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On the way home from work one day, I felt the hunger. The hunger for Needful Things.

The 1991 so-called “last Castle Rock novel” is one of my favorite Stephen King novels. However, I’m a person who can read a book once and not need to reread for a long time. So, I pushed down my desire to return to the tale of pranks and Faustian bargains and I got to thinking: back in April, I micro-reviewed ten Stephen King books. I did it for a lack of other topics that month. But when I saw it in the ‘Popular Posts’ sidebar during September and October, I realized: if I’m going to take my readers on a guided tour through the world of the man who’s single handedly responsible for Maine’s wildly fluctuating tourism rate, it should probably be during spooky season.

My favorite coffee shop closing means this will be coming post-Halloween, but Halloween isn’t the end of the spooky season (I think).

Ten Stephen King books. Let’s talk about them.

The Tommyknockers (1987, 747 pages)

Bobbi Anderson breaks a hole in the ground while walking her dog. Inside the cavern she discovers an ancient object and accidentally activates it. Soon, the people of Haven, Maine, are building technology centuries ahead of the curve using common household items. They’re also losing teeth and ignorant of the fact that the air is becoming toxic to any non-residents. It’s up to Jim Gardener, a burned-out author friend of Bobbi’s who’s immune to the strange changes Haven is going through, to keep the Tommyknockers from coming a-knocking.

Brief review: Eh. I didn’t particularly like it at the time. It wasn’t bad—Stephen King novels rarely are—but it also wasn’t great. Time has made me appreciate it a little more, especially when I read an interview where King said the whole book was a metaphor for his past drug addiction, which made several elements that didn’t work for me on first read click in hindsight.

Good first King read? I’d say it could go either way.

Carrie (1974, 242 pages)

The book that introduced Stephen King to the world. An epistolary novel that combines narrative, interviews, and articles to tell the horrific tragedy of Carrieta “Carrie” White, a bullied teenager from Chamberlain, Maine, with an abusive fanatically religious mother. Carrie realizes she has telekinesis at the same time Sue Snell, a popular girl, talks her boyfriend Tommy Ross into taking Carrie to prom. Queen bee Chris Hargensen, still upset that she was punished for playing a prank on Carrie, decides to play another one to get her revenge.

What happens after that?

Did you notice a few lines back I said “horrific tragedy”?

Brief review: This book got a lot of its thunder stolen by Brian de Palma’s 1976 film adaptation starring Sissy Spacek as the title character. Granted, that movie is the horror classic it is for a reason, but the limits of special effects back in 1976 meant they had to scale down the climax. In the movie, Carrie destroys her high school with her powers. In the book (spoilers for a fifty-year-old book) Carrie takes Chamberlain off the map. The epistolary format–bouncing between Carrie’s story proper, interviews after the tragedy, excerpts from articles and books about the event–also wouldn’t have translated well to film, which would be a reoccurring problem when it comes to adaptations of Stephen King’s work.

Good first King read? If an author’s debut novel isn’t a good read of theirs, what were they doing, man?

Needful Things (1991, 960 pages)

The town of Castle Rock has seen some things. Years ago, a local man, Johnny Smith, used psychic powers to apprehend serial killer Frank Dodd then went and got himself killed trying to assassinate a presidential candidate. A few years after that, a local dog, Cujo, went rabid, killed three people, and caused the death of a young boy when he trapped the boy and his mother in their car. A few years after that, bestselling author Thad Beaumont came to Castle Rock to put an end to George Stark, his pen name who somehow gained a life of his own and went on a killing spree. Now there’s a new item on the heaping mountain of strange in Castle Rock: Leland Gaunt, owner of a new shop called Needful Things. The shop has seemingly whatever the customer wants, and Leland gives it to them for the low, low price of playing a little prank on someone else.

In doing so, he exposes how low people can sink to get what their heart desires.

Brief review: Like I’ve said, this is one of my favorite King novels. I mentioned the novels that precede this–The Dead Zone, Cujo and The Dark Half–but Castle Rock is a central location in the King mythos, so the story of Needful Things is a culmination of years of short stories, novels, and mentions and references in other novels and short stories. My description is inadequate. Read this.

Good first King read? Yes and no. This book can be read on its own, but at minimum, I’d say read The Dark Half, as Needful Things’ protagonist Alan Pangborn is a supporting character. At maximum [patience, that is] read everything listed before Needful Things here.

Roadwork (1981, 320 pages, written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym)

Three years ago, Barton Dawes’ son died of cancer. Now, a new highway extension will wipe Dawes’ home, workplace and neighborhood off the map. Dawes won’t take it.

He’ll take extreme measures to keep his home.

Like consulting a local crime lord to see if he can get his hands on explosives.

Brief review: One of Stephen King’s most forgettable books. Yes, I know how insane it is to call a story where a man with rapidly declining mental health besieges a construction company and the police forgettable, but I had to click between Goodreads and Wikipedia to remember the plot. Also, this is one of seven books King wrote under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Out of left field recommendation: refreshing my memory of the plot, this book sounds a lot like the movie Falling Down. So if you liked that movie, give Roadwork a try.

Good first King read? To be honest, me meme meh. 

Revival (2014, 403 pages)

When he was a kid, Jamie Morton’s little town got a new youth pastor, Charles Jacobs. Jacobs was handsome, charming and intelligent, with a particular interest in experiments with electricity. Then his wife and child died horribly in a freak accident, and Jacobs cursed God and renounced his faith before disappearing. Decades later, after Jamie has torpedoed a musical career by getting hooked on drugs, he meets Jacobs again. Jacobs has found a new god to worship, a “special electricity” that makes Jamie’s drug addiction vanish and that he travels the country faith healing people with.

But the bill always comes due.

And Jamie will have to come face to face with the horrifying power source of Jacobs’ “special electricity.”

Brief review: I do not scare easily. Thanks to Blumhouse movies butchering the concept of a jump scare, I can count on one hand the number of times something I’ve read or watched has truly scared me. So when I say that Revival is one of the most horrifying stories I’ve ever read, I mean it. To say why would spoil a fantastic book, but know: sleep with the lights on once you’ve reached Revival’s end.

Good first King read? I think it could go either way. Either read it first to rip the Band-Aid off or make like I recommended with Pet Sematary to save the most terrifying for last.

Want to know something crazy? I read Revival last year, but it wasn’t my ‘best horror’ pick when I counted off my best books of 2023.

Six Scary Stories (2016, 126 pages)

This was.

When The Bazaar of Bad Dreams released in the UK, King judged a promotional short story contest run by British publisher Hodder & Stoughton and The Guardian newspaper. Six of the stories were so good he decided to collect them in an anthology.

Brief review: Yes, I proclaimed this scarier than Revival a year ago, but with hindsight, I see they’re scary in different ways. Revival is a slow burn of building dread; meanwhile, Six Scary Stories, being an anthology, really has to cut to the scares. Ultimately, I’d say Six Scary Stories shoots off its brightest firework too early, because the first story “Wild Swimming,” which managed to reduce me to the shivering dog in less than thirty pages, is the best. Still a good anthology, though.

Good first King read? Yes.

Cycle of the Werewolf (1985, 128 pages)

For twelve months, citizens of the small town of Tarker’s Mills, Maine, die gruesomely whenever there’s a full moon. The only survivor of the killer is Marty Coslaw, a wheelchair-bound boy who tells the police they’re looking for a werewolf. The police don’t believe him.

You saw the title. You know who’s right.

Brief review: Another one I had to look back into because it’s been so long since I first read it. It’s…OK. It’s a werewolf story, and not one that breaks any new ground as far as werewolf lore. It’s an excellently crafted werewolf story, make no mistake, but if you’re looking for a radically different interpretation of werewolves a la The Quarry or Dog Soldiers, this isn’t it.

Good first King read? Yes, but mostly because it’s one of a handful of short King reads, the others being Six Scary Stories, Elevation, Gwendy’s Button Box, and the previously-reviewed The Colorado Kid.

The Regulators (1996, 475 pages, written under his Richard Bachman pseudonym)

A beautiful afternoon in suburban Ohio comes to a bloody end when garishly-colored vans roar down the street and the drivers open fire on anyone they see. The survivors gather and watch as their little town transforms in front of their eyes. Faceless gun-toting soldiers patrol the streets. Lawns turn into sand, and cacti replace bushes. And people keep getting phone calls that consist of a nonsense word: “Tak.”

It is a nonsense word, right?

…right?

Brief review: I ranked this book the best horror novel I read in 2021. It’s scary. Violent, too. It’s up there with The Dark Half in the ‘Stephen King books you shouldn’t read having eaten recently’ Hall of Fame. Also, fun fact: The Regulators is an alternate universe take on King’s earlier novel Desperation. So if you like The Regulators, check out Desperation.

Good first King read? As long as you have a big bottle of ginger ale on hand.

Christine (1983, 526 pages)

From the second dorky Arnie Cunningham lays his eyes on the bright red 1958 Plymouth Fury, he’s obsessed. He pays the owner, crabby old Roland D. LeBay, pennies to get it. Arnie changes once he has the keys to the car, which he names Christine. His acne disappears and he no longer needs his glasses, but he’s also experiencing mood swings and blackouts and casting his lot with shady characters, and his best friend, popular Dennis Guilder, doesn’t like it.

Christine gives him the creeps.

And that’s before the murders, the vehicular homicides of people who get on Arnie’s bad side.

The vehicular homicides that make Dennis conclude the impossible: that Christine has a will of its own.

And a psychotic obsession with whoever’s behind the wheel.

Brief review: A book about a haunted car should not work as well as Christine does. Christine has the misfortune of being the book that precedes Pet Sematary. I’d go so far as to call this underrated, inasmuch as you can call a book by one of the most famous authors of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries underrated.

Good first King read? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Night Shift (1978, 344 pages)

Stephen King’s first short story collection. That’s notable on its own, but it’s also notable because nine of the stories–“Graveyard Shift,” “The Mangler,” “The Boogeyman,” “Trucks,” “Sometimes They Come Back,” “The Ledge,” “The Lawnmower Man,” “Quitters Inc.” and “Children of the Corn”–have been adapted to film.

Brief review: Good. The same can’t be said for most of those film adaptations I mentioned up top. “The Lawnmower Man”’s film adaptation was so bad and so unrelated to King’s original concept that he successfully sued to have his name removed from the film’s promotion. Off topic. It’s a good collection.

Good first King read? Yes.

 

So those were ten more Stephen King books and my thoughts on them. Happy reading and minimal nightmares.

Nope, no snappy referential quote this time. Get reading.

2 Comments

  1. Rylan Shewmaker

    Have you read The Dark Tower series? I read them a few years ago as my first King read and fell in love with his writing through them… though I haven’t ventured much into his horror books yet.

    Reply
    • Noah Keene

      For the last *shudder* 8 years or so, I’ve been reading his books chronologically, with the mindset that I will get to the Dark Tower once I’ve read his non-Dark Tower books. As it stands, I’m five books off: Billy Summers, Gwendy’s Final Task, Fairy Tale, Holly and You Like It Darker.

      Reply

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