It are some of my favorite King

Also The Shining, which I don't think Kubrick really did justice to. I actually think the ABC miniseries did a better job of it.

I think I've read one of his short story collections, maybe Skeleton Crew? It was the one with "The Lawnmower Man" in it (was the movie really based on it? Cause it didn't resemble it in the least) and "Sometimes They Come Back." Wait, is "Graveyard Shift" in that, or is that in a titular collection? The one about rats?

And now that I think about it, I don't love Crichton because of his prose or characters, but because I really enjoy reading his books. They're great adventure novels revolving around science (not always though, I also like Disclosure, though Airframe ended up being kind of lame).

Yeah, totally. The Shining was awesome. Skeleton Crew is the one with "The Mist" (which I think was made into a movie too) and the story about the scary-ass toy monkey that was pictured on the cover. The one about the rats I thought was in SK.

Really bummed about the fact that our stupid cable won't get TNT for some reason (at least not clearly) and so we missed the new Salem's Lot that just ran. That book initiated me into the wonderful world of all-nighters when I was 13.

ETA I was thinking of "The Lake" - that's the one that got turned into Evil Cabin or whatever it was called. I just wish someone would make a good movie out of the "The Mist".

Also The Shining, which I don't think Kubrick really did justice to. I actually think the ABC miniseries did a better job of it.

Thanks to the ABC miniseries, to this day I cannot bear to have the shower curtain closed unless someone is actually showering in it. If it's not in use, the curtain has to be all scrunched up at one end so that there's no possibility of anything lurking in the tub.

Also while I think King's use of the MN was lazy in terms of plotting, his most half-assed writing in terms of language (Bag of Bones for example struck me as lame, also Madder Rose) still runs rings around Crichton and his ilk. Dean Koontz, for example. I couldn't get through the first paragraph of The Bad Place without throwing the book against the wall in rage at the unbelievably poor grammar and fifth-grade writing level. Of course, I didn't expect any better from such an unimaginatively named tome.

[English major]

I liked Airframe because he did well on the aviation tech and corporate atmosphere, and the portrayal of the news media fit my prejudices, but all the characters were pretty flat.

Oh, no, the one I read was Night Shift.

Really bummed about the fact that our stupid cable won't get TNT for some reason (at least not clearly) and so we missed the new Salem's Lot that just ran.

I read the book for my Gothic class at Rice, but I didn't check out the miniseries cause Dalton Ross didn't think much of it, and Rob Lowe's hair was too laughable.

That book initiated me into the wonderful world of all-nighters when I was 13.

I don't remember whether a book initiated me into all-nighters, but my story is in junior high or high school, and it involved Dean Koontz's Cold Fire, and my hitting the turning point of the book and staying up till at least four or something until I finished the section.

I couldn't get through the first paragraph of The Bad Place without throwing the book against the wall in rage at the unbelievably poor grammar and fifth-grade writing level.

I also love The Bad Place. I'm a big Koontz fan. My favorite might be Dragon Tears.

Thanks to the ABC miniseries, to this day I cannot bear to have the shower curtain closed unless someone is actually showering in it.

Letter to Hitchcock: "Sir, After seeing Diabolique, my daughter was afraid to take a bath. Now she has seen your Psycho and is afraid to take a shower. What should I do with her?"
Hitchcock: "Send her to the dry cleaners."

Liked Eon by Greg Bear a lot. Read The Heart of the Comet by David Brin ... I liked it; it was kinda trippy, and I think it had a lot of originality to it. Gregory Benford's Timescape was one of my faves. Haven't read it in a while, though. I, too, liked The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park, but that's about it for Crichton and me. I'm really rather random and sporadic in my reading. And I have a bad memory for authors. Well, and titles, too, sometimes.

Whatshisname in the ABC The Shining was really quite scary. I hadn't planned to watch, but I got sucked in.

(Edited for spelling. Twice now.)

Whathisname

Steven Weber, of Wings fame.

I actually have a shitload of cheap paperbacks of Dean Koontz stored on a closet shelf just about 18 inches from where I'm sitting typing right now, but I cheerfully concede that he's a horrid writer. He's generally a good gruesome twisty conspiracy-theory-ridden nutbag of a storyteller, and a big guilty pleasure, but there are whole chapters in each of his novels that I have to read with one eye closed or my brain turned off. When he decides to write like a real Writer and Ahh-tist, he's absolutely unbearable.

Stephen King will always have my utter hopeless loyalty for Insomnia, in which he quoted heavily from Stephen Dobyns's Cemetery Nights, one of my favorite books of poetry ever. I love him like mad for that.

Liked Crichton when I was a seventh grader.

King has so far failed to impress me, either with The Green Mile or The Gunslinger , and I thought both of them had interesting stories - just hated the way he told them.

Dean Koontz looks too bad for me to try it.

I've never gotten more than halfway through a Greg Bear novel without giving up - his ideas are cool, his writing drives me insane. Which is a shame, as he seems to have a lock on airport newsstands Sci-fi selections.