What's Your Favorite Stephen King Novel?

He's done some excellent stuff, but he's been pretty mediocre for many years now. I've pretty much given up on reading anything new he writes, as I haven't particularly rated anything I've read of his after Dolores Claiborne (I'm not much of a Family Guy fan, but this sketch about him is bang on the money). But that said, he wrote a whole string of stone-cold classics back in the day - Misery, It, The Shining, The Stand and Carrie are all sensational novels (and they made pretty good films too, particularly The Shining). I couldn't really pick a favourite from those.

My favourite short story of his is called The Long Walk; I think it's one of the Bachman Books. It's about an enforced competition between a whole load of teenagers who are just forced to walk without stopping, because as soon as they do they're shot dead by a military escort until only one remains. It's pretty powerful stuff.

And the best SK film is The Shawshank Redemption. This is not up for debate.

Quote from OscarGold101

His best works are his Dark Tower novels. No doubt about it.

Wizard & Glass is the only one of those I've read - it was alright, and I'd have probably enjoyed it more if I'd read the others first, but not even close to the same league as his early novels. If I was ever going to read more King it would definitely be that series, but I've moved on to other things now and I don't really see myself getting around to reading like a meter-thick series by someone that I used to love but have grown lukewarm to over the years.

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon is far and away the worst Stephen King book I've ever read. I think that was probably the point where I decided he'd lost it.

Quote from OscarGold101

@Caribou

I mean i respect your opinion. But don't hate on him. Shhesh. So he's written a couple of bad books. Don't be a Stpehn King hater.

Dude, if you're not going to read my posts then please don't bother replying to them. It's pretty clear from what I wrote that I'm not even close to being a "hater". I have no interest whatsoever in superheroes so I don't bother posting in the superhero threads - Stephen King, however, was one of my favourite authors for a long time, and I've read at least half of the stuff on Dr Sleep's list, so it's a subject I feel I'm at least somewhat qualified to comment on.

If your definition of "hate" includes a mild bit of criticism that at worst describes his recent output as "mediocre" (and I even mentioned I was prepared to make an exception for the Dark Tower series), yet at the same time described various works of his as "excellent", "sensational" and "powerful"... I suggest you take a deep breath before exploring too much of the world, and indeed the internet, 'cause you're not going to like what you see.

The bottom line is, Stephen King is a good author. But there are hundreds of good authors, and a lot of them are consistently better than he is. I simply don't have the time or the inclination to plough through more books that I know before I've read them aren't going to particularly excite me, and I've read enough King now to know this will usually be the case.

Quote from Dr. Sleep

Caribou, don't feed it. Just let it go. Don't add fuel to the fire.

When someone addresses me directly, I answer them. And I don't see any fire here anyways.