03 Jun 07
Start with his two earliest short story collections, Night Shift and Skeleton Crew; Salem's Lot and The Shining are excellent as has been said, although the latter is essentially an inferior riff on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. The Stand is by all accounts wonderful, but I haven't had the time to read more than the short story it started out as, and at 1000+ pages it may be asking too much to start with.
One warning, though: stay away from his later short story collections - both of them are by-the-numbers exercises, in particular Nightmares and Dreamscapes.
03 Jun 07
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Originally posted by AmauroteI liked The Stand for the first 1/2, after that it started getting tedious. King's novels at that point started turning into 1200 page monsters. They always begin rocko-socko grab your interest with great character development and situations, but about half way through you just stop caring what happens. Like trying to trudge through Moby Dick.
Start with his two earliest short story collections, Night Shift and Skeleton Crew; Salem's Lot and The Shining are excellent as has been said, although the latter is essentially an inferior riff on Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. The Stand is by all accounts wonderful, but I haven't had the time to re ...[text shortened]... - both of them are by-the-numbers exercises, in particular Nightmares and Dreamscapes.
03 Jun 07
Originally posted by badmoonHearts in Atlantis was very good, but not typical King. It's a better place to start than the gunslinger series though.
I've read most of King's. I think The Stand was absolutley awful. Try Hearts in Atlantis - His writing was at it's peak and it is quite imaginative
I'd say The Shining, or Salem's Lot - typical King (so you get a good idea about his writing,) one book (so you get the whole story, not a beginning to a long series,) and short enough that if you decide you don't like it you haven't wasted buttloads of time on finding out that you don't like it.