I thought The Institute was only ok. You really should check the Mr Mercedes triology. Also made into a nice TV series. Revival and Billy Summers are also good.
it can be interesting if there are comparisons between the book and film. for example, they left out my favourite part of the shining in the film! (the hedge animals) and it suffers not seeing jack's thought process. i think it shows that often you need the book to supplement any film
King was almost killed when he was hit by a vehicle while out walking. It messed him up to say the least That was about 20 years ago. Apparently the guy who was driving died soon thereafter under somewhat mysterious circumstances.
If I had to recommend only one it would probably be 11/22/63. A page-turner for many sleepless nights and an ode to the sixties woven into a suspenseful time travel story.
after the simpsons do 'it' the aliens are trying decide which novel to terrorise them with next The humans have vanquished our thousand-year-old clown, but surely they will be no match for our next nightmare... A Saint Bernard with rabies. Mm... An angry car? Put that in the "maybe" pile. How about a prom that goes seriously wrong? Haunted hotel? What about some Tommyknockers? Those sound scary. Yes, yes! (cackling)
The expanded version of The Stand includes "The Kid", one of King's most obnoxious and enjoyable characters. He wasn't there the first time I read the book but I can't imagine it without him now.
1. The Stand 2. It (would be #1 if it weren't for the terrible scene at the end of the "child" section, in the sewers) 3. 11/22/63 4. The Running Man 5. Skeleton Crew (short story collection, The Jaunt is one of the best)
Revival falls apart in the last hundred pages or so, but before then it's quite nice. Billy Summers is freaking awesome though, and I really wish you would have stuck with it. Once the girl comes into the story it definitely gets better.
In general I consider his Bachman novels to be the worst he's ever written. They're amateurishly written with boring storylines, stupid one dimensional characters, and are just hard to get through because of how bad they are. The Running Man and Thinner are the lone exceptions since they're actually competently written with intriguing characters and almost non-stop action in places. But sadly stories like Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork and Blaze are just plain dumb and an embarrassment to the Stephen King name. Think of the worst Stephen King book in the world, multiply by ten, and that's what you get when you read Richard Bachman, with the notable exceptions of course.
I think "The Jaunt" is the most frightening short story I've ever read (and not a ghost or a monster in sight.) As teleportation stories go, it beats George Langelaans's "The Fly" and that's saying something.
The Stand was the first King novel I ever read, but the one that really gave me the heebie-jeebies was Pet Sematary.
Counter-opinion - I love The Long Walk. Unnerving story, and though I'm not surprised it hasn't been adapted into a film, I can imagine a good (though very dark) movie being made from it. I also love Revival. It's another very dark story, and you can clearly read King wrestling with his own mortality (which is also true of Elevation). I didn't struggle with The Institute, but it felt impersonal, like a workmanlike science fiction novel from the 1980s. It may be the closest King has come to writing a Dean Koontz novel (I'm not a Koontz fan in the least).
I came across The Running Man in paperback many years ago and I thought it was great. I passed it around to my co-workers and they all enjoyed it. (One of them still has it.) I didn't know who the hell Richard Bachman was but I was on the lookout for more books by this guy. I've been a Stephen King maniac since Salem's Lot came out, so you can imagine my shock when I found out (a few years after I'd read The Running Man) that King was Bachman! It proved one thing to me: I wasn't predisposed to liking this book because it had Stephen King on the cover.
If I remember correctly, two of Richard Bachman's novels, The Long Walk and Rage, are set at least partially in Maine - southern Maine, specifically, which is King's home base. Even if a fan hadn't looked up the Library of Congress registrations for Bachman's novels, I'll guess that some readers would have figured it out eventually.
My favorites: It Needful Things Bag Of Bones 11/22/63 Nice to see Duma Key mentioned a couple of times. Seems to fly under the radar a bit. I thought it was very enjoyable. I'm about to start the last book in the Gwendy's Button Box trilogy. The first two were solid reads.
I had a very similar experience, only in my case it was the Michael Whelan painting on the paperback edition that did it. They always say you shouldn't judge a book by its cover but after seeing that spooky image on the shelf at my local B. Dalton Bookseller, I bought it, took it home, and started reading it bed that night.
Tough one. I admire The Stand more than love it because it falls to all,the post apocalyptic cliches but the storytelling is so dense it’s,still a contender. I,prefer the ones that focus on the human element in relation to the supernatural. The Mr. Mercedes trilogy is great. I also enjoyed ThemOhtsider but Sale,’s Lot and The Shining remain the best written of his novels IMHO. The Body remains his best written novella. I love the Different Seasons anthology. for the record, I’ve always felt his novellas were an example of his best writing. He tells the story and doesn’t run into editing issues.
