Ranking Stephen King's Novels

My top three are

The Shining
11-22-63
The Long Walk


I'm in the minority but I absolutely hated The Stand

I'll just post the top tier books of those I've read:
Night Shift
Skeleton Crew
Different Seasons
The Bachman Books (if you can find it somewhere online or in a used bookstore, otherwise just read the individual novelettes I guess)
The first 4 Dark Tower books (though I hesitate to suggest these due to the last 3 sucking so bad)
Salem's Lot
Firestarter
The Talisman
It
The Dead Zone
The Eyes of the Dragon
The Green Mile
For all it's faults I think The Stand belongs in his top tier as well.

A couple that I think are not quite in his top tier for me but still very good:
The Shining
Desperation
Dreamcatcher

I tried twice to get through The Stand and just could not finish it. Last time was probably 20 years ago.

I remember I could not put it down for the first maybe 4-5 hundred pages. But somewhere in the middle it got bogged down and became so tedious and boring I just quit.

Today I learned that I have read more Stephen King than the average Book Board poster!

Below is books not mentioned or conflicting reviews:

Dead Zone and Misery are very good

The Stand is pretty good

It is great

Avoid Tommyknockers

Try Needful Things and see if you like it. Do the same for Dreamcatcher.

I appreciate everyone's responses.

I’m so so so glad I read a spoiler of the Dark Tower series before I read past book 3.

If I had read all of those thousands of pages for that ending I probably would have punted it through a window.

Has anyone read "the running man"? King wrote it under the name Richard Bachman. The movie with Arnold Schwarzenegger in it is based on it, wondering if the book is any good.

1. IT
2. Pet Semetary
3. Needful things
4. The green mile
5. Bag of bones
6. Misery
7. Different seasons
8. The shining
9. The girl who loved Tom Gordon
10. The shining sequel whatever it's called

Those are my top ten novels that I've read, I still need to read salems lot, the stand. And the JFK one because I've heard great things about all of them

My ranking of short story collections would be

1. Skeleton crew
2. Night shift
3. Everything's eventual
4. Nightmares and dream scapes
5. Bazzar of bad dreams
6. Just after sunset

I actually prefer his short stories. By the way I listed different seasons as a novel because it contains 4 novellas so I don't really consider them "short"

King is a great writer with many flaws that you just learn to tolerate, like you would a family member. Probably the biggest one for me would be his lame arse cringe worthy humor at times, and the more documented over writing and over detailization.

Revival and tommyknockers are god aweful so they aren't listed

11/22/63 is one of my favorite books of all time.

1. 11/22/63
2. The Stand
3. It

I thought Salem's Lot was terrible.

1.) It
2.) The Shining
3.) Dr Sleep
4.) Needful Things
5.) Misery
6.) The Dark Tower Series
7.) ‘Salem’s Lot
8.)The Stand
9.) Revival
10.) The Outsider
11.) Pet Sematary
12.) Desperation

I really enjoyed all of these.


Rose Madder has some pretty good parts and some pretty bad parts. Pretty mediocre overall. I’d also stick


Stay far, far away from The Tommyknockers and Dream Catcher.