NationStates Jolt Archive

Has anybody read this series? I'm currently on book 3 and really enjoying it! Just gone out and bought the other books in the series so lots of reading to do!

What other books have you enjoyed recently?

Those are just about the only books by King, that I havent read.
The classics, Carrie, It, Christine, Cujo, etc...are all great, and fun novels.

However...

His more recent stuff, Rose Red, Bag of Bones, Insomnia, and most especially, "Hearts in Atlantis"...sucked...really bad.

I like how conceptual and strange it is, but I don't like how Steven King's writes it

I think I saw the movie of the dark tower. Did they make a movie out of it? I don't know.

Has anybody read this series? I'm currently on book 3 and really enjoying it! Just gone out and bought the other books in the series so lots of reading to do!

What other books have you enjoyed recently?

Good luck dude. The last book in the series sucks, though it's fun til the end of the books.

Recently I've been filling out my Stephen King collection, and have just read Needful Things and Misery. They were both great. From A Buick 8 was probably the worst King book ever though.

Am now reading Firestarter.

I have to say the best King book I have read is The Green Mile. I've found that reading some of his books, like Dream Catcher and Christine I get bored after a few chapters but so far The Dark Tower is good and others like the Shining have kept me hooked!!

How do you guys rate Dean Koontz and James Herbert? I'm loving Koontz! I'm a bit of a reading freak to be honest!!!

Sarah

I have to say the best King book I have read is The Green Mile. I've found that reading some of his books, like Dream Catcher and Christine I get bored after a few chapters but so far The Dark Tower is good and others like the Shining have kept me hooked!!

How do you guys rate Dean Koontz and James Herbert? I'm loving Koontz! I'm a bit of a reading freak to be honest!!!

Sarah

Koontz runs hot and cold with me.
Some of his novels are pretty good, like "Intensity", but others, like the ones whos name I cant remember, but where a doppleganger steals the narrators life...was too King-ish.

The Dark Tower series of books that i have read so far are amazing. I've read possibly every King book (apart from The Girl Who Liked...) and it's remarkable how he has created all these worlds which seem to exist in parallel with each other. If you like the DT series, then definately read 'Insomnia' (which is not his best book, but my fave along with 'It' and 'The Stand').

James Herbert is pretty good too, but Dean Koontz' writing is too pretentious for my liking, and his books seem formulaic to me.

I've read nigh-on everything King's written.

The Dark Tower series is excelently weird, but peters out towards the end imho.

I think his best work is 'The Long Walk', which can be found in the 'Bachman' collection, which were four books written under a psuedonym with a slightly less supernatural bent in order to see if he could replicate his success (Book 4 hit the best seller lists so I guess he did).

The fifth 'Bachman' book was published 'post-humous', since a prying reporter discovered and revealed King's second carear, thus killing Richard Bachman.

King is definitely my favourite 'character' writer. His 'worlds' are less important to me than the fantastically varied and believable characters he has inhabiting them.

What was good about the early Dark Tower books was that they were unlike anything else King had done. They had a really offbeat kind of atmosphere to them. Unfortunately, the longer the series continued, the more like any other King work it became. And after King's near-fatal accident in 1999, he just got plain weird about it, almost like he was starting to believe his own stories.

But it's worth reading. The first three are worth reading several times.

I used to be an avid Steven King fan. I've noticed that in some of his stories, like the dark tower series, The Talisman, and insomnia as well as in some others he attempts to build a mythology that holds true from one book to another like H.P. Lovecraft did. I found it quite interesting, but I don't think King actually pulled it off well. It was left too abstract and undefined for my taste.

I bought the first one at about 4:00 in the morning completely pissed (obviously this is the only reason why Asda stays open 24 hours a day). I quite enjoyed it but don't have the money to buy the sequel(s) (that and I buy most of my books second hand). However it didn't grab me the way other books have, so finishing the series is fairly low on my "to read" list.

Has anybody read this series? I'm currently on book 3 and really enjoying it! Just gone out and bought the other books in the series so lots of reading to do!

What other books have you enjoyed recently?
The first two books are the best IMO, but they're all good fun. Don't read the extra ending though. Really. I promise that of all possible endings, that one will bug the hell out of you after 3000+ pages of following the little band of heroes.

The Dead Zone is awesome (and topical as Dubya is reelected). Also thought Pet Semetary was very good.

I'm hooked on King books. heh.

I've read all of them but the last one. Stupid library didn't have it.

I have to agree with it getting odder and odder toward the end... the stuff in SoS is just ego-stroking. Or something. But it was odd.

The Stand is awesome. The uncut one is really good, though also really really long.