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The 'Currently Reading' Thread.


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Posted (edited)

Has anybody read any of the Dark Tower books? Are they any good?

 

Edit: Or any of the Stephen King books? Which ones are best?

Edited by Mr.E
Posted

My housemate has most of Stephen King's books and told me once "you know the way you like wrestling? well I like Stephen King". That probably sums it up. He's generally awful but you may like it...

Posted

Fair enough.

 

I'll ask about on my end, see if anybody I know has read any of his stuff, but I'll probably get something of his and give it a whirl.

Posted

Could be an age thing, I guess. Most SK fans I know started reading his stuff as late teens so perhaps they've stuck with him like people stick with a band they got into at an earlyish age?

  • Awards Moderator
Posted

I like some Stephen King (I think The Stand is great). A couple of the Dark Tower books are pretty good, but there are also various times in the series where it disappears so thoroughly up its own arse it creates some kind of infinite arse time loop.

  • Paid Members
Posted (edited)

King's books got a bit too bulky for me in the end — sure, The Stand is cracking, but by the time you've got a book like Insomnia stretching the storyline till it just snaps, I lost interest. 'Salem's Lot is a thing of beauty, because it basically introduced all of those Stephen King cliches before they were cliches.

Edited by Sergio Mendacious
Posted

Clive Barker was my man back in the day, Weaveworld and the Hellbound Heart were better than anything I'd read by King. But I was also 16 at the time and bummed Anne Rice so he'll probably be shit if I went back to his stuff now.

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Posted

Barker's pretty good, but his short fiction is the best. In his longer works, I found that he loved to repeat the trick of "here's a villain // wait, here's a worse villain // the original villain is now more of a reluctant hero"

 

Books of Blood are great.

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Posted

"My name is George Nathaniel Curzon

I am a most superior person

My cheeks are red, my hair is sleak

I dine at Blenheim twice a week"

 

Just finishing a decent biography of Lord Curzon, Foreign Secretary after WW1 and former Viceroy of India. Had a head like a pumpkin too.

 

Also got an outstanding book called 'The Wars of Afghanistan', by Peter Tomsen, a former US diplomat in the area. It's huge in scope and about as good a one volume explanation as to why Afghanistan is a basket case as you will find. 

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