'Serenity'
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
(looking for distraction, yes I am.)
Salem's Lot is still my favorite King book of all time. It just hurtles along, and I don't think there's a dud scene anywhere in it.
I kind of want to reread It, but I have very vivid memories of how terrified I was by it.
My favourite Stephen King is the lesser-celebrated Needful Things. It's creepy as anything.
King definitely needs an editor, although the original Stand is my favorite book of all time. Maybe it helps that I was living in Boulder at the time I first read it and everything felt so much more real in a way. Scary for sure. Then again I do love me a good postApocalypse/dystopia.
I've had Salem's Lot sitting on a shelf for years, and I'm not sure why I never read it. I really ought to!!
Firestarter holds a special place for me as it was the first King I read, and I caused quite a scene in the library because I was trying to check it out when I was 12 and the librarian was sure this was a terrible idea. My mother was all... "Why on earth shouldn't I let her read it?"
I re-read It over the summer. I was struck with how King re-created not just one, but half a dozen children's worlds in the 1958 sections. It's also the one I'd most like to see the author's background materials for -- I suspect a lot about Pennywise never made it into the book.
And may I pimp "Richard Bachmann's" The Long Walk? Completely implausible premise at the time (though not so much in today's reality-TV mad world?) but utterly compelling.
I loved It so much. The children's voices, their connection, their fear, everything. And then the end sucked so incredibly, I literally threw the book across the room. Only time King has ever really disappointed me.
Okay, so I"m looking at a wide choice of SK ebooks.
Help me choose.
stand - yes! dark tower - yes! it's a long series, and you have the benefit of not having to wait for the rest of the series. I enjoyed the earlier books of the series more, and the later books less for many reasons. colorado kid - meh. i wasn't enthused.
Oops I edited in a big bunch there. I was interested in the Colorado kid because it seems to have sparked Haven in a really lame way. I want to the connection there.
The Stand is completely worth it, even uncut. One of my all-time favorite books of any kind.
The Shining is fantastic, and has a much more satisfying ending than the movie.
Misery is actually wonderful, so don't cross it off the list entirely. Great, tight POV, incredible tension.
Carrie is fantastic, and really inventive, too, in style and format.
Night Shift and Skeleton Crew are both totally worth it, and full of gems.
The only ones you don't have on here that I'd really recommend are Desperation and The Regulators, which you should really read as a pair, in whatever order you like, and Delores Claiborne, which gets overlooked, but which I really loved.
For just starting out, though, I'd go with one of the short story collections and then either Carrie, Salem's Lot, or The Shining.