Current Events > If you read Stephen King's books in order, how long until you get a stinker?

(+) Yeah! (+)

The list is gold, bro.

I think the first SK book I disliked was The Dark Tower V: Wolves of Calla.

Reading them in order is the right way to do it. Then you catch all the cross-references

I haven't read all of these but never heard of roadwork so it's probably not stellar. No idea though.

Aren't several of those Richard Bachman books? (yes, yes, it's King, but...)

Requiem posted...

The list is gold, bro.

I think the first SK book I disliked was The Dark Tower V: Wolves of Calla.

You including novellas? Cause that's a long list of love.

That list is solid 15 billion carat gold. Roadwork probably my least favourite out of those, but it's still gold.

The Long Walk and Rage are A+++++++++++++++++ novels

specialkid8 posted...

I haven't read all of these but never heard of roadwork so it's probably not stellar. No idea though.

man doesn't sell house by deadline that government wants it gone for a road. wife divorces as a result. mental breakdown ensues.

I sort of feel like you either enjoy his style of writing or you don't.

99% of the time, his stories boil down to "but what's really frightening and amazing, the real monsters and heroes, are the ordinary people (or ordinary people given access to superhuman abilities but with human frailty/mindset, in a few cases)".

And, yeah, some of his best works (imho) are novellas.

I don't remember loving Firestarter, but I think you have to get to Cycle of the Werewolf to get the first one that's truly just meh. Which makes sense given that it was originally a calendar.

Rage is a step down but not necessarily bad

I haven't read many of his books. Maybe 10 but the only one I hated was Rose Madder

The Long Walk is absolutely one of my favorites.

Can you pinpoint the exact book he starts binging cocaine?

jumi posted...

Can you pinpoint the exact book he starts binging cocaine?

My guess would be either Firestarter or Dead Zone. That's around the time he started using it. You can't really tell in most of his writing though. Cujo is considered one of his best and he doesn't even remember writing it.

He had substance abuse issues long before the cocaine though, he was a hardcore alcoholic.

ScazarMeltex posted...

The Long Walk is absolutely one of my favorites.

100%. One of the best ones he's ever written. Shit is gnarly and unnerving.

Only book without a vote yet is The Stand. Makes sense I always hear that one is fantastic.

I really like his short stories, but not so much his full novels.

Good to see that you will read Rage.

I haven't read some of these in decades. I distinctly remember being shocked about Cujo because the ending was different than the movie.

Euripides posted...

I haven't read some of these in decades. I distinctly remember being shocked about Cujo because the ending was different than the movie.

Just wait until you see The Running Man.

Read the book first, so i was like what is this when i first saw the movie.

Firestarter for me, a lot of people hate Rage too

Requiem posted...

Just wait until you see The Running Man.

Read the book first, so i was like what is this when i first saw the movie.

Oh, yeah, very different. In the book, the game lasts a month, not a day

Requiem posted...

Just wait until you see The Running Man.

Read the book first, so i was like what is this when i first saw the movie.

A friend of mine read the book very recently and told me that it sucks. I wanna give it a shot, but Schwarzenegger is fantastic in the movie, so Im sure it wont live up to those expectations.

The_Popo posted...

A friend of mine read the book very recently and told me that it sucks. I wanna give it a shot, but Schwarzenegger is fantastic in the movie, so Im sure it wont live up to those expectations.

The book is very, very, very different. Like just to start off with, the character Arnie played is very scrawny and kind of looks like he's catching tuberculosis.

For me, Firestarter is the weakest of those novels.

It's still a good book, but it's not great, IMO, and apart from Rainbird not too much about it is particularly memorable. King did the girl with special powers goes on a justified rampage that has horrific consequences finale better before this book in Carrie, and the shady government -adjacent organisation kidnaps children with special abilities and keeps them in a facility to harness their powers storyline better afterwards in The Institute.

It's definitely not a misfire from him, and you'll have a good time reading it, but for want of a better description it's his first filler episode.

For me it's The Stand. Boring the whole way through. The movie and the series are too.
I'm about to start Fairytale now though.

Also, if you're reading in chronological order, then technically Blaze should be second (though it's not second in release order, so...) - it was written after Carrie. He took both Blaze and Salem's Lot to his agent when they were talking about releasing a second novel, and in the end they settled on Salem's Lot after much to-ing and fro-ing over the fact that Salem's Lot was undeniably better, but would mean King got typecast as a horror writer for the rest of his career (something Steve cared about a lot less than his agent, haha), with Blaze remaining unreleased until Bachman's widow found the manuscript decades later.

Although, if we're going by writing order rather than release then Rage is first, so fuck it.

specialkid8 posted...

I haven't read all of these but never heard of roadwork so it's probably not stellar. No idea though.

Roadwork is pretty decent. It tends to be the "forgotten" Bachman book, not having the quality of The Long Walk, the notoriety of Rage, or the film adaptations of The Running Man or Thinner, but it takes a pretty thin concept and in my eyes makes it really quite effective. Like Firestarter it's not a classic, but it's not a Rose Madder either.

God, Rose Madder. It's such a good story about a battered woman reclaiming her life and then there's the rest of it.

firestarter is pretty boring

pegusus123456 posted...

God, Rose Madder. It's such a good story about a battered woman reclaiming her life and then there's the rest of it.

I stand by the fact that the opening, with Rosie having a miscarriage after a beating, then the smash cut to a significant amount of time later when you realise she stayed with Norman afterwards is the most genuinely terrifying thing he's written. Then the rest of the book happens.

On the subject of Steven King books, I absolutely love The Shining despite the big glaring plot hole that makes it all really dumb.

Bonus: Doctor Sleep also suffers from a single big plot hole as well.

AI_TechGam3FAQS posted...

On the subject of Steven King books, I absolutely love The Shining despite the big glaring plot hole that makes it all really dumb.

Bonus: Doctor Sleep also suffers from a single big plot hole as well.

You could just go ahead and say what they are.

I dunno how The Long Walk hasn't been adapted as a movie or series by now

pegusus123456 posted...

You could just go ahead and say what they are.

The Shining of all the actions the evil spirits can do, they couldnt give Jack a break and release steam pressure just that one time! The book stops mentioning it about halfway through anyway so I assumed its an action never worth mentioning anymore or the spirits have been doing it for him anyway.

Doctor Sleep Some of the bad people were alive for more than a century and theyve never taken the steam from someone who was sick before? Its also amusing that the illness was the measals, its clear that the kids parents were antivaxxer types

Yeah, those aren't plot holes.

I'm pretty sure the steam thing is brought up a lot as The Shining hits its climax