What is the best Stephen King book /lit?

Different Seasons

Pick a random one. They're all pretty much the same.
Let me get this clear... I used to love King, and I started reading him when I was a teenage, in 1985.
The point is that when you write that much, it's natural that your plots start looking a bit too similar.
They're almost all pretty good readings, but keep in mind that:
1) You can start with any book that's not part of a series. You'll like it.
2) Sooner or later you'll start noticing the similarity in the plots and they'll become a little predictable.
3) Youl'll grow to HATE the fact that 90% of the leading characters are writers. For fuck's sake, King, write a novel about a plumber, from time to time!

>>8413976
>Youl'll grow to HATE the fact that 90% of the leading characters are writers.
This goes for literature in general though. They'll be writes or language teachers. It's easiest for them to insert into characters they share traits with. How could he write about a plumber if he hasn't done any plumbing in his life

>>8414002
I could name you literally hundreds of writers that have written masterpieces without having a single character being a writer.
I've read novels about magicians, cops, teachers, baseball players, astronauts, warriors, car drivers, office employees, etc.
Guess what? They were all written by writers and had NO WRITER in them.

The point is not "having A writer in a novel", the point is having "so MANY writers in so MANY novels".

Furthermore, the similarities in most of the plots remains strong.

>>8413958
The Stand

pet semetery
Cujo (coke days)
thinner for sure

Anythin before he got sober and wrote for the sake of it, alot his short storys have become great films, stand by me is a classic

IT is is best horror, the shining was overshowed by kubricks film, which was greater in every way

Does King have a fetish for older men stealing the women of younger men? It seems to show up a lot.

>>8414558
I guess its his way of fictionalizing his lust for younger women, those despite his writing 'ability' shall we call it for sakes sake... Does he strike you for the man who could lure a nice one without paying throught the roof or doing a bill cosby. his horror hides his lonely childish heart.

Stephen Hero

>>8413958
the one with the sewer gangbang

>>8413958
It

The Gunslinger was his only good story

That's it, everything else by him is trash

ie Desperation, Hearts in Atlantis, It, etc

>>8415351
Bingo right here!

>>8413958
None. King is an overrated hack.

>>8413958
IT is his most literary work and I daresay the only one of any real merit whatsoever, though that isn't saying much

>>8413958
Salem's Lot.

>>8413958
I read him a lot in high school. I think he has (had) lots of good ideas, but trouble with the execution. He isn't an offensively terrible writer like the kids mimicking Bloom want you to believe, he's at the very least competent and imaginative, but I wonder if he maybe shouldn't have gone into screenwriting since a lot of his prose reads like a movie script.

'Salem's Lot is his best novel IMO. Just a simple, well-told story about vampires in New England; there's lots of Lovecraft influence and many scenes with tense and restrained language that gets the disquiet exactly right. He abuses the writer protagonist in his other stories, but in this one I really felt like he was able to use it to create interesting images and say something intelligent about art and memory. It's been about a decade since I read it, but I still sometimes think about his description of writing alone in a hot and isolated hotel room.

The Shining isn't much compared to the film adaption, same with Carrie, but neither are bad reads.

His short stories are hit-or-miss, mostly misses, but occasionally an excellent one will come out of left field and totally unnerve you like The Moving Finger, which I believe is one of the best modern weird fiction stories I've read.

IT and The Stand are sprawling, easy-to-consume doorstoppers that both have some great images, but ultimately too many subplots, messy conclusions, and irrelevant characters and digressions.

Didn't like what I've read of his Dark Tower pastiche. Only got through The Gunslinger as a fifteen year-old, but even then it felt too derivative.