to utterly love Stephen King?

[minifingers]

Ex secondary English teacher, who snootily resisted his books and the whole horror genre for decades, in favour of Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Jane Austen, and lots of serious modern authors like Saul Bellow.

Had children, got too knackered and thick to read serious fiction so tarted on the Stephen Kings.

I find that I absolutely love his books. Love them, and the mind which created them.

Worried that I'm going to end up like that woman in Misery - you know, the Kathy Bates character. Obsessed.

Anyone else got a Stephen King pash or is it just me? He's not very mumnsetty.

You would get it Cat. I loved it and stayed up too late every night reading it!

WeAre big Kingdom Hospital fan here, both the original Scandinavian version and the SK-infused US version. DH and I both really enjoyed it. And how about Rose Red? That proper scared me.

And how about Rose Red?

I love Rose Red. I only found out the other day SK was originally involved with the film The Haunting but left fairly early on (good old "creative differences"), he turned his ideas for that into Rose Red instead.

You will get it CatKisser. It's about the Kennedy assassination. I wasn't around then either.

Duma Key's good too but it is supernatural.

And obviously it's called 11.22.63 as is Americay

Downloaded the 63 one! Here I go!

DH and I watched Rose Red when it was serialised and went straight out and bought it on DVD when it came out. It's one of my favourite proper horror stalwarts.

My DD1 is 13 - I'm going to introduce her to the master soon (though probably starting with The Eyes of the Dragon, she's quite sensitive).

I've never seen Rose Red, but did get quite into Haven, which I think was based on The Colorado Kid.

My biggest problem with Kubrick's Shining was the fact that in casting Jack Nicholson, the whole point of a man slowly losing his mind under the influence of a malign hotel went completely out of the window. And you never got the sense of the internal struggle he went through.

Wendy was diminished to a cypher, which I found really annoying.

I can see why people love it so much, but I just love the book more.
But I think that might be a problem with adapting his books generally. They are so complex in their portrayal of people's internal lives that a lot gets lost in translation.

Mind you, the tv series of Bag of Bones was pretty good. Pierce Brosnan was great and I found it really scary.

SK wrote a book about alcoholism and parenting, which was a good book.
Kubrick made a film about a scary hotel, which was a good film.
But king seems to think a film should be a homage to and faithful reproduction of the text, which I think misses various points.

11.22.63 is a great great book. I think it was King at his best - sometimes I think his endings let him down (Under the Dome, anyone?) but it was the perfect end to a nearly perfect book. So full of love and nostalgia and menace and wisdom.

And to whoever mentioned tennis balls up thread - yes! I saw a mass of them on a tennis court the other day and was genuinely freaked out. That image from Duma Key will stay with me for a long time.

I love his older stuff, Carrie, Salem's Lot, Cujo and Pet Semetary. I live in a small, old New England town and I often imagine I am stuck in a SK novel.

I love his older stuff, Carrie, Salem's Lot, Cujo and Pet Semetary. I live in a small, old New England town and I often imagine I am stuck in a SK novel.

I try not to imagine I'm stuck in a SK novel - I live too close to Salem's Lot to be able to do that comfortably :-)

Ok I've read Duma key and I can't remember the tennis ball thing? That's clearly my next re-read!!

I only watched Kubrick's version once (haven't seen the TV version) but I didn't like it.

I felt like it moved the main character from Danny to Jack, if that makes sense. And there wasn't nearly enough emphasis on the shining itself, which was the most interesting part of the book to me. It's almost 3 a.m. here and I am finding it impossible to say what I mean :)

Has anyone ever read the Gingerbread Girl? A woman gets caught by a serial killer and is (possible spoilers)

Trying to get away and locked in a room. To buy herself more time, she yells to the man that they should make a deal. He says "no deals with bitches!"

The next line is something like "she knew she could only buy herself some time...she did not really need him to tell her he was not the sort of man to make deals with bitches.". For some reason that always makes me laugh. Pure King!

When I was 14 or so I read the Bogeyman and almost wet my bed as I couldn't pass my closet to go to the bathroom. Also I read Salem's Lot in secret when I was 11 and then was terrified to go get firewood from the shed in the dark, but I couldn't tell me dad why because I wasn't supposed to read it. I remember walking out there, shaking from both the -30 weather and the absolute knowledge that Barlow was lying on top of the stacks of logs, ready to grab me...

I've just found The Mist on Netflix :) I'll be watching that after bake off tonight (with the lights on)

I have only just read all of this thread.
I absolutely love SK. A webchat would be a dream come true.

I read the Langoliers (randomly chose that in a book of short stories) on a school trip and after that I was hooked!

IT, is definitely my favourite, the build up (spoiler?)
as the town crumbles in on itself at the end is amazing writing. Though, at 34, I still cant read it at night and so it takes forever to read..........

Do you think Mumsnet could afford King? It'd be great to have him....

I agree with Cheerful that the film of the Shining totally neglected Danny's shine and turned what it did address into a superficial shlocky horror. It did feature Danny's trip to the doctor in Sidewinder though, for me, one of the more moving parts of the book especially the idea of childhood being more a process of forgetting than learning to some extent. All that talk of monsters under the bed, imaginary friends, talking to yourself that is seen as normal in childhood but a sign of illness on adults....So true. So poignant.

And the books ending when Danny sees his daddy come back into the terrible capering and burned figure Jack becomes is deeply moving and woefully ignored by Kubrick. Jack fights off the hotels malign influence so as to save his son thus referencing his earlier attempts to fight his alcoholism and other demons in order that he become a better father. At the end, when it truly counted, Jack came through for his son. Then we missed out too on Danny being reunited with Dick, going fishing with him and Wendy- Dick helps him grieve for his father....

I love Kubrick's film of The Shining, but I kind of see it as separate from the book, just completely different entities.

I think Shelley Duvall unfairly takes a lot of flack for her portrayal of Wendy. Yes, in the book she's much more three dimensional but I feel like Duvall's performance, if it didn't get the essence of King's character, was great in a different way. She was just distilled down to pure, primal fear, for herself and her son. She wasn't strong or resourceful, just a personification of absolute fear and I think she did that brilliantly.

Bought DR Sleep on my kindle this Morning. Off to bed to get reading

I borrowed it from my local library, and am already crapping myself.

I loved Dr Sleep, was lovely to see Danny again. :)

Wooblyweebles! You must be is some lovely little Maine town! When I lived in Wells, Mn I often thought of slinking around to Bangor on a SK hunt..and then thought about the anti-stalking laws

I just read an excerpt of 23/11/63...I'm thinking of taking the plunge!

Here's an interesting article about the movie based on A Good Marriage.

When I read it I was sure it was based on the BTK killer, and it was. :( It sounds like his daughter is being hurt by it. here Not sure what to think!

Here is his reply, or at least some of it.