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.

I love Peter James especially the Roy Grace series.
Apparently he writes similar to King so im wondering weather to try them as iv read all of Peter James
anyone read both?

I do like the description Sparkly of human monsters. I think that's his writing at his best. How he unpicks a mind or character and makes the ordinary terrifying!

I agree that Rose Madder is brilliant but I HATED when it went into the weird supernatural stuff. It was so powerful without that Viva Ze Bull nonsense. I still don't know what that was all about.

Started reading SK when I was about 13 and found them so powerful. One of my first bits of "grown up" telly I was allowed to watch was the tv adaptation of The Stand with Rob Lowe and Molly Ringwald. It was brilliant!

Anyone read Gerald's Game? I had to put it down for a while because the scene of the dad sexually abusing his daughter really got to me.

I've not read any Peter james and I'm always on the lookout for new authors to read

Heart shaped box by Joe Hill (SKs son) was pretty good. Not quite to his dad's level but he looks like a promising writer.

Give him a go sparkly I like the Roy Grace series

Can't stand him.

CatKisser Gerald's Game remains the one SK book I can't bear to read again. Due to a certain description relating to the handcuffs and the bed.

There's a couple I will never read again as they weren't very good Lisey's Story but GG I just can't. Too upsetting.

I love SK but mostly his older stuff; The Stand and Dark Tower series did nothing for me but I adore lots of his (long!) short stories:

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
The Long Walk
The Langoliers
The Running Man

Novel wise I love

Cujo
The Shining
Dead Zone
Pet Sematary
Carrie
Firestarter
Gerald's Game
The Green Mile

His books just take me away to a dark and scary place where I can let my imagination run riot!

Mini the full quote is something like 'reading a long book is like a long relationship/ a marriage, and a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger'. Ie both satisfying but in a different way.

I think SK is very very talented, in that his books work on so many levels.

You can read them as a greedy 15 year old purely for plot, then come back to them as a 45 year old literature geek and see the sheer craft involved!

Yanbu. I bloomin' love him (and I am still an English teacher!).

Another great quote is:

"Harry Potter is about confronting fears, finding inner strength and doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important it is to have a boyfriend."

I might download Rose Madder onto me kindle, then. Sounds good!

I've never got through a Stephen King book. I find them too wordy for me with my goldfishesque attention span. I love James Herbert books and I'm ashamed to admit that I once rang in sick to work because I'd scared myself stupid with one of his books and it was still dark out .

I read all of his stuff as a teenager... except the Dark Tower series. I then spent 20+ years reading other stuff, but have recently come back to him and am currently listening to the Dark Tower series (am on no 5) and annoying DH by telling him every time there's a link to one of his other books

I love him

I wrote him off as a trashy writer for years before I read Salem's Lot and thought it was brilliant. He's such a bloody good storyteller. I think in years to come a lot of his work will be appreciated for how good it is, taught on American lit courses and considered alongside HP Lovecraft, Edward Gorey and Shirley Jackson in the grand old tradition of American weirdness.

My favourites are: Salem's Lot, The Shining, Carrie, The Driver (from Full Dark No Stars), Misery, Children of the Corn (from Night Shift).

Love all his books except hearts in Atlantis but favourite is it( have read hundreds of times) and needful things( but now have little ones find can't read it ( you know her little baby in fire) without skipping parts) love him

Can only add my voice to the "totally not unreasonable at all!" hordes - amazed to see so many of you, as I don't know any other fans in real life (unless they're all keeping him as a guilty secret.)

I have been nodding my way through posts about his characters, story telling etc so can't really add anything on that score.

But I did get to see him late '90s when he did a talk at the South Bank Centre. He was utterly fab. I chickened out of trying to meet him afterwards (definitely fan-girl ish!), but was content to be in his general vicinity - and I got an autographed copy of Bag of Bones.

Hard to pick a top five, but roughly I'd say I like:

Salem's Lot - almost perfect elegant (despite the grue) horror story
Christine - real soft spot for this as I read it as a teen and it was brilliant schlock!
The Talisman - I like alt-universe stories and this is the best
The Mist - For something relatively short he manages to grab you with the characters
The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - for someone who is often criticised for not doing female characters well, this was awesome - I so identified some of the feelings of being that age
The Stand - have to confess, I rather like his over-wordiness, and loved the characters in this
Dead Zone - Johnny is such a tragic, lovely character
Misery - just fab

I'd better stop here!

There are some I re read often, and I've lately been re-reading some I've only read once and am quite enjoying the fact that even in ones I'm not so keen on (Dreamcatcher for example, bit pants) there's something to enjoy.

Night shift rules best short story's ever except skeleton crew(quitters inc)

Nugget me neither
I just about only read Stephen king
I loves him

I also never meet anyone who admits to being a fan() I've been reading his books since I was a child(pinched my dads when he wasn't looking!) and he makes me feel like I'm coming home,strong but true. Also love micheal moorcock although he's more sf than the king

Corey did you see upthread, Big Driver's been made into a TV movie. You can see the preview on YouTube, it looks pretty good!

Ooh no way, Cheerful! That'll be a grisly one I can't wait

I've been evangelising about SK for years, to the horror of people who think he's trashy. I've got an English degree and work in the arts and I get a lot of "but why don't you read proper fiction?". I always say that I think good fiction should suck you in, make you care passionately about the characters and be written in a style that doesn't overpower the narrative. He ticks all those boxes - no one can write about the sadness of being human or capture a humdrum emotion like he can. And my word, he knows how to tell a good story.

I struggled a lot with Rose Madder, but it's the only one of his books that I haven't loved. I read the Bachmann books and Salem's Lot as a teenager, and loved The Eyes of the Dragon (why does no one ever mention it) then came back to him more recently. I adore The Stand, and thought 11.22.63 and Under the Dome were wonderful. I've got The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon lined up, and am saving IT for when I am somewhere hot and sunny and not scary (I read Duma Key while in Florida and nearly fainted through terror). I keep thinking I should start The Dark Tower but if they are on Audible perhaps that's the way to go.