Which Stephen King book is the best?

The Stand is my favorite. I have read it many times.

@chyna Ive heard great things about that one, but still havent gotten a chance to read it.

I second The Stand.

My personal favorite is The Tommyknockers. I go back and read it every time for Gard ol’ Gard.

I’m throwing in another vote for The Stand. My favorite of his by far, and I’ve read almost all of them.

If you want to make your friend lose some sleep, start with Salem’s Lot. Sheesh. It was the first Stephen King book I read, at the tender age of 12. I don’t know who decided it should be a part of the middle school’s library, but it horrified me so much that I couldn’t finish it. Since then I’ve read it a couple of times, and the other night picked it up again just for the heck of it. Bad idea. My husband was out of town, and once I turned out the light, I just could not sleep.

There’s another book of his that I liked a lot, but haven’t read it for years. It’s called The Eyes of the Dragon (or something like that). Different from his other books, but has always stuck with me. I think I was in high school the first time I read it. I don’t care what the snooty people in my college lit and writing classes said, Stephen King is a good writer. I think they were all just jealous.

Toss up between “The Stand” and “IT”

@MissAusten . . .That is the title exactly and a very good story. This was when King began to make Flagg his recurring “devil” in earnest.

The Dead Zone is my second favorite. For personal reasons, I could not finish Pet Semetary.

All I know is it is NOT Gerald’s Game.

AVOID THIS BOOK AT ALL COSTS!!!
It couldn’t be duller. A lady ends up handcuffed to a bed after she accidentally kills her husband by kicking him in his privates, the rest of the book is spent on her musings about her life. A crazy dog shows up and eats her dead husband and a shadow that appears on the wall at night scares her because in a distorted way it kind of looks like a person. Eventually she is rescued and has more musings over her life. TAH-DAH! You might as well have just read the book.

“IT is the best”
“what is?”
“IT”
“What’s it?”
“IT’s the book”
“Which book!”
“IT!!!”

@J0E . . .Beep! Beep! Richie.

I have read exactly one book by Stephen King, The Dead Zone, and I liked it. I have read some of the stories in The Bachman Books, but I like The Dead Zone better.

Another vote for The Stand! I love stories where everything falls apart and has to be reassembled. Day of the Triffids by Wyndham is like that.

I had recommended Misery to another friend earlier, anyone hear of it? I had seen the movie before, and ,like most books-turned-into-movies, the novel was oodles better.

I liked his earlier books, before he got totally weird. Cujo and Christine had were just close enough to reality that you could almost believe them and for me, that made them just soooooooooo scary!

I’ll be the dissenting voice here. I did not think The Stand held up. It created immense expectations, with plenty of King doing what King does best—following numerous characters, creating separate storylines that will eventually converge, and tossing in many small, exquisitely drawn single-purpose characters who perform one function and then disappear. But I thought it fizzled in the end and did not live up to its promise.

After The Tommyknockers I no longer read every one as it came out. (Here’s a chronology.) I found Needful Things and Rose Madder to be annoying in the same way that Misery was: fine exhibitions of King’s marvelous skills in creating effects I simply did not like reading.

I consider his last best book to be Pet Sematary, which was mature King delving deeper than a gimmick story (however well done) and reaching for moral and philosophical depths he hadn’t tried before except in “Shawshank Redemption.” It was hard to read in the sense of being painful in places, and of course scary, but it was also effective and satisfying, and it delivered on its promise.

However, I would not start there. He puts the reader through some stuff. I would sooner start with something less confident and less demanding. Why not Carrie or ‘Salem’s Lot for starters, and work up?

Skip Cujo, though. Skip it forever.

@Jeruba . . .are you sure that’s not the X talkin’?

Any of his short story collections are a great place to start reading King.

I never read the stand, but I loved The Talisman. Though I read it when I was like 16, I remember thinking that it was the best book I had ever read at the time.

I’ve read >10 King books.

Though I normally agree with @Jeruba, I have to completely take issue here. The Stand is also my favorite BY FAR with Needful Things being second. I also greatly enjoyed Cujo (the book, not the movie), because of the way it built the suspense to a point where you could almost feel what the characters felt. I’m not huge on a lot of his most recent work, but up until the early 90s he was pretty consistent…I didn’t really feel he lost his edge until right around Insomnia.

But back to the Stand, I like stories about the end of the world, which is what this starts out being, but unlike ANYTHING else I’ve ever read, he gets it so right, in so vivid details. He doesn’t take the way out many authors do by joining the story in the aftermath of the tragedy that wipes out most of humanity, he walks us through it in intimate detail, and he does such an incredible job of describing how the survivors deal with and integrate into this new world. There are so many things that clearly WOULD happen if people began to die by the millions, that most people if they were to consider it as a what if would never even conceptualize, but not only does he hit on all the small finer details of what going on living would be like, he does an amazing job of describing human ingenuity and how they end up dealing with it. And that encompasses the first ⅓ of the book.

The second ⅓ is about the journey, about the purpose of all of this, one that was only hinted at in the beginning. We believe it’s just a man made accident, but come to realize that this whole thing has some sort of higher (or lower, depending on who you are) purpose, and people are drawn to either the light or the dark. We meet an inspirational force for good, and we meet the incarnation of the ultimate evil, one which is eternal. We see how our characters who have now formed inter-relationships, tend to migrate, and what happens when a person is torn, we feel the intimate inner workings of the characters’ thinking and really come to understand what motivates each person to make the decisions they make.

And in the 3rd part, we get to the end game, the final confrontation between good and evil, and the rebuilding of conflicting societies, only one of which can ultimately stand.

I would point out to you that this book was originally released in the 70s when King was an up and coming writer, and not yet someone who could pretty much say, “this is it, take it or leave it”. And as such, they cut his nearly 1100 page book down to just 800 pages when it was first released, and indeed cut out an entire character. Fortunately, by 1991, he was able to restore it to its original glory….THAT is the version you should read (I’ve read it like 6 times, and feel like I need to read it again). For my money, it’s not just the best Stephen King book I’ve ever read, but the best book I’ve ever read, period.

I started with Carrie in the late 70s, when I was a little girl. Then for some reason I read The Dead Zone, which I was really too young for. Scared the bejeezus out of me. Then I read Firestarter. Those three I liked, though. I haven’t got into any of his books since, save for On Writing, which is non-fiction and is a bio/“how to be a writer” sort of book.

IMO, the Dark Tower series is King at his best. These are not horror novels, or easily adapted into movies, so they are a bit less known. The Gunslinger is the first in the series, and it’s really old, and a little tougher to get through than the rest (but it’s short, for a King book). You won’t regret reading them, it’s an epic tale.

I liked The Talisman. But I think The Dead Zone is one of his best. Christine scared me half to death, I shall not be reading that again in a hurry.

@jeffpetersen, I would have said the Dark Tower, except, like you said, it takes some getting into, and this question is for introducing some one to King.

I’m not sure I would have gotten into his books if that was the first one I’d read, but I agree it’s probably his best. It depends on the type of reader this is being recommended to.

I’ve read almost everything Stephen King has written (including his Entertainment Weekly articles!) and the only thing I’ve never been able to finish is the Dark Tower series.

The Stand is my favorite. Needful Things and The Dark Half are tied for second. Misery holds a special place in my heart because it’s the first King work that I read, at age nine. His short story collections are awesome.

The Green Mile is my second favorite, and The Shining my third.

@MacBean Same here. Dark Tower is just not my cup of tea, but I’ve basically devoured everything else he’s ever written. Some are not so great, but I’ve finished them all.

BTW, his extended essay, On Writing, is a truly interesting book, combining autobiography with lessons on the craft of writing. It is well worth the read.

Carrie and The Dead Zone.

The Stand was too dark for my taste.

The Shining was amazing, because just the words he chose to use were scary!

Cell. Its not as dark as some of his other books and it takes place in the present more or less.

I just downloaded The Regulators, has anyone read it???

I read the Regulators, which was actually released under his pseudonym Richard Bachman, on the same day as the book in his own name, Desperation. I actually read them back to back, and I’d recommend you do the same, as King loves to do with many of his novels, they sort of cross reference with each other. Those were a couple of his best books of that era I believe.

And I agree with @Bugabear – Cell blew me away, I didn’t think the old guy still had it in him, but that was one book where you’re like 2 minutes into it and BAM, which is exactly the opposite of what you expect from a King novel. It’s quite impressive.

@dalepetrie I did the same with Regulators and Desperation. I don’t think I put them down, but read straight through. I agree that both should be read back to back. I have never read Cell, but I will be on the look out for it now.

That’s good news then, I have a 5 hour drive ahead of me tomorrow, the book is I think 9 hours so that will cover the entire trip and a couple of runs next week. Then will search for Desperation.

Thanks for the input.

@chyna – I think you will like Cell. It’s another end of the world type story like The Stand, but instead of taking 400 pages to basically kill of humanity, he does it in the first few sentences, with the type of high tension conflict of Needful Things. If you saw the movie The Happening, it was kind of the same idea, only much, much better.

@dalepetrie Ok, I might not wait to find it in a flea market then, I will just go to the bookstore and get it. I have a 40% off coupon for Borders that is up this month, so I’ll use it on Cell. I’ll let you know how I like it. At one time I had actually thought about going to Maine and stalking him for his autograph, but after he got hit by the van and almost died, I figured he wouldn’t be out much.

Yes, definitely worth it @ 40% off, it is out in paperback now, and probably in more than one store’s cutout bins (most of his books n omatter how good end up on clearance racks eventually). I hope you like it.

Re going to Maine, yes, I know first hand he’s not out as much as he used to be. I actually had a half brother who lived in Bangor (he died 10 years ago), and I really only got to meet him on a few occasions in my life, but one time was in ‘91we went to visit him and his family in Bangor. I mentioned something about Stephen King and he told me, “you know where he lives, don’t you?” I said, “I know he lives here in Bangor,” and he said, “I mean do you know WHERE in Bangor?” I said I didn’t and he said, “go up to the end of the block, turn left, walk two blocks and turn left again, you can’t miss it. So I walked up there, and sure enough, I couldn’t miss it. It was a huge pink colored mansion that basically stretched back almost an entire block…it looked like the kind of the Amityville house or some other old Victorian style house from a horror film. Around the front, there was this black wrought iron gate (it was a corner lot, so the gate was MASSIVE, and on the corner posts and on the entry gate posts there were these gargoyles crafted out of the wrought iron. I took some pictures, of course they’re not digital so I can’t post them anywhere, but I’m sure you could find pics online anyway. So, I went back and said how cool I thought that was, but lamented that unfortunately, I didn’t see King himself. He said that had I been there up until a year or two ago, more likely than not, all I’d have had to do was go down to the local park and hang out for a while…I guess he used to go there on a regular basis and chat with whomever came by. But apparently, that house didn’t used to have that security pad on the front gate, and he had that installed around the same time he stopped going to the local park, because apparently someone was stalking him and he kind of pulled back from the public eye a bit. My understanding, and this is not first hand, is that after he was hit, which was many years after he stopped being so much in the public eye anyway, he pulled back even more, bought a new house in a very secluded area outside of Bangor, and now pretty much the only way to communicate with him is if you write to him and he decides to write back.

Just thought you might like that story.

@dalepetrie I find anything about Stephen King facinating. Thank you. And the description of the house is exactly the kind of house he should be living in, complete with gargoyles. Nothing plain for him, or so I have in my imagination.

I discovered Stephen King by accident about a year or so ago and have been hooked ever since. Often he is spot on in his observations, such as the description of the battered wife in Rose Madder. It is not one of his best, but the delineation of Rose comes very close to the bone. And then he can be grimly funny, as in the orphanage sequence in The Talisman.

@bea2345 He can certainly describe snot and vomit like no other.