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Hughmoris posted:Ok, I just finished The Shining and absolutely loved it. What book of his should I go to next? Salem's Lot? Misery. Ignore the others.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:17
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Read Salems Lot, or if you want a shorter story, The Long Walk. The Long Walk is actually King's first story. It was written before Carrie.
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Nov 7, 2014 15:21
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Misery, Salem's Lot, Dead Zone or Firestarter. Pet Semetary is not overrated. If 50 pages of setting, character and plot development (which make the later sections of the book so effective and gruelling) are "boring" then I suspect there's no point us explaining why not one page of this book is superfluous and how this is the most disturbing book because we see the suffering and death of characters we really know and care about precisely because we have got to know and like them during the opening part of the book.
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Nov 7, 2014 19:54
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:
It's the other way around. I read King for stuff like Pennywise and Captain Tripps. Pet Semetary was way too much doctor working at a college, talking to his old neighbor, etc. It's not that I don't like slower, character centered books. But for that, I read much better writers than King (who I am still a huge fan of).
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Nov 7, 2014 20:00
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Long Walk for something shorter. Needful Things for another epic and one of King's funnier ones. No town-wide massacre should be as gleeful as this one.
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Nov 7, 2014 20:20
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blue squares posted:It's the other way around. I read King for stuff like Pennywise and Captain Tripps. Pet Semetary was way too much doctor working at a college, talking to his old neighbor, etc. It's not that I don't like slower, character centered books. But for that, I read much better writers than King (who I am still a huge fan of). Fair enough. If a person reads King for shocks and gore then granted PS is not the book for that. I would say disturbing material is not quite the same as horrific, surprising or shocking material. Long Walk is also a good call - very approachable for a newbie.
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Nov 7, 2014 20:35
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King has a new collection coming out next fall, titled The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. I've read some of the stories that I assume will be included, and they hearken back to his earlier years so I'm tentatively excited.
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Nov 8, 2014 02:38
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Ornamented Death posted:King has a new collection coming out next fall, titled The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. I've read some of the stories that I assume will be included, and they hearken back to his earlier years so I'm tentatively excited. That sounds like a bazaar I would walk through without buying anything. Wonder how their trade is. I like his short fiction better than the long (certainly recently) so I might check that out. It would be nice to get a "Complete Stories" (in 2 or 3 volumes?) at some point.
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Nov 8, 2014 10:24
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First review of Revival: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/revival-by-stephen-king-book-review-9846949.html "Where Revival falls down, if not quite apart, is in its climax. The problem isn’t entirely the genre familiarity. King riffs deftly on pulp fiction’s great set-pieces. But after Revival’s finely judged first 5/6ths, the conclusion feels rushed and unbalanced." Oh no...How familiar does that seem? 
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Nov 8, 2014 12:05
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On the other hand: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.ht...d_i=10207069011 (check out #6)
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Nov 8, 2014 16:09
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I'm in Maine for business for a week and I've discovered that the Maine accent is totally a real thing. Every old person sounds like they're straight out of a King novel. Ayuh.
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Nov 8, 2014 16:12
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:First review of Revival: The Guardian actually suggests it's a good ending.
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Nov 8, 2014 17:05
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Josef K. Sourdust posted:First review of Revival: So... it's a Stephen King novel then. I think we all know what we're getting into at this point.
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Nov 8, 2014 18:25
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Meanwhile, The Tommyknockers is wildly underrated. That book actually made me nauseous. take this eat and eat this eat
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Nov 9, 2014 03:50
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Magic Hate Ball posted:Meanwhile, The Tommyknockers is wildly underrated. That book actually made me nauseous. I loved "Tommyknockers." The ending - Gard's death; Hilly and David reunited - still sticks with me.
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Nov 9, 2014 20:56
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Just finished Joyland and I really enjoyed it. The funny thing is that I enjoyed it despite not caring at all about the murder aspect of it. If the book ended 12 hours earlier and had no resolution to the murder plot I'd have been just as satisfied.
joepinetree fucked around with this message at 23:52 on Nov 10, 2014 |
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Nov 10, 2014 21:26
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joepinetree posted:Just finished Joyland and I really enjoyed it. The funny thing is that I enjoyed it despite not caring at all about the murder aspect of it. If the book 12 hours earlier and had no resolution to the murder plot I'd have been just as satisfied. "so far nothing is happening but I'm not bored." is the most accurate review of Joyland I've ever seen.
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Nov 10, 2014 22:02
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Stroth posted:"so far nothing is happening but I'm not bored." is the most accurate review of Joyland I've ever seen. I think this applies to "A Buick 8" and "Insomnia" as well. I enjoyed both greatly.
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Nov 11, 2014 00:50
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So, Revival comes out tomorrow. How many people are getting it? I'll get my copy on Saturday when Stephen signs it and hands it to me personally.
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Nov 11, 2014 01:56
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blue squares posted:So, Revival comes out tomorrow. How many people are getting it? I'll get my copy on Saturday when Stephen signs it and hands it to me personally. My finger is hovering over the "Buy It Now" button, waiting for the crack of midnight. I will no doubt be disappointed as I am by so many things: new Stephen King novels, boxed mac & cheese, sex, life in general
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Nov 11, 2014 04:31
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I was trying to decide between Mr. Mercedes and Revival, and I decided to take my chances with Revival, so I pre-ordered it. I hope I chose wisely.
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Nov 11, 2014 05:16
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Pheeets posted:My finger is hovering over the "Buy It Now" button, waiting for the crack of midnight. I will no doubt be disappointed as I am by so many things: new Stephen King novels, boxed mac & cheese, sex, life in general Maybe you're not doing these things right. I would suggest adding frozen peas to the Kraft dinner, after that I got nothing.
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Nov 11, 2014 06:04
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Pheeets posted:My finger is hovering over the "Buy It Now" button, waiting for the crack of midnight. "Ayuh. Wait till full dark." When he swallowed, something in his throat clicked audibly.
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Nov 11, 2014 21:06
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Spent the morning reading Revival. No spoilers here, but it's what the slipcover promised. It's more typically Stephen King than Mr. Mercedes was. I enjoyed it, though I couldn't say which other book of his it reminds me of most, which may not be a bad thing, that it's not a bad clone of something else. There's some Dark Half, some Duma Key, some Dead Zone, it's all in there. Bleak, though. loving bleak and unsettling, which is no mean feat for me. I'll leave you all to find our for yourselves. I don't think the world will collapse if you don't run out and by it day-of, but I'm glad I did. Aquarium Gravel fucked around with this message at 00:25 on Nov 12, 2014 |
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Nov 11, 2014 21:07
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Christ man, I read fast and didn't really have anything I had to do today and I'm only halfway through it.
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Nov 12, 2014 04:26
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kenny powerzzz posted:Christ man, I read fast and didn't really have anything I had to do today and I'm only halfway through it. Same here, but I'm deliberately trying to slow down because this is waaay better than his last two. Edit: There was nice kind of a cameo appearance in Revival - the main character walks through Dorrance Marstellar's fields; Marstellar was one of the more interesting characters from Insomnia. I like these little easter eggs. Pheeets fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Nov 12, 2014 |
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Nov 12, 2014 04:31
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I read fast, but the real deciding factor is that when I have a new book that I am enjoying, I don't have too much luck getting anything else done. That said, today was a half day of work for me, so I had the leisure. I wish I could slow down and enjoy it, but it doesn't work that way for me on the first read-through. That said, I won't mind re-reading this one fairly soon. It's still been sinking in, and the more space I gain on having read it, the more I like it. It doesn't connect up with anything else he's written, really - there's Castle Rock which never seems to face the events of Needful Things, and a passing mention of Joyland and "carny-from-carny", but really, with the subject matter, this is a benefit. The events of Revival are better for being independent of the Dark Tower saga, because when you're discussing that nature of death, Lovecraftian entities and doorways into the afterlife, tying the story to expectations that the world of Revival works the same way as the Dark Tower worlds, would blunt the impact of what happens. It's far better to leave the rules and expectations open-ended, and it delivers, IMHO.
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Nov 12, 2014 04:56
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Just finished reading Night Shift for the first time. I enjoyed most of them, but didn't really like "Battleground". Something about the way it was written made my mind keep wanting to go into skimming mode, like I tend to do on the slower parts of It and the Stand. I wasn't a big fan of Strawberry Spring either. My favorite one was probably the first story, Jerusalem's Lot. Now I have to decide if I should read the rest of Everything's Eventual (I only read 1408 so far), or check out Revival. Or both.
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Nov 12, 2014 12:25
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Aquarium Gravel posted:Spent the morning reading Revival. No spoilers here, but it's what the slipcover promised. It's more typically Stephen King than Mr. Mercedes was. Bleak and unsettling usually makes for some of the better King imo, so I'm psyched to read this now.
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Nov 13, 2014 04:14
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I liked it. It's definitely "newer King" or whatever but the story is great, it has classic King characters and has a few ties to other books in the King (and Joe Hill I guess) universe and I always love that. The ending is a little weak I thought but I think of it more like the end of a journey kinda thing rather than the last twenty minutes of a blockbuster thing. All in all I hope he continues to put stuff like this out for a long time.
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Nov 13, 2014 04:23
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Haven't been able to sleep lately so I've decided to reread Insomnia.
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Nov 13, 2014 04:59
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I lived in Bangor for a few years and it's so loving weird when you actually have to live there. It makes reading King's novels so much better. I bet you could still hitchhike in Maine to this day without getting hosed up. It's weird reading It and knowing the standpipe and poo poo.
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Nov 13, 2014 07:47
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kenny powerzzz posted:The ending is a little weak I thought but I think of it more like the end of a journey kinda thing rather than the last twenty minutes of a blockbuster thing. Yeah, I actually thought the ending/reveal would have been more impactful had it been even more vague. The simple idea of everyone that dies immediately entering a very real Hell is terrifying enough to stand on its own merits in the reader's imagination. Maybe just slightly less detail would have made that even creepier. I don't think we needed to actually hear the phrase "Great Old Ones" or get such a physical description of Mother and the aliens. Hard to walk that line, though, and King has never been a master of subtlety.
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Nov 13, 2014 15:48
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SmokaDustbowl posted:It's weird reading It and knowing the standpipe and poo poo. Isn't Derry a fictional town? Or did he just steal a lot of landmarks from Bangor and that's what you're referring to?
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Nov 13, 2014 18:48
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I agree with others, the ending of Revival was a bit weak; I felt almost like he chickened out at the end and just kind of clumsily rehashed some old elements from other stories for instance the Mystery of the Worm from Jerusalem's Lot. I feel like if he was going to bring those things up he should have explored them more in depth. There was not much meat at the end, basically. There was one element that I thought had great potential and that I thought would play a big creepy role in the climax "something happened, something happened" - seriously, WHAT happened??, but it was just abandoned, which was a great disappointment. It almost makes me want to write that story myself. All in all though, a good read for the story alone, definitely better than his last two.
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Nov 13, 2014 22:17
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I bought Revival, and read it in about four or five hours. I'd say that I enjoyed more than anything he's done since the 11/22/63. Every time I read a new King book, I'm reminded that I am a smaltzy bastard that tears up at the dumbest family nostalgia poo poo. I don't think anyone writes people(well, white people) better in pop fiction.
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Nov 14, 2014 21:47
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Aagar posted:Isn't Derry a fictional town? Or did he just steal a lot of landmarks from Bangor and that's what you're referring to? Derry is explicitly an evil version of Bangor with a little bit of another Maine city mixed in.
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Nov 15, 2014 05:18
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This should be linked again. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_Howard_(murder_victim) Adrian Mellon's murder in the book was based on this. Remember how in the book Adrian didn't believe Don that Derry was more hateful than other places, so to prove his point Don went show him some graffiti. quote:'Come down to Bassey Park with me," Don had replied, after seeing that Adrian really meant what he was saying — and what he was really saying was that Derry was no worse than any other fair-sized town in the hinterlands. 'I want to show you something, my love.' Now here's real life Bangor from that wikipedia article. quote:Memorial vandalized
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Nov 15, 2014 05:37
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I've been getting back into Stephen King over the last few months, having read a few books when I was a teenager and then not reading a thing by him throughout the entirety of my twenties. I picked up 11/22/63 earlier this year and loved it though, so I thought I'd give him another chance. Now I'm reading the classic The Stand for the first time. I'm on chapter five of what appears to be about a bajillion. Any recommendations of things to pay attention to for a first-time reader? So far it's great. I do have a complaint, though. When I was younger I just assumed King had an amazing worldly perspective of how people talk and the nuances of conversation. Now that I've read more of his books I'm starting to feel like half of what his characters say is almost nonsense. Does anyone else have a really hard time following character conversations in his books? Or is it just me? 
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Nov 15, 2014 07:49
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ExtraNoise posted:I've been getting back into Stephen King over the last few months, having read a few books when I was a teenager and then not reading a thing by him throughout the entirety of my twenties. I picked up 11/22/63 earlier this year and loved it though, so I thought I'd give him another chance. Now I'm reading the classic The Stand for the first time. I'm on chapter five of what appears to be about a bajillion. Any recommendations of things to pay attention to for a first-time reader? So far it's great. I could go on about this and I'm sure someone else will. Instead, I'm just going to offer this advice and hope it helps: Let King be King. He's got some very strong points and also weak ones. Just try to remember when each novel was published (the guy is so incredibly prolific it can be easy to forget social/converstaional/referential norms around when the books were written) and try to roll with it. He gets into different habits during different points of his career; but for the most part we just take King as King because he was writing in a genre that just didn't have a voice like his when he started. Now, you could (and I'm sure some have) write a dissertation on the different phases of his novels. They're basically pulp fiction, and should be treated as that kind of pleasure, with the occasional "holy poo poo I did not see that coming" flair; and please don't think about the dialogue too much. Just save yourself the trouble.
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Nov 15, 2014 08:31
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