The Stephen King thread

Arts & Entertainment
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Queen of the Damned is a better book than movie only because the movie is impossibly awful

105

Well in the book Forrest has sex with Jenny in the sink for some reason iirc

106

Lol I forgot that. I just remember him going to space with a talking monkey.

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Yeah the book is so different from the movie you can’t really compare them

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108

Yeah Rice agreed after seeing him.

It was hard for me to differentiate initial experience from objective opinion so I can’t speak on what was better, nor do I remember that well. Tom Cruise def didn’t fit the description of the character in the book but they did a good job with lifts and hair.

My main takeaway at the time was the book was so short and the movie long yet they omitted a lot.

I forgot and that’s one where the movie was probably better (watched it first also).

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109

Oh I read bazaar of bad dreams, nothing memorable but I enjoyed it.

I tried to read the set of stories that had langoliers and didn’t finish, I don’t remember liking langoliers either.

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110

Oh man it did have secret window, secret garden though in that set so maybe I’m thinking of something else.

I fuckin love that movie though, not quite sure why.

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111

Since it’s the Stephen King thread, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is a good story and all, but obviously the movie is on another level. IMO.

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113

I have an emotional relationship with Stephen King’s books that has more to do with family history than with the author. My dad’s always been an avid reader, and I think he’s read nearly everything that King has written. I grew up in the 80s, so that means he was reading King a lot.

He even read The Eyes of the Dragon to me when I was little. I think he must have paraphrased some parts of it because I read it myself later and was surprised to see the king saying that the boat his son made for him looked like a turd – not a word my dad would have used.

My parents thought that most of King’s work was too mature for me, but I was allowed to read Firestarter probably when I was in early middle school. In sixth grade, I started reading my dad’s copy of Misery secretly. I thought it was really good, but I got caught and my dad took the book away from me before I could finish.

In high school I managed to read through The Stand (uncut edition) in secret. I would read it at night and hide it under my bed when I wasn’t reading it. I also read The Langoliers (with permission I think). I even tried to read Misery again but got caught and had it taken away again, leading to a shouting match between me and my dad.

My parents were also strict about movies. I couldn’t watch R-rated movies until I was 17, although I managed to see quite a few when I was hanging out with my friends.

This type of upbringing has led me to be more lax with my own kids. I don’t let them watch everything, but I’ve shown my eight year old things like The Terminator, T2, Alien, Fury Road, Die Hard, Speed, etc.

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114

Sounds like the plot of a Stephen King period piece :grinning:

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You’ll like “The Stand”, and “The Tommyknockers” then. I’ve read them both over a dozen times. Tommyknockers gets a lot of hate, but it’s one of my favourites.

Edit: I bet you’d like Harry Turtledove’s
“Worldwar” series too.

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116

Shawshank, Lord of the Rings though. Both movies as good or better than the books imo.

Edit: I should grunch less.

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Please continue grunching :popcorn:

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Essential Nonfiction
Danse Macabre

Danse is taken from a period where Stephen King taught college courses on the horror genre in the 70s. What a fucking treat that must have been for the students. Anyway, this book is the closest I’ll get to being in one of those classes.

Casual fans will also appreciate this insight into what kind of experience he believes defines horror and thus what he is attempting to evoke with his stories:

King classifies the genre into three well-defined, descending levels—terror, horror, and revulsion.

  • He describes terror as “the finest element” of the three, and the one he strives hardest to maintain in his own writing. Citing many examples, he defines “terror” as the suspenseful moment in horror before the actual monster is revealed.
  • Horror , King writes, is that moment at which one sees the creature/aberration that causes the terror or suspense, a “shock value”.
  • King finally compares revulsion with the gag-reflex: a bottom-level, cheap gimmick which he admits he often resorts to in his own fiction if necessary, confessing:

I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I’ll go for the gross-out. I’m not proud.

I’d say this is strangely good for fans of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance due to King’s constant regressive reflection on the quality of horror. Postmodernists rejoice.

It’s only now that I see this was republished in 2010 with a new essay called “What’s Scary.” Looks like I need to revisit this!

On Writing
On Writing isn’t just about writing. That is one TINY piece of the book. Most of it is a memoir about his career and how he discovered his creative process. There are many great stories about him writing your favorite books.

And he includes one of the most significant moments of his life when he was on his daily walk to keep himself in shape in his ageing years when a car hit him on the side of the road and nearly killed him. It was years before he was able to write again like normal, and it was this incident that motivated him to return to and finally finish the Dark Tower series.

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119

GOAT short story/novella collections
Everything’s Eventual
Just After Sunset
Night Shift
Hearts in Atlantis

Hearts in Atlantis is perfect for fans of Stand by Me (originally published as The Body) who want a touch of the supernatural. It has a bonus connection to the Dark Tower but doesn’t require you to know that to like the story.

It’s a collection of three interconnected novellas, and the second one is among one of the most affecting college love stories you’ll ever read. True to the title of the collection, it’s about a kid who goes to college to avoid going to Vietnam, but his growing addiction to the card game Hearts nearly costs him everything.

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If you are ready to devour a collection of short stories faster than Pennywise picks off kids at a Chuck E Cheese, grab a copy of 20th Century Ghosts, the first short story collection by Stephen King’s son Joe Hill.

@trolly you need to read this one. Every story is like one of the very best episodes of Twilight Zone.

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121

I LOVE Hearts in Atlantis. The title story hit me directly in the feels. Carol and Pete’s love story, the hearts obsession, the threat of near death of going to Vietnam. It’s one of my favorite stories from King.

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123

You’re bringing up all the feels with those details. I’m going to pick that one back up tomorrow.

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Ha, that’s funny, I’m downloading the audiobook to listen to at work tomorrow. Will probably skip Low Men in Yellow Coats (though that is a hell of a story too. I think the background happenings of the mother and how much that story is hers as it is Bobby’s. A heartbreaking window into a beaten woman. )

Shit, walked myself into just listening to the whole thing.

The meticulous detail of Blind Willy’s morning routine is expertly built. That story is a mini-masterpiece (and I think one of the earliest things that King ever wrote, dont quote me on that but I remember seeing it somewhere)

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125

I think I saw the movie first? So long ago, and I was reading/watching everything King out of order, everything must go. But I think it was the movie first for me.

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