In Stephen King's books, King tells stories that are seemingly unrelated to each other. With his great attention to detail Stephen King is able to link these stories together by introducing the necessary characters or settings. Stephen King often makes references to events that have happened in his other books to tie these unrelated stories together.
Stephen King's portrayal of his characters make them very realistic and very believable so that we can relate to them. Stephen King paints the settings of his stories so vividly that you as a reader cannot help but be drawn in and made to feel like you are part of the setting.
Stephen King refers alot to the dark and scary side of American culture and history. Most of the characters in Stephen King's books take on the fears that exist within the American culture and history. Recurrent themes that run throughout Stephen King's books include; crime, war, the supernatural - spirit realms, violence and racial issues.
Stephen King does not fail to entertain. Find out why Stephen King's books are hard to put down. Here is what people are saying about some of Stephen King's books:
The Shining
The beginning of the book starts off with Jack Torrance, alcoholic, and a man with a bad temper. He has a lovely wife and adorable son, named Danny, who seems to have an amazing gift of seeing future events and being able to sense how people are feeling. We first learn that Jack was fired from his last job because he beat up one of his students. This student, George, was convinced that Jack was setting the timer ahead in his debate class. Because of this act, George became very angry and slashed Jack's tires.
Jack did make friends at Provington Private School. One of Jack's closest friends was Al Shockely, Al is a very rich and powerful man who sits on the boards of many projects including the Overlook Hotel. Because Al is friends with Jack, he gets Jack a job at the Overlook Hotel as the curator for the hotel. One of Jack's most vital jobs is to heat the hotel, one wing at a time, and to make sure the boiler does not blow up.
When Jack and his family arrive at the Overlook, Danny starts to have terrible nightmares of a thing chasing him down a hall trying to kill him. In these dreams, Danny makes a wrong turn and ends up in a room. At the end of these dreams he always sees the words REDRUM. After the first couple weeks of the job, Jack and his family start to notice things that are a little peculiar about the strange hotel. Outside in the playground area there are hedge animals, a dog, rabbit, and three lions. Danny and Jack both see the animals start to move and run after them. Danny even gets scratched by one of the lions. Many other strange things like this happen at the Overlook, and the Torrance family starts to realize that Jack should not have taken this job!
This book taught me many things, one being that a good horror book is hard to put down. This book, is amazingly scary and will leave you wondering how someone could come up with such a scary book. I personally, have always loved horror books, but this one brought my love of them to a whole new level. The way Stephen King can tell a story is truly amazing and brings me out of my little world and into the world of the Overlook!
The Stand
This book was AMAZING. Honestly, it was both one of the most well-written books I've ever read, and one of the most interesting stories. It has just enough fantasy to lend a creepier edge than a realistic horror story, but the evil characters are still real enough to feel like evil humans. These characters were the characters I've come closest to connecting with - with twelve-hundred pages, King spends tons of time developing each character in huge depth. I was able to understand the characters, picture them, imagine them as real people. They are like real people - they have faults, they have understandable motivations, they do things that don't always seem like the perfect thing to do. They are human, in a word. And since they are all developed in such depth, nothing they do shocks you, nothing stands out as something a person wouldn't do - it all flows, as if it were something that actually did happen, and King is just telling you about it.
The story also covers such a grand arc of humankind. For those who don't know, it deals with what happens when almost all of the population of the world dies, and what the survivors do. There is a vast amount of commentary on what society is, and how and why it develops. The thing is, it comes not only as simply King saying what he believes, but how the survivors band together. With every kind of person, including the good and the bad, he portrays the many tangled webs of relationships between the imperfect and even less perfect people, and how they define a society. In terms of reading, this books goes quickly. It takes a lot of time to develop fully, as all of the characters have fleshed-out pasts and personalities, but the language is simple enough, although evocative, that it reads easily. Once the characters come together, the pace of the book picks up, and goes even faster. To sum it up: if I could have given this book 100 stars, I would have. It is incredibly well written, with incredibly complex characters and an engaging plot. You can read it again and again and again, and every time, see something new in the writing. I recommend this to everyone.
Misery
'Misery' is a gruesome story of torture with blood, guts, and a psychopath. It's a well told tale, the characters are well developed and the fact that there are only two of them never gets boring. It's a real page turner, in fact I finished it tonight after getting off the subway on the platform before I walked home. But, this book is more than just a thriller, just like King is more than just a pulp writer.
I read an article by the ever optimistic and cheerful Harold Bloom in college about how dismayed he was that young people like Stephen King so much. All the literature crtics I've read hate King and it seems like it's just because people actually enjoy reading his work. Yeah, Bloom, I said 'work' just like I would about Tolstoy's 'work' because Stephen King as damned hard worker. Think of all the books he's churned out over the last few decades. I'd like to see Harold Bloom show enough imagination to write fiction instead of just criticizing it all the time.
I'm actually new to Stephen King's fiction. I've read a few of the essays and articles he's written and a really great graduation speech he gave at UMaine awhile ago in which he extolled the virtues of our mutual home state, but this is only my 3rd novel by him. I like this guy, and I know why too. It's not just because he makes me scream and I have a hard time putting his books down, it's because King loves writing. He has a real and self-aware relationship with what it means to be a writer. He knows he's not Tolstoy or Faulkner, he doesn't try to write that way. He knows how to tell a good god damned story and he has a passion for it. I appreciate his self awareness as a writer and the fact that he ackowledges how difficult the whole process is while not making us feel like he's somehow superior because he's figured out how to do it.
In 'Misery' it's almost like we get to watch King write this story. He doesn't just set us up for a crazy story and watch us discover things about his characters, it feels like he actually comes with us and makes the discoveries at the same time we do. That's what makes a good storyteller. And I don't give a damn if Bloom likes him or not.
It
"It" takes place in Derry , Maine where 7 indiviuals come together to fight an evil presence that lives and feeds off of mostly young children in this small town. These wonderful charaters confront "not once, but twice, first as children and again as adults.
I went into this book thinking "It" was a clown, when really "It" was much more than that...he took on many forms and "It" was creepy as hell.
This book was great! I have been a Stephen King fan for a long time and I am now kicking myself for waiting so long to read this book. As scary as some of the parts of this book was, I really enjoyed the seven main charaters, espcially when they were children. Yes, there were times I thought to myself, "I may need to sleep with the lights on if I keep reading tonight", but there were also times I actually found myself laughing out loud with these kids.
Some weird things went on toward the end of this book that are still making me go "hmmm...." but what good story doesn't right? Loved it, worth the 5 weeks I had to spend on one book, "It" was very long, but worth every page!
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