who hear reads steven king? i know hes popular, but thats not a bad thing rite?
There's a huge gap in the quality of his work, ranging from the coke-fueled abortions of a novel published only due to the author's success, to the well-planned and executed fictions that are responsible for allowing his bad works to be dumped on the unsuspecting public like so much excrement.
>>3 Well said.
However, I love King. Anyone here read "Pulse"? (Not suere if thats the original title). The one about cell phones..
I only liked the Stand and the Dark Tower series. Nothing else really grabbed me, I'm sad to say.
Salem's Lot (The Novel) is the only scary vampire story I have ever readh.
Salem's Lot (The Shorty) is a nice lovecraftian story.
>> 6
Salem's Lot (The Movie) did no justice to Salem's Lot (The Novel).
I really liked the Dark Tower books, most of his short stories, and a few of his bigger books like Needful Things. Even his schlock was okay when I was bored enough for it.
The earlier works were better imo.
Stephen King is good at characterizing and leading you along an interesting chain of events, but he has two MASSIVE weaknesses: he tends to overwrite, and he's really bad at endings (he apparently hates writing them).
Besides King's big horror bricks, you should check out his short story collections, and particularly pay attention to some of his less supernatural stories, which can be remarkably good.
The "Pulse" novel is called "Cell," incidentally, and I found it to be one of his weaker works, personally.
The book he wrote for his kids (The eye of the dragon or something like that) is awesome.
>>The "Pulse" novel is called "Cell," incidentally, and I found it to be one of his weaker works, personally.
Thanks for the info. I really liked the book. The ending felt like a slap in the face, but hey - as you said: who didn't expect that.
Maybe I enjoyed the book so much because I really like the characters, especially Alice.
[Spoiler ahead]
You make a connection with her, see her development, things start to get better and then BLAM, dead, over and out..great.
I also like the moral questions he raises..but maybe I'm overthinking that.
Re short stories: I read "Nightmares and Dreamscpaes" and thought it was awesome.
his short stories are good. they tend to get made into decent movies--running man aside. -_- Shawshank, Apt Pupil, Hearts in Atlantis (questionably good), Green Mile. Stand by Me.
yeah, his endings kind of blow. They're for the most part....not happy and not entirely satisfying.
I'm not big on the Dark Tower.... but I really do like the tendency to self-reference. ^_^ A lot of his other works too though will have minor throwaway refs to events and people from other stories. The Castle Rock stuff makes especially heavy use of this. It's just interesting, I guess, because a lot of those minor elements popping up all the time.... it has a good conspiracy theory feel to it. :o)