1. The Stand
2. It (out of nostalgia)
3. Dark Tower 1-4

The Long Walk

Different Seasons/The Body

>>8274078
This. A lot of banter and masculine camaraderie initially but it turns into slow, painful philosophical trains of thought with an uneasy presence lurking in the background. A lot of people have mixed feelings about the ending but I thought the symbolism was well done. Not a bad light read. Funnily enough, it's the first book he wrote and finished (though it wasn't published until later under his pseudonym).

>>8274039
On Writing and the first half of Bag of Bones

I'm not trying to be a /lit/ snob (I read and enjoy trashy genre shit all the time) but I've only read Carrie and thought it sucked. Are his other books better?

Misery is easily the best.

>>8274039

I like his detective book, Mr. Mercedes, because I'm a sucker for detective novels.

stephen king looks like a who from whoville t-b-h

The Running Man, I read it on my first year at college and by that time it totally fucking blew my mind. At that time the plot was not as cliché as it is today, I still fucking love it out of nostalgia and sort of grattitude for entering me into the world of books.

Pet Sematary scared the everloving shit outta me when I was 16. When I got to the part where he's exhuming the body of his dead son, and I get to the cliffhanger at the end of a chapter, it literally ends with, "He had no head" and I had to put the book down, for around two weeks, in fact, if I remember right. Carrie was alright (interesting concept and execution however), The Shining was a bore, but like >>8274203 said, Misery is really captivating and sucked me in really easily. I felt so anxious as I was reading the climax of that book. The Stand and IT are too long-winded for my taste. Stephen King may not be the most "literary" writer, but he sure knows how to spin a spooky, intriguing yarn. I like his shorter stuff best. I've also been meaning to read The Long Walk--from what I've heard it's like an old-school YA novel like from the eighties and nineties. I'm looking forward to it. I don't think I'll ever really read much else by him, however. He has a select number of classics and that's it. Maybe 'Salem's Lot if I feel the urge, maybe around Halloween if I can't find anything else. Anyways... good stuff.

>>8274199
The guy is absolute Marmite.

Personally, I quite like most of his early alcoholic and drug fuelled stuff.

It reminds me of my teenage years.

To answer the question. Probably The Stand.

Dark Tower series
Short stories (Night Shift, Skeleton Crew, other collections)
Bachman Books
Different Seasons stories

Because King's ideas are often much better than his execution, his shorter stories and novellas tend to be his best, especially when he was using an alias and a bit freed from horror expectations.

the mist was my favorite book when i was in 10th grade, so that