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I think the original is better, though. I didn't read the entire revised edition, granted, and just skimmed the first section, but it seemed to have too much of the "Cry pardon do ya ken commala?" type crap that infested the later books for my tastes. The original book had this weird stark strange beauty that made me love the world and the idea of it. The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. The revised lost a lot of that, I think.
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Oct 17, 2013 04:01
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