Re: Books by Stephen King
Bringing this thread back, because Stephen King is one of my favorite authors.
I read "Pet Sematary" at age twelve, and it scared the Hell out of me! But I was hooked.
King does seem to go through phases with his writing, and I think I've figured out that the "lesser" books are written when he has trouble with drugs and alcohol. I didn't much care for Dream Catcher, or From a Buick 8. Tommyknockers and Desperation were kind of slow for me too. Interestingly, I didn't like "Insomnia" when I first read it, but after experiencing eighteen years of non 24 sleep disorder, I appreciated it a lot more.
But I love his world building and character development! The Stand, 11/22/63, The Shining, Needful Things, It, and Under the Dome, are all great if you don't mind huge books.
I loved his earlier books too - Carrie, Cujo, Christine, Firestarter, The Dead Zone, etc. His writing seems to reflect his age, in that in his younger days, he was more of a "BOO! scared ya" writer, and now that he's older, he goes for the more subtle pervasive-fears aspect of things. I like his later writing for different reasons, maybe because I'm aging too. For this era, I like "The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon" and "Joyland."
His short story collections tend to be very good. I don't think I've read one collection I didn't like, but my favorites were "Night Shift", "Different Seasons", and "Skeleton Crew." I thought he had one of the best characterizations of a blind heroine in "The Langoliers" from "Four Past Midnight." I could tell that he had made a real effort to research blindness before he created a blind character, and I appreciated that, at a time when blind people just weren't in media anywhere.
Love him or hate him, the guy is beyond p rolific, and a master at what he does.
_______________________________________________ Audiogames-reflector mailing list Audiogames-reflector@sabahattin-gucukoglu.com https://sabahattin-gucukoglu.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/audiogames-reflector
