Just thought I'd drop a deuce on everyone's dashboard...

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Officious Little Prick

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2014
129
443
51
Broken Arrow, OK
Hello, all! Constant reader of Mr. King's for 31 years. My attachment to, and deep affection for, his command of language and simile makes it exceedingly difficult for me to enjoy the works of any other author. I always find myself thinking, "Interesting plot? Sure. Compelling characters? Check. Oh, but if this had just been in the hands of Stephen King...!" I forced myself to take a sabbatical from his works for several years as a result, to encourage a broadening of my reading scope and tastes, but have been back off the wagon

(hair of the dog that bit me)

for about two years now and have been moving steadily through whichever King books I hadn't yet read (about 20% of his canon) in chronological order of release. As of this writing, I'm about 65% of the way through DREAMCATCHER; FROM A BUICK 8 will be next.

King's best book (objectively): THE SHINING
King's best book (subjectively): CHRISTINE
King's worst book: ROSE MADDER
Best movie made from a King book: Kubrick's version of THE SHINING (sorry, Steve; just because you're the best at your craft doesn't mean your judgment outside of literature is bulletproof!)

I'll be here for you, fellow Constant Reader, as you need me; I hope you will return the favor in kind.
 

SutterKane

Well-Known Member
Jun 7, 2014
297
1,891
41
Welcome to the Board!

Personal taste has a little to do with it, too. :wink: I'd have to agree to disagree with you about The Shining adaptation being the best of the adaptations but that may be because Kubrick's style isn't one I cared for in any of his movies.

That's the thing about Kubrick, he was A great artist in that his style was very unique, there is no other movie that looked or felt like one of his. That also means that his presence on adaptations tended to be overbearing. If you thought his bastardizing of "The Shining" was bad you should read the book "The Short Timers" and then see how bad he raped it for "Full Metal Jacket" lol

I loved his movies but I understand why some don't, it's an aquired taste.

Welcome to the board OLP, I admire your patience with the chronological order journey your on. I've said for years I'd like to do that but then I look at the stack of books and feel defeated.
 

Officious Little Prick

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2014
129
443
51
Broken Arrow, OK
I admire your patience with the chronological order journey your on. I've said for years I'd like to do that but then I look at the stack of books and feel defeated.

To be fair, it's just of the 20% of King's canon I haven't yet read, not a complete run-through of the entire thing. I had a couple of stragglers from the '70s/'80s, and a cluster of the early '90s. The vast majority of that unread 20% is from the year 2000 forward.
 

Officious Little Prick

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2014
129
443
51
Broken Arrow, OK
Worst movie?
Tighten up, you Officious Little Pr*ck.
too, welcome aboard.

That's hard to say, because there's so, so much out their that's just wretched. A film of true quality based off of King's work all too often seems a rare treasure, though I think per capita they are improving in the 2000s over what we got in the '80s and '90s. There are the obvious choices, like THE MANGLER, THINNER, SLEEPWALKERS and anything--anything!--Mick Garris has touched, but (other than King himself penning the screenplay for SLEEPWALKERS), those were films without much of any recognized talent behind their collective production, so picking them is like shooting proverbial fish in a barrel. In terms of movies made by and with truly talented people, movies that should have delivered the goods yet inexplicably went off the rails, I think the obvious answer has to be DREAMCATCHER. Wait a minute--Lawrence Kasdan is behind this?! The same Lawrence Kasdan of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK and SILVERADO fame?! Thank heavens (so far!) I'm finding the novel exponentially more satisfying than the movie.
 

Walter Oobleck

keeps coming back...or going, and going, and going
Mar 6, 2013
11,749
34,805
Check out Elmore Leonard, Charles Willeford, Harry Crews you get a chance. Leonard rocks, Willeford is a hoot, and Crews wrote some great yarns...plus there's a pile of great stories and story-tellers out there...you see the movie Winter's Bone? I have not...used to be an avid Movie Goer, could tell a tale or two about that. But the man who wrote the story is also very talented. Have not seen most of the movies made based on SK stories, but Kubrick's The Shining was the first thing SK-related I experienced...unless it was a movie poster about Carrie, Sissie Spacek looking...ummm, goofy. She was a tad too...southern for me...at the time, living in Florida. Anyway, the stories are why I am here, not the movies. Have most of those threads on "ignore". If I had to pick a 'worst' movie...probably be the small bit of The Tommyknockers I happened on. Usually I catch things half-way through...but the set on that one, I'm talking spaceship...did not jive with what I saw, a deep trench cut into the ground by those doing the digging...not Smurf-village, zombies doing the shuffle in the background. Don't know movies or those who produce them...even when I was a Movie Goer...didn't know them...faces is all. Well...there was Clint. Go ahead...so forth so on.
 

Spideyman

Uber Member
Jul 10, 2006
46,336
195,472
79
Just north of Duma Key
$T2eC16F,!zcE9s4g0tw9BQtE(hBbtg~~60_35.JPG
 

Neesy

#1 fan (Annie Wilkes cousin) 1st cousin Mom's side
May 24, 2012
61,289
239,271
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
Hello, all! Constant reader of Mr. King's for 31 years. My attachment to, and deep affection for, his command of language and simile makes it exceedingly difficult for me to enjoy the works of any other author. I always find myself thinking, "Interesting plot? Sure. Compelling characters? Check. Oh, but if this had just been in the hands of Stephen King...!" I forced myself to take a sabbatical from his works for several years as a result, to encourage a broadening of my reading scope and tastes, but have been back off the wagon

(hair of the dog that bit me)

for about two years now and have been moving steadily through whichever King books I hadn't yet read (about 20% of his canon) in chronological order of release. As of this writing, I'm about 65% of the way through DREAMCATCHER; FROM A BUICK 8 will be next.

King's best book (objectively): THE SHINING
King's best book (subjectively): CHRISTINE
King's worst book: ROSE MADDER
Best movie made from a King book: Kubrick's version of THE SHINING (sorry, Steve; just because you're the best at your craft doesn't mean your judgment outside of literature is bulletproof!)

I'll be here for you, fellow Constant Reader, as you need me; I hope you will return the favor in kind.
Welcome - a good list, but I beg to differ - Rose Madder was a lovely book - I thought it was just great (but we can agree to disagree)

wolf and raven.jpg
 

blunthead

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2006
80,755
195,461
Atlanta GA
Hello, all! Constant reader of Mr. King's for 31 years. My attachment to, and deep affection for, his command of language and simile makes it exceedingly difficult for me to enjoy the works of any other author. I always find myself thinking, "Interesting plot? Sure. Compelling characters? Check. Oh, but if this had just been in the hands of Stephen King...!" I forced myself to take a sabbatical from his works for several years as a result, to encourage a broadening of my reading scope and tastes, but have been back off the wagon

(hair of the dog that bit me)

for about two years now and have been moving steadily through whichever King books I hadn't yet read (about 20% of his canon) in chronological order of release. As of this writing, I'm about 65% of the way through DREAMCATCHER; FROM A BUICK 8 will be next.

King's best book (objectively): THE SHINING
King's best book (subjectively): CHRISTINE
King's worst book: ROSE MADDER
Best movie made from a King book: Kubrick's version of THE SHINING (sorry, Steve; just because you're the best at your craft doesn't mean your judgment outside of literature is bulletproof!)

I'll be here for you, fellow Constant Reader, as you need me; I hope you will return the favor in kind.

Welcome to the SKMB, Prick! All is relative, including interpretations of art. One CR's most favorite sK is the next's least. I'm not trying to suck up when I say I agree with sK about The Shining being a failure in terms of the story he wrote, but a beautiful thing to behold otherwise. I like the idea of presenting a character under those circumstances whose screws are gradually coming loose; that is, I like that Kubrick wanted the horror to be emanating from within Torrance. I just think he failed to tell that story (as opposed to sK's) well.
 
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Officious Little Prick

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2014
129
443
51
Broken Arrow, OK
I beg to differ - Rose Madder was a lovely book - I thought it was just great (but we can agree to disagree)

View attachment 5076

It's funny, but my opinions on King's unofficial "battered women trilogy" (GERALD'S GAME, DOLORES CLAIBORNE and ROSE MADDER) run the gamut. I absolutely adore DOLORES CLAIBORNE (a real powerhouse of rich, mature writing). I enjoyed GERALD'S GAME, but consider it mid-tier King (an agreeable read, but nothing to write home about). But ROSE MADDER I despised. Only it and THINNER have ever caused me to put a King book down when I was finished and exclaim, "Are you kidding me?" In the case of ROSE MADDER, I can lay the bulk of my complaints on King taking a very real victimized character, and very real societal ill (both of which he handled with due respect and appropriate gravity in GG and DC) and spinning them off into some baroque, over-the-top Guillermo Del Toro fantasyland. I found it to make for rather gauche and disrespectful plotting in the face of a very real modern epidemic that affects thousands of women (and even some men) daily. I will grant that it has one of King's finest opening chapters, but from there, it steadily runs off its own rails.

In terms of Kubrick's THE SHINING, we'd all chase our tails into oblivion arguing its merit. I'll only say that, for me, THE SHINING is the textbook example of a genius filmmaker (personally, second only to Steven Spielberg) recognizing that what works cinematically is often a very different animal than what works in prose. I think it's extraordinary that Kubrick changed wholesale the plotting of so much of King's novel (the scariest book in history), yet still ended up creating the scariest film in history. If anyone wishes to argue the unquestioned virtue of fidelity to the written word when translating book to film, I point you to King's own script for THE SHINING TV miniseries, which--to paraphrase King himself--"was boring as old, dead dog s**t."
 

Officious Little Prick

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2014
129
443
51
Broken Arrow, OK
Best novel subjectively: The Stand
Best novel objectively: The Stand

Though they're both fine novels in their own rights, I find both THE STAND and IT to be, among Constant Readers, overrated. THE STAND's deux ex machina ending particularly grates, especially for an agnostic-with-strong-atheistic-tendencies like me. And surely there's a novel of King's you rank below all others; it wouldn't necessarily mean it's a bad book (I mean even ROSE MADDER is pregnant with King's incomparable mastery of immaculate prose), just comparatively the worst.
 

prufrock21

Well-Known Member
Jun 2, 2011
2,956
12,657
The Caribbean
Though they're both fine novels in their own rights, I find both THE STAND and IT to be, among Constant Readers, overrated. THE STAND's deux ex machina ending particularly grates, especially for an agnostic-with-strong-atheistic-tendencies like me. And surely there's a novel of King's you rank below all others; it wouldn't necessarily mean it's a bad book (I mean even ROSE MADDER is pregnant with King's incomparable mastery of immaculate prose), just comparatively the worst.
You're joking, right? And please don't shake your "deux ex machina ending" finger at me.