P-C, I really loved Firestarter.

I picked up Cujo at a garage sale a while ago. It came out the week I was born!

Pet Sematary, Misery, and Dolores Claiborne were all great, and I also loved The Regulators and Desperation. They both came out in 1996, and The Regulators came out with Richard Bachman as the author. They're great to read one after the other, in whichever order, because he's basically playing with the same characters and settings and ideas, but tilting them one way or another. They're both good, and they *are* different, but they're also the same at the base. I loved seeing that, how you can take one story and tell it a completely different way.

Lisey's Story was also really good, and really worth it in the end, but the buildup was also slow, like Duma Key. If you don't give up on it, though, the characterization and the story are fantastic.

One summer in college, I went on a King-reading binge. I can't remember what all I read at this point (pretty sure it included The Stand, except that it culminated with The Tommyknockers. I kind of burned myself out on Stephen King for a long time after that.

Pet Sematary I think I read in junior high, and it was the first book I remember reading that actually scared me. Scared the CRAP out of me, as I recall.

Pet Sematary is almost unbearable after you have kids.

One not-King book I want to reread is Peter Straub's Floating Dragon. I remember it scaring the shit out of me, but I only vaguely remember the plot. Like, mostly that there was one.

Pet Sematary is almost unbearable after you have kids.

Man, I do not doubt it.

I just looked up Stephen King's bibliography (I almost asked "What's the word for a discography, but with books?" I blame the headache meds), and I thought I had read a lot more than I have, but it looks like I've only read 5 novels and a couple of collections. But I feel like The Stand (the uncut version) should count for at least 2 books.

The Stand should definitely count as more than one.

I also wiki'd! And I'm surprised by how many of his books I haven't read. A friend loved Insomnia and sent me an extra copy, but it's another tome. I just started Just After Sunset, because it's short stories and I have no attention span right now.

Hey, Steph, tell me what you think of The Diviners when you're done. I haven't read it yet, but I read the first chapter (possibly less?) online and was really underwhelmed. A friend said that it picks up once Evie is introduced, and that she loved it. And she *didn't* like A Great and Terrible Beauty.

I haven't read it yet, but I read the first chapter (possibly less?) online and was really underwhelmed.

It really does start slowly. Amazon's sample was something like 11 chapters, and I was going to just stop reading after the first one, but I was killing time after a meeting, so I kept reading, and then it got me.

A friend said that it picks up once Evie is introduced

It definitely really does. I think Bray is taking too long to introduce some elements and integrate them (I hit one of those "Oh, I see how this is coming together!" moments, and realized it was goddamn page 262.)

That said, I'm REALLY enjoying it. It's one of those books where I can't wait to get home from work to read more.

I went on the same binge in college, Steph! For some reason, as and English and theatre major, with all the reading, the only thing I could read for "fun" was Stephan King.

Good to know. I'll probably put it on my Christmas list. I have all of her books but Beauty Queens in hardcover, so it would be crazy and obsessive nice to continue the trend.