Darren answers “I read a couple of Stephen King novels a...”

Lea Ann Cornman asked this question about Mr. Mercedes (Bill Hodges Trilogy, #1):

I read a couple of Stephen King novels a few years back....Needful Things and Insomnia. I had a very hard time getting through these and frankly found them boring. I then heard great things about 11/22/63 and I read it earlier this Spring and LOVED, it. What is this one like? I have not read any older King either, Cujo, Firestarter....etc. I want to like King's novels, but I don't want to be disappointed either.

Darren I've read everything Stephen King has written and can say, without trepidation, that Mercedes Man is NOT a book that will go down as a good example of…moreI've read everything Stephen King has written and can say, without trepidation, that Mercedes Man is NOT a book that will go down as a good example of why folks love his writing. 11/21/63 is fantastic. Had you started reading King much earlier you could have lived through the thrill and anticipation of waiting for each new serial in the original Green Mile, which had some of the same qualities of tone.

If you really want to experience Stephen King at his best though, you have to go back... Way back. For my money, "It" is the pinnacle, along with "Pet Cemetery," "The Stand," "Tommyknockers" and even stretching as far back as "Salem's Lot" (still the only book to give me nightmares). As far as his more recent work; "Duma Key" is as close as he's come to replicating his peak in the last few years.

To love Stephen King is to love a certain style and to trust that the author will deliver. Most folks who have come to his work anew in the last ten years don't have the same attachment to him/it as those of us over forty,but if you want to understand why those of us of a certain age will always buy whatever he writes, go back to the mid 70's and start there. You'll have the bejeezus scared out of you, you might cry, you'll read some of the best short story collections of one author ever printed and you'll enjoy timeless writing in multiple genre's.

I really believe that there is something for ALMOST everybody in StephenKing's work.(less)

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