How much Stephen King have you read?

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Officious Little Prick

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Aug 28, 2014
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I have read 70 of 72. The only ones that I have not read are Faithful (I am a Yankees fan, and do not think I want to torture myself)...

Ditto. I hear ya, brother. As much as I adore S.K., I know that I'll go to my grave having never read FAITHFUL. It's the only book of his for which my interest is a total flatline.
 

Out of Order

Sign of the Times
Feb 9, 2011
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Except that what makes King a master is how he makes even his most outlandish imaginations believable. But even he doesn't have the talent to make a book extolling the virtues of the Red Sox believable.

As Faithful is a non-fiction piece he doesn't have to work his "outlandish imaginations" at all. He just lets the history do the work for him.
 
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Gerald

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Sep 8, 2011
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How Much Stephen King Have You Read

Ran across this on BuzzFeed, so I had to take it (my kids are laughing at my dorkiness). I knew I'd missed Faithful, but forgot about The Plant. Is the unfinished portion still available anywhere?

The Plant I got through this very site. Read it recently. I quite enjoyed it, it's quite funny. It's too bad that as it progresses it looses a bit what makes it funny early on - the short replies through memos and things like that. The entries become longer going on and it becomes more like a regular novel than an epistolary piece. Still wished he'd finished it, as it is promising and has a good antagonist in Carlos Detweiller.
My idea was that the new boyfriend of John Kenton's fiancée might have been Detweiller getting back at him. What did others think? Also I think it's one of the few times (perhaps only?) that he uses Satanism/a black mass in a story? Of course, Koontz does that quite often.
 
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Gerald

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Okay, I see I just reacted to a post from 2014... :p

Anyway, I've not read all by him yet, but a good portion. Firstly, because I read many others as well, not just him, and the thing is that I most like the early books, basically Carrie to Misery. After that his work becomes more uneven and average sometimes, with Tommyknockers being the first major letdown. Some are still good (Gerald's Game, Green Mile), others... not so much.
I most likely read all in the end though. Even when the story ideas aren't as strong as his early work, still his writing style and characters are always entertaining.
 
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Kurben

The Fool on the Hill
Apr 12, 2014
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66/72 listed. missed out on Faithful and his other cooperation with Stewart o'nan, Also his novellas with Joe. Has them as E-books but havent read them yet. Also, for some reason, Riding the bullet, and The Plant. Since then i think i covered his output. Looking forward to read the joe novellas but think i'll never read Faithful.
 

Gerald

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I think the idea of having to read everything is created by the fact most books have a list of all other works by the same author. It's usually in the front of the book, so as soon as you open the book there's almost like a checklist of the ones you don't have yet or have read. There is no particular reason why you would have to have read all of them.
King is not among the writers where I would recommend everything to others (if there ARE such writers). He had an amazing run of classics early on, but later on it's become more average with the occasional stand-out.
 
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