Now that Halloween is gone and my birthday is over, the next thing to look forward to this winter will be Thanksgiving. One of my best memories of Thanksgiving is from a few years ago, where both Rampaige and I had to work during the day, and my roommates had friends they could go visit. This meant that Rampaige and I went to the grocery store to buy some pies, brought them to my apartment, and ate our pies while watching the Steven Weber version of “The Shining” that aired on TV a few years ago. I will defend it and don’t just write it off as being terrible, like most people think, but it also wasn’t all that great or anything. This started a Netflix chain of adding as many Stephen King based movies or miniseries as I could, and I thought that the stories were all enjoyable. None of them were particularly amazing, but I knew that the problems were all because of the creative alterations, as opposed to the content being shitty. My earliest Stephen King memory is seeing my brother’s copy of “The Stand” and I couldn’t fucking believe how long of a book it was, and the fact that anyone could ever read it. I think my next memory was watching “The Langoliers” on TV and wondering why Balki Bartokomous was getting eaten by weird monsters at an airport. I read that next month there will be a miniseries based on “Bag of Bones” and the marketing looks kind of cool, and made me want to read the book. I went to Barnes & Noble and realized there were a shit ton of Stephen King books I want to read, but really don’t know where to start. This is where YOU, the reader, come in. What are your favorite Stephen King books? What are your favorite Stephen King movies? Where do you recommend starting, and what do you recommend skipping? In other words…TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW ABOUT STEPHEN KING!
The Wolfman Cometh
Horror! Comics! Anger!
The Wolfman Cometh 
Oh you are so young! The best Stephen King is Firestarter in my opinion, which isn’t horror, more supernatural/sci-fi. But it’s quite perfect. Followed by Pet Semetary which is totally horror. Christine, The Shining, The Stand, It, all amazing. Cujo a bit boring. I stopped reading at The Dark Half so anything after that I don’t know.
As far as that list goes, the only movie of those that I haven’t seen are Firestarter and Christine. I mean, a haunted car? How scary can that be?! I did watch The Stand a long time ago, and remember liking it, and would watch it again, but it’s so long! Oh man, and that “Secret Window” was kind of crappy too. I like The Mist though, even though they added their own ending to it. Thanks for the input!
When I was a kid I read both Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption and the first short story out of Everythings Eventual. Years later (a few months ago) I had finished reading most of CLive Barkers work so I moved on to King. Picked up Salems Lot since it his second and I have little interest in Carrie. Couldnt finish it, it was so fucking boring. When you read it you have this realization of ‘oh i get why he was the highest selling author of the 80s”, his stuff is is so damn generic and accessible. Total drag. Shawshank was great though, only 100 pages too. Read Clive Barker first, his stuff really messed me up. recommend: jaqueline ess her last will and testimony, son of celluloid, dread and new murders in the rue morgue are good places to start.
I just remembered that I read the first few books of The Green Mile and liked it, but never finished it. I liked it when I was in junior high, which might not be saying much for Mr. King. It was also around that time that I went into a bookstore looking for a Stephen King book, and they sold me a Dean Koontz book instead. What the fuck were they trying to pull?
oh and christine was a great flick! john carpenter, man!
I’m actually reading Salem’s Lot right now. The biggest problem is that some of the longer books are great for 650 pages, thenm he realises he’s got a 650 page book with no ending so sometyimes it just seems slapped on there. I can recommend It, The Cell, pretty much any of the short story collections, Misery, Pet Semetary, The Tommyknockers (although that’s one with a pretty atrocious ending, The Stand and Needful Things. I also hear teh Dark Tower series is pretty great but haven’t really delved into it yet.
I think The Cell is the only one you mentioned that has come out in the past ten years. I also think I confused that book with a book Palahniuk made around that time that was also based on cell phones. The Cell was turned into that J. Lo movie, right? With Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau? Yeah, that’s what I thought.
the stand is maybe my favorite, I went through a “I’M GOING TO READ EVERYTHING STEVEN KING HAS EVER WRITTEN!!!!” phase for oh, about a year and a half last year. I bought them all for 50 cents from Goodwill and read most of them. Some of them I wished I hadn’t seen the movies, like Cujo. His books are long. Sometimes he recycles characters. Go buy them all at Goodwill. Bye. ❤
I should probably start with The Shining, on purpose, and then try and find whatever I can for as cheap as I can. THANKS JILL!!!!!!!! HI ALEX!!!!!!
Me, I’m the type that can’t finish books due to a lack of motivation and because moving objects with sound catch my attention far more often than static words on a page. I’m sure all the exposure to TV when I was a child didn’t help the fact that I read slow and can’t stick with it, but I digress. I do own a few Stephen King books.
When I was much younger I actually read Tommyknockers after seeing the movie, and thought both were pretty cool, but nothing extraordinary. I’ve tried reading It before, and still haven’t seen the miniseries, though someday I will (probably before I finish reading the book). I was given Under the Dome recently, but took one look at the size and hid it under some dust. And I’ve been told numerous times to read The Dark Tower series, but that wasn’t going to happen either. However, after looking up King in regards to this response to your post, his upcoming book Dr. Sleep, a sequel to The Shining, sounds really interesting. Too bad I’ll have to wait for the movie version.
As far as movies go, I usually love them all. I understand that King’s had issues with some of the film versions (and rightfully so), but hands down my favorite is Pet Semetary. Nothing–NOTHING–beats a dead little kid slicing Fred Gwynne’s Achilles heal with a scalpel. And then giving him a Joker smile. What this movie taught me is that dead is ALWAYS better. Not sometimes.
Other movies/miniseries I love that have come from the mind of Stephen King (all the mainstream ones of course): Carrie, The Shining, The Shawshank Redemption, Creepshow, Misery, and The Green Mile. I might be leaving some out but I’d watch most movies that involved him.
The description I read of “Under the Dome” was that it was like an unfunny version of The Simpsons Movie plot, and with less Albert Brooks. I read the comic book adaptation of The Dark Tower, and the art was really awesome, but I can’t remember much of the story. I do like the term “Gunslinger” though, and wish that was my nickname.
We can make that last request a possibility. Especially if you’re now requesting for backup.
Backup? My back is fine, but thanks for asking! 😉
I only watch few of Stephen Kings movie like IT, Pet Sematary, Green Mile, Shawsank etc not much. Yeah I think not all of his books or movie based on his books are good but since he wrote a lot so it’s not a big problem, not bad replaced with one good
If looking for good and scary horror movie maybe better watch Thailand horror, it is much eerie.. I mean for a horror ghost movie while Stephen Kings creates many kinds of horror not only about ghost/spirit
http://www.dontbe-afraid.com
There’s a movie I recently watched called Thinner. I never heard of this SK book before, and even though its clearly a B-grade movie, I actually enjoyed it.
Might I also recommend Dolores Claiborne. Its not horror but Kathy Bates was flippin fantastic, as she was in Misery. I’ve been meaning to read both books but never got round to it.
A few years ago SK did a tv-series called Rose Red, which I absolutely loved. You check it out!
Ps. My two cents: avoid Tommyknockers at all cost-both book and movie 😛
The Dark Tower Series by King is awesome, but it’s like 7 books long. Insomnia, Black House and IT are solid. The mist is also good
I read the comic book adaptation of The Dark Tower and it was a little bit all over the place, but had some really cool concepts. And the term “gunslinger” is awesome, so I’ll look into that series a little bit more. Thanks for the suggestions!