The Works of Stephen King

[emersende]

Well, I read The Shining, and it was okay. I have to admit that I wasn't especially scared by it. Yes, yes, shame on me. It was a bit strange, since I've already seen both the 90s miniseries and the Kubrick film of the book. I think I appreciated finding out background information on the characters, but . . . I just didn't get into the scary parts. Carrie didn't scare me either, although I liked it. The last of the three horror novels I've ever read was Something Wicked This Way Comes, which scared the pants off me. So go figure.

I was a little creeped out by "The Man in the Black Suit," though.

[Deleted]

Carrie wasn't scary, but it was the best novel about teenage girlhood I've ever read. Although maybe I was a strange teenager girl....but seriously, it captured the twisted, evil ways cliques operate and what's it like to be a loner in high school. I was depressed that King wrote in On Writing how much he hated Carrie as a character.

[Deleted]

Carrie does capture the perils of being a teenage girl rather well. Which makes the fact that it was written by a middle-aged man all the more disturbing. And I can understand why he might say that he hated her, it was probably in the same way that some of the other characters hated her. She was just so pathetic that sometimes you just wanted to shake her and ask her what the hell her problem was. Well I did anyway.

[Deleted]

He actually said she was the female version of Eric Harris or Dylan Klebold and that's why he didn't like her.

[Deleted]

Ahh. Makes much more sense that way.

[Wenton]

I'll echo the sentiments that his older work is so much better. Sobering up started the downhill slide and the car accident finished the job. He went from creating villains like John Rainbird (his creepiest, IMO), Randall Flagg, and Cujo to dippy stuff like From A Buick 8.

I've always much preferred his stories where the main "evil" of the story comes from a flesh and blood being. Pennywise was all right but when King turned it into something more than just a malevolent spirit, it bogged the story down. Rainbird, Greg Stillson, Kurt Denker, etc. reflected the atrocities of reality and made for a much more compelling read.

[Beeelicious]

Has anyone read the excerpt of his new book in Entertainment Weekly this (last?) week? It's about cellphones that turn everyone into people-eating zombies. Yawn. It's been done. His writing now sounds like a cheap rip-off of himself. So sad. He was the ultimate author of my youth - I read his stuff so many times all my books of his fell apart.

[Shalamar]

I'll go you one better - I've read the book itself. It wasn't bad, but he did a better job of telling essentially the same story in his novella The Mist.

[Inkyblott]

I read the exerpt in EW and it just didn't sound like Stephen King. It's like he's attempting a new 'hip' writing style with lots of big city-ness rather than good, ole Stephen King with his creepy goings on in small town Maine. Not that a writer can't change or grow but this just sounds...boring. I'll see if I can find the book in the library this weekend and give it a try.

[fascistpanties]

I didn't get to finish Cell (I left it at my brother's house) but the first few times I answered my phone after I started it, I felt a little nervous. I liked what I had read so far.

I have a bizarre affection for King. I loved 'On Writing' and have re-read it multiple times.

I read the first four Dark Tower novels when the Wizard & Glass was newest installment. I decided to read the latest three (don't worry I know all about the meta ending...) and I'm starting over.
My boyfriend is going to read with me and we're doing all of the 'connected' novels/short stories along with the main seven from this map on one of the Dark Tower fan sites: www.thedarktower.net/connections/

I'm reading 'Bag of Bones' right now and can hardly put it down to work.