8
votes
What is your favourite Stephen King book, and why?
I'd have to go with The Long Walk, personally. It's quite haunting, the way they had every choice to sign up, but chose to anyway. The way they never quite get used to seeing their fellow walkers get shot. I love the ambiguous fascist state: what exactly happened to America in the Long Walk? There is an oblique reference to fighting Nazis in the 50s for instance, but the time period is never quite mentioned.
All in all, it's remarkable, but terribly sad. It reminded me of boys going off to war, and the truth behind all ambition.
11.22.63
A little different than the usual Stephen King book. Plus, who doesn’t love time travel?
Bevvy by the Levy and Richie in the ditchie!
I really enjoyed "IT". I thought it was really well done; it captured a lot of things about being young, and it was terrifying. It's probably my favourite, though I have to say that just about every one of his short stories (including the Bachman novellas) is pretty special. "Quitters Inc." is probably my favourite short story.
The Bachman books are fantastic, my faviurite after The Long Walk is Rage.
I just finished the unabridged version on Audiobook (narrator is great, very creepy it voice) i took a month or so break, but only listening to it during my commute it took me from October till this month to finish it! It's so long!
I have to say I read a bunch of Stephen King books around halloween last year and IT was my least favorite, it was really, really long and seemed to not really get a clear scope in mind until the end
The Stand. Been a good few years since I read it, but I don’t remember any of his other books gripping me the way that one did.
Firestarter
Partly because it was just the first Stephen King novel I'd read, but also because I happened to read it at just the right time in my life. I was young, about 13, and I had never read anything like it before. My close friends and I were nerds. Huge X Files fans. We'd sit around in our parents basements and talk about things like Roswell, MK Ultra, aliens, and whatever kind of fucked up shit we could imagine the government might be up to without our knowledge. So the theme of the "bad guy" government secretly carrying out tests with psychedelics and trying to weaponize paranormal phenomenon was right up my alley. Couple that with a fantastic, compelling plot, and an antagonist that was (roughly) my age, and it was a favorite for years.
Edit= SwiftKey hates me, and apparently I'm blind. Just some typos.
On Writing, since it remains the only King book I've read, my excuse being that I'm not a fan of the genre that King usually writes in overall.
I listened to the audiobook version of it one of the times when I was driving through Maine, in order to keep myself company and perhaps learn something about the craft. It was somewhat of a surreal experience, beause as the book described the 1999 accident in which King got hit by a distracted driver as he was walking on the road's shoulder, I realized I had been driving on that same Route 5 just about an hour earlier.
It's a good book overall, filled with anecdotes about King's life and little instructions that might help a budding author. I recommend it to anyone who is interested in becoming, perhaps just in the slightest, a better writer, or someone like me, who might not be particularly interested in King's writings otherwise. Here is a passage from the book that I find particularly memorable:
The Dark Tower
I’ve read the series three times through. I think I will continue to do so about every five years. Such an immersive universe that keeps you locked in to the end.
I really hope Amazon does a good job on their adaptation. I’ve decided to not watch the movie after talking to so many upset fans.
Yeah, I haven't watched the movie either and I don't plan on it. It may not be a bad movie in general, but I'm fairly certain it's a bad Dark Tower movie.