Opinions on Stephen King - eviltoast

This may sound dumb, but I’ve never read for this man. I’ve always just heard about him on social media but never ventured to read his work. Opinions, please. Should I invest? Feeling like fiction lately. I’ve read so much non-fiction through throughout my life that I think I deserve a couple of fiction books to get busy with for a little while. Thanks in advance

EDIT: Thank you so much to all who answered. I have read and appreciated every single comment. I have decided to start with fairy tale since I ran into the book at Walmart. So giving that a shot to see. Thank you so much

  • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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    22 hours ago

    The thing about King is, and he’ll admit this now, he used to do a bunch of drugs and hammer out several novels back to back. He’s an incredibly talented writer, but sometimes his stories are just some cool shit he thought of that doesn’t really go anywhere. Sometimes there’s deep introspection, sometimes it’s just a big scary dog that terrorizes a family.

    And Cujo is great. Read it. Read all his books. Just not all at once. The Dark Tower series is another good example, because it does a lot of world building, but also sometimes the story just happens and everyone moves on to the next thing. The Stand has a similar issue. It is well written, meandering, thoughtful, and mindeless all at the same time.

    There’s also a loosely connected universe between the Shining, It, The Dark Tower, The Stand, and probably a few others I’m forgetting. These are all good books/series, but my recommendation is not to read them back to back. You’ll start to see the patterns and fall backs he uses as an author when he just needs to wrap things up and publish the book.