Start with night shift

He wrote under a pen name to prove to himself that his work was valuable and not just selling due to branding. He wrote Running Man under the name Richard Bachman. It was turned into a Schwarzenegger film in the 80s. It’s cheesy (the film), but fun.

Christine and Carrie should also be good for getting a feel for King. I read Running Man, but not the other two. I just know them from film adaptations. The Stand and It are also worth checking out, I’d think.

Very slow-burning books, and I almost always lost interest before finishing them. I found The Dark Tower especially tedious. After I couldn’t force myself read it, I got the audiobook version a lnd tried to listen to it three times, but always fell asleep. Ironically, the books I genuinely enjoyed were some of his longest ones: It, and The Stand.

As Richard Bachman, on the other hand, he wrote loads of entertaining books. It almost seems like in that persona he didn’t give a shit what others thought of his works, and the books ended up eminently readable.

I really liked 11/22/63, it was my first King novel, but then I read The Outsider and was disillusioned.

My experience with him is unusual since the only thing I read of his works was his treatise on writing, a sort of memoir in which he recounts his experience with writing and work ethic.

Fuck Steven king. He wrote a perfectly good start to the dark tower series. Then he wrote books 5,6 and 7 and fucked it all up. God-damned son of a bitch. I’d have preferred to have been left with blue balls after wizard and glass than to have gone through the shit that followed.

But, that being said, I highly recommend books 1-4 of the dark tower series.

I personally like Stephen King. I grew up reading Carrie, Cujo, Misery, etc. They are iconic.

I started reading again a year ago but found them very long to physically read. I listen to them now and noticed a pattern. Many are slow burns, often have an older male involved (or maybe because I just read 11/22/63, Pet Sementary, and Fairytail around the same time), always have characters that reminisce, world building is great with all the details, solid characters.

I wouldn’t read many all at the same time. Try a Stephen King rec, 1 or 2. If you dont like, move on. He doesn’t just do horror. He can do other genres too. Very talented.

I still like his stuff. I just read Holly and liked it. Tried Fairytale. Wasnt my thing.

I’ve read every Steven King book. They all have varying levels of depth, but they’re all very well written and immersive. I think everyone here had a reasonable point about a lot of his endings turning out fast and dark.

You may not enjoy this if you like stories that feel like they come to a proper conclusion, but I think that’s where he excels at making his stories feel dark. The endings are almost always NOT satisfying. They often hurt.

Another thing people don’t like about him is that he’s a period writer, so lots of his writing is filled with current events from the time when he wrote the book. This makes a lot of his older books feel really dated (like Tommyknockers). But it’s good for me.

Also, like most people who have also commented, i recommend starting with his short stories, and his more popular works. They really are good.

Well, I think the responses you’ve gotten show exactly how major a figure he is, and how divisive he can be.

Any author is a matter of taste. Nobody is universally loved. That’s just the way it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

However, some writers manage to strike magic in minds so that their work resonates across generations, lifetimes. Shakespeare is still widely read. A person may not like his poems or plays, but he’s impossible to ignore entirely.

King is no Shakespeare. But he is damn good at writing things that stick in your head. And I firmly believe he’ll still be widely read in 200 years. Likely longer.

So, even if you end up not liking him in general, he’s worth reading some of his stuff Afghan anyway

Now, I mostly like King. Dude is weird, his stories reflect that, and even his worst stuff is interesting on that level.

My picks would be Cujo, Salem’s Lot, Needful Things, Hearts in Atlantis, Delores Claiborne, and the Bachman books. You read those, you’ll have a solid feel for whether or not you’ll want to ever read the rest.

Cujo is more of a real world horror story. Nothing supernatural, just a nightmare that could happen.

Salem’s Lot is a very unique take on a horror staple. But it’s still pretty normal horror.

Needful Things, that’s one of the most unique horror stories out there, imo. But it’s weird in the way that King does well.

Hearts in Atlantis switches gears. It isn’t horror, not really. But it’s a gentle introduction into his overarching inconsistently connected metaverse of sorts.

Claiborne is my favorite of his human conflict driven writing, where it’s about people in complex situations producing conflict and pointing a light at humanity in the process. It’s not horror at all.

And, the Bachman books. The collection of them is a glimpse into his most creative side, imagining slight twists on normality, akin to Claiborne. But they’re further removed. One is most definitely not set in our world. The others could be, but there’s still a sense of the alien to them. Once he abandoned the pen name, he eventually brought that kind of thinking into the rest of his work (and the best of his work imo), but there’s a rawness and ugliness to the stuff he did as Bachman that is hard to compare to anything else.

Out of the Bachman stories, Rage and The Long Walk tend to get the most attention nowadays because of the premise of each. Running Man is the most well known outside of his fandom, what with the movie loosely based on it. But the real gem is Road Work. The glimpse inside the mind of a man that’s just hit his limit and decides to stop fucking around and fuck things up instead. Hell, if you didn’t read anything else, you should read those.

But, honestly? I’ve read everything he’s written, and none of it is bad. It’s all worth at least one read, though some can be immediately consigned to the “never again bin”. His older stuff tends to be more accessible, but it’s all decent

I’d suggest his Richard Bachman pen name stuff too.

I cannot recommend The Dark Tower series enough, it is my absolute favorite. You need to buckle in and prepare for the long journey ahead though.

I’d start with a smaller one. His writing is very steady and consistent. Sometimes there are weird sexual undertones (weird in a bad way).

I’d recommend Terry Pratchett Discworld. I can’t get into King but Pratchett is good for my English soul.

I really enjoy Steven King’s work. He has an engaging style and some great, often spooky ideas.

He doesn’t plan his stories out; he just writes and lets the story flow, essentially shooting from the hip. Sometimes this works out great, other times he winds up resolving things with a deus ex machina. Generally you aren’t reading his books for the ending, but rather the journey. His short stories tend to avoid this issue - it’s much harder to write yourself into a corner when the story isn’t that long.

The best introduction to King is probably his first novel, “Carrie.” Some of it is now cliche or standard tropes, but that’s just because of how impactful this book was. “Firestarter” is another great introduction.

I like his earlier stuff when I’m in the mood for psychological horror. Carrie, The Shining, Cujo, Pet Sematary, The Green Mile.

The Dark Tower wasn’t for me. I agree with the other person who thought it was a slog.

Lisey’s Story is OK. I like the idea of it, but it’s taking me a while to finish it.

The Mr. Mercedes trilogy is a nice, fluffy read if you like detective stories.

In general, he has great ideas, but trouble coming up with satisfying endings.

Cell is a great premise, an alien signal piggybacks on cell phones turning people into zombies.

At the end of the book it was like King went “Oh? Deadline’s today? Good enough, pack it up and ship it!”