I don't see why. I think the Dark Half is his best book. As for Barker thats pretty much all I've read of him apart from Cabal.

nah ... you have to understand 0 because of my age - i read each book as it came out .. i was so sick of his ass by the time i read the stand that i hated pretty much everything since... i just dont like his style ..

I never got thru the Stand I started it and just got bored with it. King was the first author I got into (well after S.E Hinton) as a kid so I've got a soft spot for him even tho I haven't bothered reading anything he's put out in the last 10 or 11 years (apart from starting Desperation which didn't seem to bad but I left my copy on a bus I think :) maybe someone else got a kick outta it).

You should read his newest book cell. Its really good, not like some of the junk he has put out lately.

I might just do that if it ends up cheap. I'd like to buy more books but there so expensive!

when i started hating King ... i discovered Graham Greene ..
once you discover that level of literary brilliance, there's no going back to the others.


s.e. hinton was good reading too..

Needful Things, Thinner, and The Regulators are a few I really enjoyed, of course there are more but these don't have any love yet so...
I liked King a lot and while he isn't the best writer he is a great storyteller. What I don't like is people who hate an author simply because of how popular they are and I'm not saying anybody here dislikes King because of that I just hate to see it.
King does seem to be losing his edge but you never know what he could come up with. Last I heard people think he wrote the Gary Troupe book which is supposed to be a great little mystery novel.
Tastes vary though, for instance I'd rather read any King novel than Old Man and the Sea and the latter, no matter what the King book, is probably the better written piece.

Dont get me wrong..I LOVE Kings fiction..well.I havent read a lot of his more recent books, altho i may get Cell.The way i think of it..what would horror be without Stephen King?..Would even half as many people today be reading horror if not for him?..he kind of in a way made horror a household name..and i dont see anyone in particular as a "god of horror".i'd say one of the older masters like Lovecraft,but,i understand some people may not be able to get in to his works..or at least some of them, altho.when you do..its worth it..believe me..but...in my opinion a lot of writers should just get more recognition..and i never said Clive Barker was a god of horror..just that he is an awesome writer..OF HORROR..sadly..his latest works are fantasy and i just dont get into that at all myself..but when Clives writing horror..even King himself said."He's better than me now".which..i dont know about that..but when he's writing horror..he is hard to beat. and i would also just like to see Robert R McCammon and Bently Little get the respect and admiration they deserve too!

i'd definately be the one reading Old Man and the Sea :D

How long can you drag a metaphor out for? That book bothers me to this day. Hemingway is a master but I really didn't like that one.

well its almost a novelette to begin with ..

i remember it being one of the first books that changed the way i looked at literature (catcher in the rye, one flew over the cuckoos, the pearl, and the pigman were the others ..

i thought it was compelling .. i was too young to appreciate the 'man against nature' metaphor (something that is still pretty timely...)

a book like this - that well written - speaks to me in ways that king has no hope to.

You're right, King has no chance of writing a book that speaks in volumes but he does tell a good story. Funny you mention Catcher in the Rye because I read that in the same week as Old Man... maybe that's why I wasn't impressed. Catcher was such a brilliant book, I'd like to read it yet again sometime. Anyway the only reason I mentioned that book in context with King's is that I read Old Man, Catcher, Needful Things, and Animal Farm back to back and somtimes overlapping and really the only one I didn't enjoy was Old Man. To each his own. :)

i find King to be a crafty story teller ... more than a good one ..

i'm just tired of his tricks ..(jumping back and forth in time, feeding you a little bit.. making you plod on for the next tidbit ...)

probably any one of his books i would have liked ok (well, maybe a few anyway - some are just terrible) .. if i hadnt read any others ...but after reading the majority of them as they were released like i did at one point .. it just became the same thing over and over again ..

I lost all respect for the guy and it began to taint how i saw the ones i kind of did like in the beginning.


what can i say .. my tastes changed

Really?

I mean...Really ?!?!? :confused:

Anyways...My favorite King stuff would have to be The Dark Tower series, the uncut version of The Stand and Salem's Lot.His story telling style can be hit or miss sometimes, but he has a way with characters and dialouge that manages to keep my attention. What can I say? People more screwed up then me just captivate me. :D

I could never hate King...Now Anne Rice, on the other hand, that's a different story. ;)

*
 

i like his The Tommyknokers and Dreamcatcher....
i think hi is GOOD! dut some of his novels and stories r boring....
____________________
loving Helga U.
http://www.everica.com

Yes, really. Straub's command of language and characterization is definitely in a higher class than King's. His style is very baroque and gothic (in the classic sense) and much less action-oriented than King's, but the payoff is much more satisfying, in my opinion. In Ghost Story, there are no real heroes, no black and white battle between good and evil. All the characters, even (perhaps especially) the protagonists are deeply flawed, and there is no happy ending. In any case, try it out. Straub's work may not be to your taste, but I thing that everyone should read this book, at the very least.

Oh, and I totally agree about Anne Rice. Wretched hack.

I liked Desperation. Dreamcatcher wasn't bad either.

king peaked with IT and has been slowly going down hill ever since. . . he should just retire

I'm like you Urgeok, I read Carrie and Salems Lot in grade school and then read each new book as it came out.
I love SK and I've read and still own everything that he has ever written just because I'm that faithful reader he talks about. He's a masterful storyteller but I have never been horrified while reading one of his books.
The closest I ever came was The Long Walk one of the Bauchman books. If you guys haven't read that, you should, it's very inventive.
All of the books he has written since he got hit by the van have pretty much sucked in my opinion. Cell would be the best of the post accident books but it starts out great and then sinks into a bunch of crap. It seems like he quit writing his books for readers and started writing them to be made into movies.
The only time I have been scared while reading a book and had to put it down and come back later was when I was reading The Exorcist. I hadn't seen the movie yet and there was a scene in that book that was the most terrifying thing I had ever imagined.
When I finally worked up the nerve to see the movie that scene wasn't even in it and I'll have to admit I was a little disappointed.

There is probably a reason the scene wasn't in the movie. Oh and what is the scene that you are alluding to.

having grown up on king how could i not love him. first films ever watched were Pet Sematary and Misery (don't remember the order in which they were released).

books:
pet sematary
the stand
cujo
carrie

Just like Urgeok, I'm old enough that I've been reading Stephen's books as they came out,starting with Carrie when I was 10 years old. I have never seen Stephen King as a horror writer. Nothing that he writes scares me. He is, however, a master storyteller. I've read everything that he has written and have kept all of his books, just because I am that constant reader he is always talking about.
I was never bored until he got hit by the van and then suddenly his stories started to suck. It was as if everything that he wrote was a screenplay for a movie. His characters became shallow and his writing was more action orientated.
I will always read each book as it comes out because I am that faithful but I will always miss the real stories.

I love Stephen King's writting but I wouldn't call him a God
It is my favorit Stpehen King book. I've read it more times than I care to count.

Re: what in the world?????????
 

The fact that you loved him at the tender age of nine sort of explains why his horror is not regarded as scary by so many.;)

yeah, he rights good stories, but I cant say I have ever been scared by one.

I have. Pet Sematary scared the hell out of me, maybe because I read the book before I ever saw the movie. The passages about the Wendigo and the swamp, and the constellations that were wrong all really freaked me out. I usually get really wrapped up in the books I read, though. I have a really active imagination, and when I read things, I usually dream about them at night.

Well true I haven't read PEt semetary which they say is his scariest book.

It's definitely worth it.

without any spoilers, what is a general overview of the plot?

Here's the overview from the front of the book:

The Creeds. An ideal family. Physician father, beautiful wife, charming little daughter, adorable infant son. Close, loving, wonderfully alive. When they found the old house and enchanting grounds in rural Maine, it seemed to good to be true. It was. For the truth itself was bloodchilling--something more horrifying than death itself, and hideously more powerful...


If you have a family, this book is harder to read. I can honestly say, though, that there are passages that made every hair on my body stand on end, and my skin raise into goosebumps. It involves raising the dead, and evil spirits, and things that go bump in the night. This is King's scariest book by far, in my opinion. And I've read every book of his that was written before 1998 or so. That's around the time I read Insomnia and hated it to the point where I stopped bothering.

Hey thanks, I am definately going to picl up a copy.

:)

Dark Tower novels... mind blowing.

Not to get off subject, but is your avatar from Blade Runner?

Yeah, it's Blade Runner :)
Haven't resized my Phantasm pics yet.

Good call Miss... I'm impressed. ;)

I really like the one you have now, but Phantasm rocks too.
Long live the Tall Man.:cool:

Hmm...I wasnt a big fan of Pet Sematary.

Anyone who's read his books knows that King likes to get sidetracked and ramble on, and I found that this was his worst for that. Entire chapters with absolutly no purpose whatsoever.

Really? I thought the story was pretty tight. He seemed to have the rambling to a minimum in this one.

One part in particular that I found exceedingly overlong was when Dad was teaching Gage to fly a kite. It did serve a bit of a purpose, I suppose, but I went on way longer than it needed to/should have IMO.

Yeah, once you read the book, those scenes become twice as cruel. After I had my son, I couldn't bring myself to read it anymore. But I can understand where you're coming from. I think it's his way of really making it hurt when what happens happens.