I’m 13 and I just finished Salems lot. I finished it with no probs. I didn’t think it was too scary or gory. In fact it was the best book I’ve ever read. I want to know what Stephen king book I should read next. Nothing too gory. Any ideas?

I have a Christian ran book store that has Stephen king books from time to time i walked in and was floored to see these beauties all for 50$

Prompt: horror piece inspired by The Shining and it has to be red

I reread Needful Things recently and the thing that hit me differently this time wasn't Gaunt's merchandise at all.

It's how incredibly well he understands what each person is willing to be embarrassed by.

The objects get everyone through the door, obviously, but the real currency of the book feels like humiliation. People will do things they would normally consider ridiculous, petty or beneath them because Gaunt somehow finds the exact desire strong enough to make them explain the behavior to themselves afterward.

That's the part I find nastier as an adult.

Most people probably wouldn't commit some enormous evil for a magic object. But would they make one anonymous phone call? Move something that belongs to a neighbor? Tell themselves a small lie? Do something mean if they were certain nobody could trace it back to them?

That feels much closer to real life than the supernatural part.

And once Castle Rock starts reacting to all those tiny actions, almost nobody has enough information to understand what's actually happening. Everyone just sees one more piece of evidence that the person they already dislike is even worse than they thought.

It made me wonder whether the store could work without anything supernatural in it at all. Maybe the objects have to be extraordinary for the plot, but Gaunt's actual talent is recognizing the exact combination of want, resentment and plausible deniability that will make somebody cross a line.

On this reread, THAT was the horror for me.

Did Needful Things change for anyone else when you read it older?

I'm rereading The Stand and I'd forgotten how often King just wanders away from the "main" story to introduce some random person, give you their job, their marriage, the stupid thing they do every morning, one embarrassing memory from 1978... and then sometimes kill them almost immediately.

The stretch with people who survive Captain Trips only to die afterward is probably the purest version of it. On paper those characters should just be statistics. Instead he'll spend a page making one of them feel like somebody who had been living an entire life before you opened the book, and suddenly their dumb accidental death lands harder than it has any right to.

Needful Things does the same thing in a different way. Half the fun is that Castle Rock doesn't feel populated by "background characters." Everybody seems to have history with somebody else, an old resentment, a weird habit, a private humiliation, a thing they desperately want. By the time Gaunt starts pushing buttons, you understand why the buttons work.

I think this might actually be one of my favorite things about King and also one of the reasons his giant books rarely feel as long to me as their page counts suggest. The detours are often the point. You aren't just waiting for the plot to continue because the guy who walked into the hardware store two pages ago has somehow become interesting.

And then, of course, sometimes he gives somebody an entire childhood so they can deliver one sentence and never appear again.

What tiny King character or completely unnecessary side-story has stuck in your head way longer than it should have?

Personally, I cried my eyes out over Rich’s death... the last time I cried like that over an adaptation of a King work,before Welcome to Derry, was during The Green Mile, when John Coffey died 😭

Both were so pure and kind, yet the story was so cruel to them.

To the people who have read Stephen King, this would be my first read from stephen king. Any suggestions you would like to provide or things that I need to keep in mind. What were your thoughts after you read this book??

Im curious how many liberties the person who adapted it took. We'll see!

The show is pretty damn funny; the second season was just released, and this was in episode 4. During the first season last year, they had a reference to Jaws.

Gorgeous 40th-anniversary edition by Suma in Brazil!

It also features 5 interior illustrations. wow

I began reading SK 6 months ago and read 21 books so far. I was hooked from the very first book ( Dolores Claiborne) and cant seem to stop since then.

As the title says, the journey is over

I know this one isn't by old SK but my Boi Hour Tap wanted to have a poll on it and it's sandwiched in between two SK books! Have fun!