Stephen King’s Top 10 All-Time Favorite Books

You men­tion DFW and his “mass mar­ket” list of faves. But he, like King, also explic­it­ly men­tioned lov­ing McTeague and Blood Merid­i­an (which, yeah, are both high­ly rec­om­mend­ed from me, too!). The cita­tion for Blood Merid­i­an would be the essay “Over­looked” in Both Flesh and Not. McTeague was men­tioned some­where in Every Love Sto­ry Is a Ghost Sto­ry.

Who­ev­er wrote this appar­ent­ly has­n’t paid the slight­est bit of atten­tion to Stephen King’s writ­ing in the past oooooh… quar­ter cen­tu­ry. What a stu­pid assump­tion to make, and using as exam­ples two books that were in the ear­ly part of his career and ignor­ing the dozens of works that have come since. Look at the entire body of King’s work, and it’s not the slight­est bit “strik­ing”, that an author (who reads more than he writes, BTW) who has not only tak­en, but taught upper lev­el col­lege cours­es, would list in his top 10 some­thing as “high­brow” as Huck Finn.

What a bizarre way to end an arti­cle.

I’m curi­ous as to whether the author has ever read “The Stand” because it seems to me that the only qual­i­ty sep­a­rat­ing it and most of the so called high­brow “clas­sics” in King’s list is age.

It’s fair­ly self evi­dent to any­one who’s famil­iar with King’s bib­li­og­ra­phy that his brand of fic­tion is far more about explor­ing the kind of tropes and ideas you would find in the lit­er­a­ture he appar­ent­ly prefers and as has been com­ment­ed above sim­ply uses super­nat­ur­al set­tings as a nar­ra­tive tool to tell human sto­ries.

Some­times an unfa­mil­iar set­ting iso­lates with sur­pris­ing clar­i­ty moral or human­is­tic ques­tions and mus­ings.

I find elit­ism vis-a-vis what con­sti­tutes “high­brow” kind of annoy­ing. “Spooky tales of fan­ta­sy” my arse, please read King’s entire bib­li­og­ra­phy imme­di­ate­ly. Con­sid­er it home­work. Because shock­ing­ly not only does he teach upper lev­el col­lege cours­es, his works are often the sub­ject.

Rebec­ca Whites com­ment is right on. The thing that first attract­ed me to King’s books was they play upon the fears many of us share whether we admit them or not… that lit­tle child inside us is still afraid of what is under the cel­lar stairs and things that go bump in the night…he also writes about things that prey on our minds as a soci­ety.

One of my favorites is “The Raj Quar­tet” too. And “Bleak House” is my favorite work of Dick­ens’.

Mr King did major on Eng­lish at uni­ver­si­ty and taught Eng­lish pri­or to being a suc­cess­ful writer so it does­n’t sur­prise me that he likes some of those nov­els. But if you read his list of the 100 books every­one should read his sug­ges­tions are more eclec­tic and include such pop­u­lar authors as JK Rowl­ing and Lee Child.

Nice list. Flies has always haunt­ed me. Like his #1 since short sto­ries can be can­dy for brain, sweet and always want­i­ng just one more piece please. Writer does­n’t wear out wel­come.

For heck of it I’d throw in King Rat to get some human insight under god awful con­di­tions.
Stuck on Ken Fol­lett sto­ries now. Pil­lars of the Earth knocked me out some years ago, now catch up time for some oth­er of his.
Thrillers aren’t that easy to, espe­cial­ly his­tor­i­cal ones.
Enjoyed first cou­ple of Koontz works then, bit like King, just too much same­ness, name brands, etc.
Kin­da sad haven’t found much con­tem­po­rary work once past Crich­ton
works but most of his were great fun.That sort of makes up for not being grabbed by today. Paint­ing more inter­est­ing.

King wrote that when he was in col­lege, he loved to car­ry around paper­backs by John D. Mac­Don­ald to piss off the Eng­lish majors. He also wrote that he learned more from mys­tery nov­els than the “clas­sics.” It appears that he’s feel­ing the need for approval from the snob­bish­ness he once scorned.