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Gonna go with Dreamcatcher. At least Cell had a good first chapter, Dreamcatcher didn't even have that. The only thing I remember is some anecdote about the guy's mom falling over and making GBS threads herself.
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May 5, 2009 05:11
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Crunch Bucket posted:I know this thread is supposed to be discussing his worst - but TLW will always remain as one of my favorite stories of all time. Speaking of King's best, my favorite by a long shot is The Shining. Every year, around October the fall chill sets in and suddenly I just have to read it.
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May 23, 2009 07:34
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The original Danish miniseries is called Riget (by Lars von Trier, no less), and it's really good. So I guess if you thought Kingdom Hospital sucked, check it out.
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Jun 8, 2009 05:05
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cycowolf posted:Wondering if its ok to ask since this is a thread for his worst books. What is your favorite book by him? I'm curious as to the difference from one to the other. Also wondering if most people prefer the older stuff. Definitely The Shining, I read it every year. There's something about it that I find hard to describe, maybe it's the pacing. Slow-burn, but kind of methodical, and the scares are spaced out pretty well. It's also pretty psychologically scary, very nightmarish and claustrophobic. Man, the fire hose scene gets me every time.
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Jun 10, 2009 08:35
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"Longer than you think, dad, longer than you think!" Yeah, that one got to me too.
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Jun 13, 2009 01:43
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Foppish posted:As to it just being a cheap shock-that's just me I guess, the original "cliff hanger" (if you want to call it that) seems more hopeless despite the last word being "hope". I always liked the thought that the mist was permanent, or if not permanent at least world changing. I think it's the chilling fade-out that makes the book's ending so enduringly creepy, and the BANG POP WOW ending to the film that makes it almost forgettable. Like, you have this hour and a half of incredibly creepy, haunting film, documenting the breakdown of society on a small scale when presented with an immutable nightmare situation, and then the tacked-on fireworks. It just doesn't really work, and if the original ending had been kept I think it would be one of the better King adaptations and it would still be in the public mind. It's an almost juvenile kind of ending, something a thirteen-year-old would craft.
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Jun 19, 2009 07:12
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An observer posted:I don't know why but I thought Duma Key just sucked. I can't even pinpoint what caused this feeling. It was the muchachos. So much loving muchacho.
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Jun 19, 2009 23:26
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I'd recommend The Shining but I'm gay for that book, and a better answer would probably be "any of his short story collections", especially Skeleton Crew, which also contains the unfathomably excellent novella The Mist.
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Jul 29, 2009 17:13
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Aatrek posted:Here's the Under the Dome cover. Whoa, that's totally bitchin'.
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Oct 13, 2009 17:43
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Zimadori Zinger posted:Yes it is, did he like the book? I can't even tell. It's just a mush of vague ideas and fancy sentences.
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Nov 7, 2009 02:17
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I wouldn't mind a sequel to The Shining. It probably won't be as good, but then again I read The Shining every year and it keeps getting better. Still, it'd be interesting to see what Danny's up to, and I always liked the idea of the shining itself (particularly the little day-to-day snippets, like the woman at the airport worrying about the roast in the oven), so maybe he'll explore that some more.
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Dec 3, 2009 07:59
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The Shining is an excellent five-act tragedy that I read every year and it never gets any less great. 
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Apr 18, 2010 08:39
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Loving Life Partner posted:What!? The ending was the Sheriff destroying Gaunt with dime store magic tricks, that became super weapons all of a sudden, totally freaking lovely. Don't forget the magic jazz hands.
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May 25, 2010 12:13
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Meanwhile, The Tommyknockers is wildly underrated. That book actually made me nauseous.Hughmoris posted:Ok, I just finished The Shining and absolutely loved it. What book of his should I go to next? Salem's Lot? I'd go for Carrie.
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Nov 7, 2014 05:03
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As someone who gets tension sorta-migraines pretty regularly, I really appreciate that one of the antagonizing forces in Firestarter is the main character's blistering headaches - King really nails that sense of "oh god here it comes I'm gonna be dead for like 24 hours".
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Dec 11, 2014 03:02
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"Oh, ayuh" she said, before slipping unexpectedly into an extended flashback about her cartoonishly overbearing and probably psychotic mother. She wet herself involuntarily, an act that requires at least three rambling sentences to describe. It was twelve forty-six, and, though she did not know it, he was the last person who would ever see her alive.
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Oct 23, 2015 20:56
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The best thing a Stephen King movie can do is be a really good drama film first, and be a really excellent horror film second.
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Nov 4, 2015 05:17
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The book is a great book and the movie is a great movie, just because Stephen King is up his own butt about it doesn't mean the rest of us have to be.
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Nov 4, 2015 21:27
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dirksteadfast posted:And holy poo poo the ending in this version. The ending in general is good but in King's original written plan Linoge turns into an old wizard with a pointy hat with stars and poo poo all over it like he's a goddamned Disney wizard from Fantasia. Whoever helped adapt this thing from page to screen needs to just sit in on all of King's endings because that is exactly the kind of stuff that sneaks in and takes me out of them. See also the ~!magic hands!~ ending to Needful Things.
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Mar 26, 2016 02:36
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Look, when you're writing on coke it's really hard to remember piddly details like how many arms a person has when you could be spending precious time describing how disgustingly obese
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Apr 13, 2016 07:09
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Forearmshadowing?
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Apr 17, 2016 02:29
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There is a film of The Long Walk, it's called They Shoot Horses, Don't They?, and it's terrifying.
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Jul 23, 2016 20:14
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I can't believe this thread was started by someone who thinks Cujo sucks.
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Jul 26, 2016 04:02
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Cujo is an excellent, blistering family drama.
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Jul 27, 2016 02:18
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It's just such a fiery, painful book.
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Jul 27, 2016 17:12
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Firestarter is great and I love any book with a protagonist whose main enemy is headaches.
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Aug 1, 2016 17:50
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I've posted about this before but my favorite part of the updated Stand is the bit where, in 1994 or whenever it's set, one of the characters is really pumped to be babysitting for a family with a color TV.
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Aug 2, 2016 00:34
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That stuff gives King's early works a kind of organic cruelty that I really appreciate. These are people with thoughts distinct from my own, and probably from King's, which makes them feel more real than if they were just bland, unproblematic stand-ins. I love the bit in Christine where one of the guys in the rear end in a top hat crew makes a racist joke and gets told off, and then feels really lovely right before getting his rear end mowed by a demon car. You don't necessarily feel bad for him but you're given a certain understanding of him and his situation and the atmosphere that wouldn't be present if he were just one of the gang. It's weird and unpleasant and makes me feel uncomfortable, but there's a barbaric, unfiltered, and deeply misanthropic vision of reality that jumps off the page when King introduces those kind of unexpected narrative bends.
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Aug 5, 2016 19:30
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I love all the details in The Dead Zone when he comes out of his coma - suddenly the doctor is writing with a weird new pen, and all the streetlights are a gross orange color.
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Aug 12, 2016 18:15
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Orange lights were a big deal when they first came around, so people from back then probably would've been more familiar with the term (I've always heard them called "sodium vapor lamps"), and now that everyone's switching to cool white LEDs there's people upset about losing the atmosphere of the sodium lights.
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Aug 13, 2016 00:08
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It's not important, technically, but I really enjoyed the queasy 50s vibes and I felt like they provided a lot of atmosphere. It was just such a totally different time, and the "golden era" setting really complimented the brutal, unforgiving horror of not only IT but of the world around them. Little things like the x-ray machine really set it apart.
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Aug 20, 2016 22:45
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I had to put down Duma Key because of how he was writing the friend's dialogue and he kept saying things like "ese" and "amigo" in weird ways.
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Sep 2, 2016 20:16
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Any paperback over 300 pages is going to be ratty after the first read-through, especially one you're gripping with fear.
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Sep 18, 2016 19:38
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Casimir Radon posted:Well mass-market paperbacks will. Trade paperbacks hold up decently. I read an unabridged copy of Les Miserables on paperback and by the time they were in the sewer it looked like a pile of tissue paper loosely attached to a bookmark.
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Sep 18, 2016 20:35
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Listening to an audiobook of 11.23.64 and enjoying it. This whole first section with the plumber could be its own book, it's phenomenal to think that's only the prelude. Digging, as always, King's instinct for rooting out the little unthinkable details that give the story an organic heft, but there's something vaguely watery about it that I can't put my finger on. Early King is like reading razor wire, and there's a squishiness to his later books that's kind of off-putting. Maybe that's the peril of fame, or maybe he's just become more empathetic now that he's older and not pumped full of cocaine.
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Sep 20, 2016 00:02
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I'm about at the part where he's directing the school play and some of the wind is leaving the sails for me, but I liked the janitor bit.
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Sep 22, 2016 01:43
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Go back in time and get a headache trying to stop him from naming it "N".
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Sep 23, 2016 20:06
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juliuspringle posted:Shelley Duvall is crazy now, absolutely no idea why. Because mental illness is common.
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Nov 18, 2016 05:16
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I liked it a lot more than Hatchet when I read it in middle school.
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Nov 20, 2016 17:38
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chernobyl kinsman posted:liberals cannot tweet about trump without referencing harry potter democratus reparo!
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Mar 6, 2017 01:44
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