Endorsed by Stephen King

[Darkmaniscoming]

I curious to see how many items are out there with a Stephen King endorsement be it a forward, or a quote etc for a book or anything else if it exists....post pics or list any you know of here....

Here's a good starter:

[gsvec]

:wtf: Good starter!

[Room 217 Caretaker]

Do you want to see pictures or a list like this:

Horripilations (Art of JK Potter) Introduction by King
A Life in the Cinema Introduction by King
Arbor House Treasury Introduction by King and a short story The Crate
Archie Americana Series Introduction by King
Batman 400 Introduction by King
Best American Short Stories Introduction by King
Frankenstein Introduction by King
Ideal Genuine Man Introduction by King
Signatures Introduction by King
Tales by Moonlight Introduction by King


Mulleins
Cumberland VA

[jhanic]

Or this extended blurb on the back of the proof of The Story of Edward Sawtelle (which was shortened substantially when the book was published:

http://i469.photobucket.com/albums/rr60/johnhanic/Other_Proofs/StoryofEdwardSawtelleproofback.jpg

John

[John Blaze]

I bought Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks by Richard Christian Matheson because 1. I thought it was the same author as I am Legend (which it's not) and 2, because SK writes a forward about how awesome the author is.

Maybe SK is just a good friend of the SR Matheson, because that book sucked. And I read the whole thing. Maybe 1 of the short stories was even semi-good, and the best that could be said of any of them was that some were disturbing. Like watching someone drown is disturbing.><

SK recommended it, but I don't.

[Room 217 Caretaker]

The Evil Dead poster with King quote

....The most ferociously original horror film of the year....

Mulleins
Cumberland VA

[Randall Flagg]

I curious to see how many items are out there with a Stephen King endorsement be it a forward, or a quote etc for a book or anything else if it exists....post pics or list any you know of here....

Here's a good starter:
You have kicked it off, now go forth and contribute all that you personally can.:idea:
P.S. Stunning idea for a thread...it might be renamed but the invigoration to the Collector section is greatly appreciated.

[Bev Vincent]

“This wonderful book by Bev Vincent opens doors to Roland’s world that not
even I knew existed. If you like The Dark Tower books, you’ll like this one.
Enthusiastically recommended.” (shortened for the cover of the book)

When this came in, it made my editor :dance:

[Brice]

“This wonderful book by Bev Vincent opens doors to Roland’s world that not
even I knew existed. If you like The Dark Tower books, you’ll like this one.
Enthusiastically recommended.” (shortened for the cover of the book)

When this came in, it made my editor :dance:

I'm sure your reaction was pretty close to the same, Bev.

[Darkmaniscoming]

Excellent adds Ralph...I think unless they are short little blurbs on covers we dont need to have the whole intro pictured, but great to have that list on here........

some obvious ones are also:

Forward on "Stalking the Nightmare" by Harlan Ellison
Forward on "The Collector" by John Fowles

which both incidentally are two of my all time faves.

You have impeccable taste in books Stephen King...:wtf:




The Evil Dead poster with King quote

....The most ferociously original horror film of the year....

Mulleins
Cumberland VA

[Darkmaniscoming]

Clive Barker - In the Flesh - King says Barker is better than he????

[Darkmaniscoming]

from jacket of "The Ceremonies" by T.E.D. Klein....
Viking 1984....Read it I think many moons ago, remember it possibly being decent...anyone read it in the last decade??

[Darkmaniscoming]

hey Bev can you post a nice scan of the cover quote for the thread collection?

Thanks!!!!




“This wonderful book by Bev Vincent opens doors to Roland’s world that not
even I knew existed. If you like The Dark Tower books, you’ll like this one.
Enthusiastically recommended.” (shortened for the cover of the book)

When this came in, it made my editor :dance:

[Bev Vincent]

http://www.liljas-library.com/img/other/trttdt.jpg

[John Blaze]

awesome! Bev, you must be so proud.

[Darkmaniscoming]

Thats a very nice one Bev, excuse my ignorance but who is the illustrator on that?

[Bev Vincent]

He's British artist Steve Stone. I believe this art will appear in the upcoming book from Centipede Press.

[LadyHitchhiker]

I wish I was endorsed by Stephen King... :drool:

[Darkmaniscoming]

If you could find some time, a picture of any is worth as many words as a blurb can have....



I've been working on a list of King endorsements... every kind of blurbs (few words to few sentences or lines sometimes), that are NOT in Justin's book. Justin didnt put them into his bibliography cause they are not long enough i guess, and if you start you have to be as completist as possible, so lot of hassle and difficulty.

I've got it at home, so i'll try to remember to post it in a few days or so. But there are quite a few (quoted) in Beahm's A to Z book.

The thing that interest me about those is that those could POSSIBLY be extracted from longer texts from King: ARCs, any reprints of the books, letter to the publisher... or maybe simply interviews, i dunno... but that allows some researches for potential new "texts"^^

:cowboy:


Thanks for the ones on this thread there were some i didnt know so far.

[Clacke]

Endorsement from the DJ of the Subterranean Press Limited Edition of The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, though I think it was originally written for the trade publication of the book.

http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/500/medium/25072009283.jpg

[herbertwest]

Clive Barker - In the Flesh - King says Barker is better than he????


I always wondered where that "I have seen the future of horror and its name is Clive Barker" comes from ???

[herbertwest]

I didnt add the one that have been prviously mentionned in that thread.


I WAS ABLE TO CHECK THE FOLLOWING ONES :


Most of the followings are mentionned in Beahm’s A to Z book!
I don’t know where those are from… letter to editor? Reviews? ARCs?

Bookcover means I was able to see it on a bookcover from an online shop




BATMAN : THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, Frank Miller
"....Probably the finest piece of comic art ever to be published in a popular edition." [amazon]

BONES OF THE MOON, Jonathan Carroll
• "I finished the novel feeling exhilarated and sated...I was entertained like a spectator at a really good magic show. A gorgeous, frightening, imaginative, loving, unsettling, funny, gruesome, thought-provoking novel. This grand book is a triumph." Official website of the writer : http://www.jonathancarroll.com/books/bonesofthemoon.html
• "A gorgeous, frightening, imaginative, loving, unsettling, funny, gruesome, thought-provoking novel. This grand book is a triumph." [online… but no idea where it is from ; back of the book ?]
• The french book have something different : "Un livre que j'ai dévoré ! Il y a longtemps que ça ne m'était pas arrivé." (rougly = a book i ate up ! It has been a long time since it didnt happen)

BOOKS OF BLOOD :
wikipedia :
When the Books of Blood were first published in the United States in paperback, Stephen King was quoted on the book covers: "I have seen the future of horror, his name is Clive Barker."=== where does that come from?

A CASE OF NEED, Michael Crichton (under the penname of Jeffrey Hudson)
• “Fantastic… I loved it!” [A to Z]
• "The classic novel of suspense...fantastic...I loved it." [bookcover, ebay]
• "I love anything Michael Crichton writes, but his early medical thrillers have been favorites of mine." [amazon.com)
IMO, there are too many different texts : there must be an actual essay about it !

FAN MAIL, de Ronald Munson
A fantastically crafty nail-bitter in the Ira Levin Tradition.I love it! [bookcover]

FEAR, by Ron Hubbard
• "A classic tale of creeping, surreal menace and horror... One of the really, really good ones." (bookcover)
• A to Z : (see at the end of that post... the joined picture)
• In the French book, it is included in the introduction of the book

FRAILTY, movie : Bill Paxton
o ??? : “I’ve never seen a movie quite like FRAILTY. It’s unique, thought-provoking, edge-of-the seat entertainment.”
o DVD cover : “…edge of the seat entertainment”


HELL HOUSE, RIchard Matheson
• ""Hell House is the scariest haunted house novel ever written. It looms over the rest the way the mountains loom over the foothills." amazon.

IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW, Peter Straub
• From Wikipedia : In addition to building Straub's reputation as a writer of quality horror/supernatural fiction, If You Could See Me Now caught the attention of Stephen King who provided a lengthy blurb for the dust jacket of the first American edition”
o From A to Z : “An electrifying finish : during the last forty pages my hands were as good as nailed to the book”


MANHATTAN GHOST STORY, TM Wright
"T M Wright is a rare and blazing talent." It’s also used on the website of the author…
http://www.tmwrightonline.net/

RULES OF PREY, John Sandford
Sleek and nasty...A big scary, suspenseful read, and I loved every minute of it. [bookcover]

SHADOWLAND, Peter Straub
“Creepy from page one… I loved it” [bookcover & A to Z]

SHADOWPREY, John Sandford.
"A big, scary, suspenseful read"

UNDONE, Michael Kimball
• "The sort of book you think about during the day and can't wait to settle back into at night. It's sly, sexy, suspenseful . . . and very, very moving."
[B]Website of the author : http://www.michaelkimball.com/undone.htm
• Sly, sexy, suspenseful . . . and very, very moving." : bookcover

[herbertwest]

I WASNT ABLE TO CHECK THE FOLLOWING ONES


HAUNTED, by James Herbert.
o « Haunted is one of Herbert’s best riveting, non-stop reading!” [on the cover of the book]
o o A to Z : Haunted is one of Herbert's best. Riveting, nonstop reading... James Herbert is one of the best horror/suspense novelists around -if you want the you-know-what scared you out of you, James Herbert will do it... Herbert is one of England's best selling novelists. Haunted is just the reason why."
But A to Z include a longer one… where does it come from?


AGAINST THE WIND, J. F. Freedman
• “A rip-snorting, full-throttle novel that mixes bikers, murder, a blood-curdling prison riot, and a powder-keg murder trial. The result is a high-octane blast. J. F. Freedman has made an auspicious debut with this compulsively readable tale of crime and punishment. It kept me up late into the night.” A to Z
• “A high octane blast that makes Presumed Innocent seem tame” : bookcover

WEAVE WORLD, by Clive Barker
Comment about Barker and this book (?) at the back of the French edition :
• "Clive Barker est un grand, un vrai novateur... A côté de lui, nous avons l'air d'avoir passé les dix dernières années à dormir... Jamais je n'avais ressenti un tel mélange d'horreur, d'excitation et d'émerveillement à la lecture d'un roman." [Initiation à la terreur]
Roughly : “Clive Barker is a great and a true innovative… Compared to him, we seems like we spent the last ten years sleeping… I’ve never felt such a mix of horror, stimulation and wonder while reading a novel”.


================================================== =


If any one can find "longer" texts, where the blurbs would have been from...

[Darkmaniscoming]

Excellent, thanks all, now we're cookin'!!

[DanishCollector]

Great with the blurbs, but I think Justin didn't include any because they're simply blurbs, not really pieces - however he does include the lengthy praise for The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and I would personally include the one for The Shadow of the Wind.

[DanishCollector]

Correction to the above - the blurb to The Shadow of the Wind was taken from King's Pop of King column "It's Alive! Alive!"

[herbertwest]

If anyone knows more, or find where some of those blurbs are extracted from...

[herbertwest]

Neil Gaiman's A Short Film About John Bolton, DVD COVER :

"Gaiman is, simply put, a treasure house of story."
-Stephen King
http://files.neilgaiman.com/hello/50/1014/1024/Gaimans-John%20Bolton%20DVD.jpg

[Darkmaniscoming]

WOW AWESOME!!!!!

[Room 217 Caretaker]

Michael Crichton A Case of Need

King writes a much longer endorsement inside the book:

"Fantastic.....I love anything Michael Crichton writes, but his earlier medical thrillers have been favorites of mine" -Stephen King

Also on the back:

"Fantastic...I Loved It"...Stephen King

Mulleins
Cumberland VA

[herbertwest]

Michael Crichton A Case of Need

King writes a much longer endorsement inside the book:

"Fantastic.....I love anything Michael Crichton writes, but his earlier medical thrillers have been favorites of mine" -Stephen King

Also on the back:

"Fantastic...I Loved It"...Stephen King

Mulleins
Cumberland VA

Yeah I had this one on my list. I'd like to know where this blurb comes from though!

====
There are a few Gaiman's fans here (i dont know his work).
I wonder if there could be a liner note inside the DVD... anyone could check?

[herbertwest]

If You Could See Me Now , by Peter Straub

This book have had an endorsement by Stephen King.
Here is an excerpt from an email from Centipede Press, about a new edition :

One of the greatest ghost stories of the 1970s, If You Could See Me Now is a haunting and beautiful story of love and regret, an opportunity for a second chance, and the realization that the past can never be changed. It is also a chilling and devastating account of revenge and obsession.

This new edition features more than twelve full-page, full-color photographs by J.K. Potter. The book also features an afterword by Thomas Tessier, a reprint of the original 1977 dustjacket, a photograph of Peter Straub, a bonus short story by Straub (the bizarre "Variations on a
Theme from Seinfeld") and an interview with Peter Straub by Jay Gregory. The book is elegantly typeset and has a rounded back, top-edge stain, ribbon marker, and printed endsheets.

This is a really classy, top-notch book that won't be available for long. We think that you'll agree it is on of the best books we have ever done.

Web price: $175
http://www.centipedepress.com/ifyoucould.html

Special newsletter price: $150
If you are interested, send a check to the address below or let me know and I can send you a PayPal invoice.

Special deal: order If You Could See Me Now at $150 and you can buy The Deadly Percheron hardcover edition for only $10 extra! If you already have The Deadly Percheron hardcover, let me know what you might be interested in and I am sure that we can swing something for you.

[Darkmaniscoming]

"Should come in a red wrapper marked DANGER HIGH EXPLOSIVES"

[herbertwest]

BTW, Steve have written a column about blurbs:

the "art" of blurbs
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20185450,00.html

he says that he have written blurbs for about 3-4 movies, and probably about a hundred of books (up to march 2008)

[Cloysterpete]

I wonder how many one lines quotes he's provided?, gotta be thousands.

I started reading Richard Laymon because I saw one of his hardbacks with the line In you've missed Laymon your in for a treat - SK and I picked up Simmon's The Terror as it said I'm in awe of Dan Simmons - SK, on the top of it.

I'm a sucker for King quotes on books.

[herbertwest]

I wonder how many one lines quotes he's provided?, gotta be thousands.

I started reading Richard Laymon because I saw one of his hardbacks with the line In you've missed Laymon your in for a treat - SK and I picked up Simmon's The Terror as it said I'm in awe of Dan Simmons - SK, on the top of it.

I'm a sucker for King quotes on books.

According to his column, he must have written about 100 blurbs for books (at the date of march 2008.... )

[Room 217 Caretaker]

"Hell House is the scariest haunted house novel ever written. It looms over the rest the way the mountains loom over the foothills."
-- Stephen King

Mulleins
Cumberland VA

[Ari_Racing]

Under the dome UK proof has this:

"I sure hope people like it"
Stephen King

[herbertwest]

Steve endorsing his own books? Aint really blurbs... is it?

[Darkmaniscoming]

Hey all,

I found an extra copy of the book that inspired this thread..LOL
with the amusing endorsement by King "Great f*cking book!"
Its a pretty hilarious book.

If anyone wants it I can post it to you for $8 bucks total.

Pm me if interested.http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/attachment.php?attachmentid=1684&d=1248225077

[mae]

http://sitb-images.amazon.com/Qffs+v35leqbefKB2bTPajbllGKpvnXZn8xXI2tIQtiYrn82jT rwY8C0HHM/mEGGsZswO73/igc=

[Darkmaniscoming]

thanks for the ad pablo...nice one!

[jhanic]

I've been a Haldeman fan for a long time--his Forever War is great. I've never heard of that one.

John

[herbertwest]

http://upfromtheunderground.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=84


Stephen King Blurb Framed by New Genre Author PDF Print E-mail
Written by Holden Pike
Monday, 23 May 2005 17:00

New genre author received one of the highest and most aught after accolades in horror literature, a blurb by Stephen King. Having her first book published by the small press outfit of Darker Than Dark Books was her crowing achievement until she received the blurb packet in the mail from Mr. King’s office.

The packet contained a forty-page contract for the rights of use of the blurb as well as other stipulations on its use. “I mean I knew I would need a lawyer to go over my book contracts but who would have thought that you would need a lawyer to go over a blurb contract.”

Packing the hefty tome of a contract into her worn briefcase she made her way down to her literary lawyer’s office that happened to be attached to a laundry mat. After sifting through the pages upon pages of requirements she found out that a Stephen King Blurb (which by the way must be capitalized just like that when ever used) comes with a catch. “Well I can handle only using it on four hundred of my published books. That is reasonable. No reason to dilute his blurbage. But what gets me is the cut he wants of the sales of those four hundred copies as well as a small cut on the back end of the rest of the run.”

Without even giving it a second thought, she signed the contract and dropped it in the mail on her way back. “One consolation is that he did include a copy of the blurb in the packet. So I’m off to Frame-R-Us to get a nice frame so I can hang it next to all my rejection slips.”



I want to be sure that i correctly understand what is written : the blurb can only appear on 400 copies of the complete print run, right?

And that he gets some % on the sale of the 400 books... as well as a smaller percentage (i guess) of the complete print run.

[Bev Vincent]

Up from the underground is a parody site, like The Onion. Other articles on the same page include "Bush demands more money for war on zombies" and "HWA commisions 5 year old for next anthology cover artist."

[Rahfa]

Ha! Talk about a case-study on how an urban legend can be created.

The second time I read it (after reading Bev's comment) I picked up on the 'lawyer office attached to the laundromat,' but until then it seemed perfectly legitimate - strange and kind of harsh, but possibly legitimate.

You wait - five years from now, people will be talking about how King gets a percentage of all uses of his name on a blurb...

[Darkmaniscoming]

Hmmm I'm actually really happy that this thread went this direction.
It is no secret that I do not put Lawyers at the top of the Human Race in general, but I will try to keep this post neutral.

I have seen many times that a celebrities lawyer will do things that do not reflect the personal thinking of the author/artist/rock star/ etc etc.
I've seen them trounce on very minor issues on the "little guy", many times the celebrity is not even aware of it. This is called "having a good lawyer" in the entertainment business and I bite my tongue saying that but its true.

I'd like to figure out something that has been puzzling me for a while.
I recently picked up and read a book by Stewart O'Nan called "Speed Queen" by complete random, (which i thought was very good BTW). Had no idea it was King related, but I noticed the print on the spine was strange. Turns out the print was printed with the title "Dear Stephen King", and after a legal to do, King's lawyers allegedly forced the title to be dropped and the printed spines covered in a block white "Speed Queen".
The projected sales for this title were very small and the cost of reprinting certainly killed it. It is a Doubleday book so that may add something to the story, but not sure what?
If you look close you can see that somethings up with the spine print

So what really adds confusion, is that within a few years after (have to double check time line) King and O'Nan do the Baseball book together?

Bev, maybe you got some clue here? Curiosity has always killed me on this one.

[herbertwest]

Up from the underground is a parody site, like The Onion. Other articles on the same page include "Bush demands more money for war on zombies" and "HWA commisions 5 year old for next anthology cover artist."

i didnt really pay attention to the other links. i guess i should have

[Patrick]

http://upfromtheunderground.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&Itemid=84


Stephen King Blurb Framed by New Genre Author PDF Print E-mail
Written by Holden Pike
Monday, 23 May 2005 17:00

New genre author received one of the highest and most aught after accolades in horror literature, a blurb by Stephen King. Having her first book published by the small press outfit of Darker Than Dark Books was her crowing achievement until she received the blurb packet in the mail from Mr. King’s office.

The packet contained a forty-page contract for the rights of use of the blurb as well as other stipulations on its use. “I mean I knew I would need a lawyer to go over my book contracts but who would have thought that you would need a lawyer to go over a blurb contract.”

Packing the hefty tome of a contract into her worn briefcase she made her way down to her literary lawyer’s office that happened to be attached to a laundry mat. After sifting through the pages upon pages of requirements she found out that a Stephen King Blurb (which by the way must be capitalized just like that when ever used) comes with a catch. “Well I can handle only using it on four hundred of my published books. That is reasonable. No reason to dilute his blurbage. But what gets me is the cut he wants of the sales of those four hundred copies as well as a small cut on the back end of the rest of the run.”

Without even giving it a second thought, she signed the contract and dropped it in the mail on her way back. “One consolation is that he did include a copy of the blurb in the packet. So I’m off to Frame-R-Us to get a nice frame so I can hang it next to all my rejection slips.”



I want to be sure that i correctly understand what is written : the blurb can only appear on 400 copies of the complete print run, right?

And that he gets some % on the sale of the 400 books... as well as a smaller percentage (i guess) of the complete print run.


Ha! Talk about a case-study on how an urban legend can be created.

The second time I read it (after reading Bev's comment) I picked up on the 'lawyer office attached to the laundromat,' but until then it seemed perfectly legitimate - strange and kind of harsh, but possibly legitimate.

You wait - five years from now, people will be talking about how King gets a percentage of all uses of his name on a blurb...



Up from the underground is a parody site, like The Onion. Other articles on the same page include "Bush demands more money for war on zombies" and "HWA commisions 5 year old for next anthology cover artist."

i didnt really pay attention to the other links. i guess i should have


I apologize for getting off-topic of the thread, but there is this other story on the site...


Cemetery Dance Magazine to go Weekly
Written by Holden Pike
Thursday, 26 June 2008 07:00

CEMETERY DANCE has issued a press release that outlines their upcoming move from a sporadic release schedule to a weekly magazine.
HA!. Yeah right. I'm, sorry I can't even keep a straight face typing it.

Cemetery Dance Magazine To Go Weekly (http://upfromtheunderground.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=186:cemetery-dance-magazine-to-go-weekly&catid=32:niblets&Itemid=82)

[Rahfa]

Hmmm I'm actually really happy that this thread went this direction.

I'd like to figure out something that has been puzzling me for a while.
I recently picked up and read a book by Stewart O'Nan called "Speed Queen" by complete random, (which i thought was very good BTW). Had no idea it was King related, but I noticed the print on the spine was strange. Turns out the print was printed with the title "Dear Stephen King", and after a legal to do, King's lawyers allegedly forced the title to be dropped and the printed spines covered in a block white "Speed Queen".
The projected sales for this title were very small and the cost of reprinting certainly killed it. It is a Doubleday book so that may add something to the story, but not sure what?
If you look close you can see that somethings up with the spine print

So what really adds confusion, is that within a few years after (have to double check time line) King and O'Nan do the Baseball book together?

Bev, maybe you got some clue here? Curiosity has always killed me on this one.

Yeah, I see your point...but if you're in King's position, you have to protect your name - if he lets one person do something like that, use his name to sell a product, then it just starts down a slippery slope. It's not King's problem if the publisher's legal office didn't do it's proper vetting before printing a book...

Obviously, O'Nan didn't hold a grudge, I guess.

[Randall Flagg]

From Stephen King:
“The Five isn't just Robert McCammon’s best novel in years; it’s his best novel ever. Terrifying, suspenseful, unputdownable, and full of rock and roll energy. It’s also uplifting, a book you’ll finish feeling better about your world, your friends, and your music. Here’s one you’ll beg friends to read.”

http://www.subterraneanpress.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/mccammon03_b.jpg

[sgc1999]

A good and a bad blurb in the same sentance:
"Both Rowling and Meyer, they’re speaking directly to young people. … The real difference is that [Harry Potter author] Jo Rowling is a terrific writer and [Twilight author] Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."
— Stephen King

[DanishCollector]

That one started an outrage among all the Sparklers in the world:)

[mystima]

do reviews count also....I read this and it had his endorsement or blurb on the cover of the book. (excellent book by the way and am looking forward to the other two and movie as well.)

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20223443,00.html

[Robert Fulman]

My favorite parts of the review are King's complaints:

1) Deus ex machina (re: the silver parachutes) - Is he not the author of the Dark Tower series, into which he explicitly inserts himself and the term "deus ex machina" by providing Jake a key, and helping Susannah out with an anagram?

2) He questions the originality of the televised violence theme, by pointing out that he wrote two books with that theme (and was it just me, or was Cell pretty much The Stand with zombis?)

[BigCoffinHunter]

My favorite parts of the review are King's complaints:

1) Deus ex machina (re: the silver parachutes) - Is he not the author of the Dark Tower series, into which he explicitly inserts himself and the term "deus ex machina" by providing Jake a key, and helping Susannah out with an anagram?

2) He questions the originality of the televised violence theme, by pointing out that he wrote two books with that theme (and was it just me, or was Cell pretty much The Stand with zombis?)

Actually, I would say Cell was just a reworking of George Romero's Land of the Dead, which I thought was terrible, by the way

[jemaher]

Yeah, overall the Cell was a dropped call.

[jemaher]

The Stand was , on the other hand, one of his best.

[DanishCollector]

I think he meant Land of the Dead was terrible, not Cell. I liked Cell; not his best but a fun little ride just the same.

[Randall Flagg]

Stephen King on "Lord of the Flies", from the London Telegraph: (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/authorinterviews/8653066/Stephen-King-on-Lord-of-the-Flies.html)

I grew up in a small northern New England farming community where most of the roads were dirt, there were more cows than people, and the school was a single room heated by a woodstove. Kids who were bad didn’t get detention; they had to stay after school and either chop stovelengths or sprinkle lime in the privies.

Of course there was no town library, but in the deserted Methodist parsonage about a quarter of a mile from the house where my brother David and I grew up, there was one room piled high with mouldering books, many of them the size of telephone directories. A good percentage of them were boys’ books of the sort our British cousins call “ripping yarns”. David and I were voracious readers, a habit we got from our mother, and we fell upon this trove like hungry men on a chicken dinner.

There were dozens concerning the brilliant boy inventor Tom Swift (we used to joke that sooner or later we’d surely come across one titled Tom Swift and His Electric Grandmother); there were almost as many about a heroic Second World War RAF pilot named Dave Dawson (whose Spitfire was always “prop-clawing for altitude”). We fought the evil Scorpion with Don Winslow, detected with the Hardy Boys, roved with the Rover Boys.

Eventually — around the time John Kennedy became president, I think — we came to feel something was missing. These stories were exciting enough, but something about them was… off. Part of it might have been the fact that most of the stories were set in the Twenties and Thirties, decades before my brother and I were born, but that was not the greater part of it. Something about those books was just wrong. The kids in them were wrong.

There was no library, but in the early Sixties, the library came to us. Once a month a lumbering green van pulled up in front of our tiny school. Written on the side in large gold letters was State of Maine Bookmobile. The driver-librarian was a hefty lady who liked kids almost as much as she liked books, and she was always willing to make a suggestion. One day, after I’d spent 20 minutes pulling books from the shelves in the section marked Young Readers and then replacing them again, she asked me what sort of book I was looking for.

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I thought about it, then asked a question — perhaps by accident, perhaps as a result of divine intervention — that unlocked the rest of my life. “Do you have any stories about how kids really are?”
She thought about it, then went to the section of the Bookmobile marked Adult Fiction, and pulled out a slim hardcover volume. “Try this, Stevie,” she said. “And if anyone asks, tell them you found it yourself. Otherwise, I might get into trouble.”
Imagine my surprise (shock might be closer) when, half a century after that visit to the Bookmobile parked in the dusty yard of the Methodist Corners School, I downloaded the audio version of Lord of the Flies and heard William Golding articulating, in the charmingly casual introduction to his brilliant reading, exactly what had been troubling me. “One day I was sitting one side of the fireplace, and my wife was sitting on the other, and I suddenly said to her, 'Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books.’ And she said, 'That’s a first-class idea! You write it!’ So I went ahead and wrote it.”
I had read adult novels before, or what passed for them (the room of water-dampened books in the Methodist parsonage was full of Hercule Poirots and Miss Marples as well as Tom Swifts), but nothing that had been written about children, for adults. I was thus unprepared for what I found between the covers of Lord of the Flies: a perfect understanding of the sort of beings my friends and I were at 12 or 13, untouched by the usual soft soap and deodorant. Could we be good? Yes. Could we be kind? Yes again. Could we, at the turn of a moment, become little monsters? Indeed we could. And did. At least twice a day and far more frequently on summer vacations, when we were often left to our own devices.
Golding harnessed his unsentimental view of boyhood to a story of adventure and swiftly mounting suspense. To the 12-year-old boy I was, the idea of roaming an uninhabited tropical island without parental supervision at first seemed liberating, almost heavenly. By the time the boy with the birthmark on his face (the first little ’un to raise the possibility of a beast on the island) disappeared, my sense of liberation had become tinged with unease. And by the time the badly ill — and perhaps visionary — Simon confronts the severed and fly-blown head of the sow, which has been stuck on a pole, I was in terror. “The half-shut eyes were dim with the infinite cynicism of adult life,” Golding writes. “They assured Simon that everything was a bad business.” That line resonated with me then, and continues to resonate all these years later. I used it as one of the epigrams to my book of interrelated novellas, Hearts in Atlantis.
It was, so far as I can remember, the first book with hands — strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, “This is not just entertainment; it’s life or death.”
Lord of the Flies wasn’t a bit like the boys’ books in the parsonage; in fact, it rendered those books obsolete. In the parsonage books, the Hardy Boys might get tied up, but you knew they’d get free. A German Messerschmitt might get on Dave Dawson’s tail, but you knew he’d get away (by putting his Spitfire in prop-clawing mode, no doubt).
By the time I reached the last 70 pages of Lord of the Flies, I understood not only that some of the boys might die, but some would die. It was inevitable. I only hoped it wouldn’t be Ralph, with whom I identified so passionately that I was in a cold sweat as I turned the pages. No teacher needed to tell me that Ralph embodied the values of civilisation and that Jack’s embrace of savagery and sacrifice represented the ease with which those values could be swept away; it was evident even to a child. Especially to a child who had witnessed (and participated in) many acts of casual schoolyard bullying. My relief at the last-minute intervention of the adult world was immense, although I was angry at the naval officer’s almost offhand dismissal of the ragtag survivors (“I should have thought that a pack of British boys… would have been able to put up a better show…”).
I stayed angry about that until I remembered — this was weeks later, but I still thought about the book every day — that the boys were on the island in the first place because a bunch of idiotic adults had started a nuclear war. And years later (by then I was on my fourth or fifth reading of the novel), I came across an edition with an afterword by Golding. In it he said (I’m paraphrasing): “The adults save the children… but who will save the adults?”
To me, Lord of the Flies has always represented what novels are for; what makes them indispensable. Should we expect to be entertained when we read a story? Of course. An act of the imagination that doesn’t entertain is a poor act indeed. But there should be more. A successful novel should erase the boundary line between writer and reader, so they can unite. When that happens, the novel becomes a part of life – the main course, not the dessert. A successful novel should interrupt the reader’s life, make him or her miss appointments, skip meals, forget to walk the dog. In the best novels, the writer’s imagination becomes the reader’s reality. It glows, incandescent and furious. I’ve been espousing these ideas for most of my life as a writer, and not without being criticised for them. If the novel is strictly about emotion and imagination, the most potent of these criticisms go, then analysis is swept away and discussion of the book becomes irrelevant.
I agree that “This blew me away” is pretty much of a non-starter when it comes to class discussion of a novel (or a short story, or a poem), but I would argue it’s still the beating heart of fiction. “This blew me away” is what every reader wants to say when he closes a book, isn’t it? And isn’t it exactly the sort of experience most writers want to provide?
Nor does a visceral, emotional reaction to a novel preclude analysis. I finished the last half of Lord of the Flies in a single afternoon, my eyes wide, my heart pounding, not thinking, just inhaling. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since, for 50 years and more. My rule of thumb as a writer and a reader – largely formed by Lord of the Flies – is feel it first, think about it later. Analyse all you want, but first dig the experience.
What I keep coming back to is Golding saying, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys… showing how they would really behave?”
It was a good idea. A very good idea that produced a very good novel, one as exciting, relevant, and thought-provoking now as it was when Golding published it in 1954.


This is an edited version of the introduction to Lord of the Flies (Faber), republished to celebrate William Golding’s centenary. To order for £7.99 (plus 99p p&p), go to books.telegraph.co.uk (http://www.books.telegraph.co.uk/)

[Patrick]

I loved LORD OF THE FLIES when one of my teachers assigned it back in high school. SK's commentary makes me want to read it again.

[Bev Vincent]

Green River Killer by Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case :

"Terrific. It's got the scariest opening sequence I've read in years, and the novel as a whole makes compelling stay-up-late reading. Great, creepy stuff."
-Stephen King, New York Times best-selling author of The Dark Tower and The Stand

http://netgalley.com/static/img/GreenRiverKiller.jpg

[Clacke]

Not exactly an endorsement within the pages of the book, but king has guest reviewed The Night Eternal by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan for Amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/Night-Eternal-Guillermo-Del-Toro/dp/0061558265/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318786193&sr=8-1



Amazon Guest Review: Stephen King on The Night Eternal

Stephen King is the author of more than 50 books, all of them worldwide best-sellers. Among his most recent are the Dark Tower novels, Cell, From a Buick 8, Everything's Eventual, Hearts in Atlantis, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, and Bag of Bones. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. He lives in Bangor, Maine, with his wife, novelist Tabitha King.

The Strain trilogy opened with an authentic wow moment: a Boeing 777 arrives at JFK airport with all but four of the passengers dead in their seats. The flashlight beams of the first responders “registered dully in the dead jewels of their open eyes.” Not much later these corpses begin to rise from their morgue slabs, and a plague of blood-hungry predators overwhelms New York. The first hundred pages of The Strain is a sustained exercise in terror that held this reader in spellbound delight, because del Toro and Hogan write with crisp authenticity about both the fantastical (vampires) and the completely real (New York City, with all its odd nooks and crannies).

What began in The Strain comes to a sublimely satisfying conclusion in The Night Eternal. Del Toro and Hogan have taken Dracula, the greatest vampire tale of them all, and deftly turned it inside out. In Stoker’s novel, Bloodsucker Zero arrives in England on a sailing ship called the Demeter. As with the Regis Air 777, the Demeter is a ghost ship when it reaches port, the eponymous Count having snacked his way across the ocean. The difference is that Dracula is confronted by a heroic band of vampire-hunters who eventually drive him from England by using modern technology—everything from diaries kept on wax recording cylinders to blood transfusions. In The Strain Trilogy, the body-hopping Master—who arrives at JFK in the person of Polish nobleman Jusef Sardu—uses the very technology that defeated his honorable forebear to destroy the civilized world. Big corporations are his tools; modern transportation serves to spread the vampire virus; nuclear weapons usher in a new era of pollution and atmospheric darkness.

Only jolly old England escapes; the wily Brits have blown up the Chunnel early on, and remain relatively vampire-free. At moments like this, the reader senses del Toro and Hogan tucking their tongues in their cheeks and having a gleeful blast.

When speaking of the New World Order in Henry the Sixth, Shakespeare has one of his characters say, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.” As The Night Eternal opens, the Master (currently having traded the body of Sardu for that of rock star Gabriel Bolivar) doubles down on that, ordering his minions to kill not just those in the legal profession but all the CEOs, tycoons, intellectuals, rebels, and artists. “Their execution was swift, public and brutal. Out they marched, the damned, out of the River House, the Dakota, the Beresford and their ilk…in a horrific pageant of carnage, they were disposed of.”

With the exception of heroic pawnbroker/scholar Abraham Setrakian (who almost destroyed the Master in Volume Two, The Fall), the winning cast of human characters from the previous novels are all present and accounted for: Nora Martinez, who has traded in her scientist’s microscope for a silver sword; Vasily Fet, who now exterminates vampires instead of rats; Augustin “Gus” Elizade, once a gangbanger and now a hero of resistance. There’s also the less-than-admirable but fascinating (in a repulsive way, it’s true) Alfonso Creem, with his insatiable appetite and his vampire-repelling mouthful of silver teeth.

And there’s Eph Goodweather, the epidemiologist around whom all these others revolve. When The Night Eternal begins, two years after the Master has used nuclear weapons to create vampire-friendly darkness all over the planet, Eph has fallen on hard times. His undead ex-wife stalks him relentlessly (he is, after all, one of her “Dear Ones”), his son has become a rifle-toting, obsessive-compulsive acolyte of the Master, and Eph himself has started popping Vicodin and oxycodone. Nora has left him for Vasily Fet, and Eph is viewed with distrust by those who used to rally around him. Justifiable distrust; he keeps showing up late for meetings and vampire-killing gigs.

Fet has managed to purchase a rogue nuke (it’s wrapped in garbage bags and looks like a trashcan), and the resistance fighters have a sacred book that may—if deciphered—lead them to the Black Site where the Master’s earthly life began. If they can destroy that holy soil, they believe the vampire plague will end.

There’s a certain amount of perhaps dispensable hugger-mugger about vampires in Rome and archangels in Sodom, but the main attractions here are the resistance fighters’ fierce dedication to their cause, and Eph Goodweather’s slow and painful realization that if he destroys the Master, he may also destroy his son Zachary, the last person on earth he truly loves. Heroes of tragic dimension are rare in popular fiction, but Goodweather fills the bill nicely.

After a small (and perhaps unavoidable—see Tolkein’s The Two Towers) letdown in The Fall, The Strain Trilogy comes to a rip-roaring conclusion in The Night Eternal. The action is non-stop, and the fantasy element is anchored in enough satisfying detail to make it believable. All the New York landmarks, such as Central Park’s Belvedere Castle and The Cloisters, are real. And while you’re discovering such essential vampire facts as the undead’s inability to cross running water without human help, you’ll also find out that the stone lions outside the New York Public Library have names: Patience and Fortitude. Plus, come on, admit it—there’s something about seeing vampires massing for an attack in a Wendy’s parking lot that makes them more real. The devil’s in the details, and this is one devilishly good read full of satisfying scares. --Stephen King

[WeDealInLead]

Yeah. fans of those books should NOT read that review.

[Merlin1958]

Well, I'm game. Sounds a little like "The Passage", but with a more contemporary setting. Just bought books 1 & 2

[biomieg]

I loved the first two books and I'm eagerly awaiting #3 (which is on its way to me now). I would not say it's reminiscent of THE PASSAGE (which is very epic in scope) but I'm pretty sure that if you like one, you will like the other. Enjoy!

[mae]

This apparently came out last year, but as far as I can see searching the forum, it went unnoticed:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41PLu5ryaPL.jpg

King's preface is short, and can be read in its entirety by using Amazon's Look Inside feature.

I'll quote it here, since it's publicly available:


Monsters In Your Closet:
А Preface by Stephen King

Few novels had the impact оn me that Dracula did. In college, even guys in my literature class talked about it, and as I read and re-read it, I realized it was the original vampire cloth from which all others had been cut. I know one thing, it scared the blооdу well-hell out of me.

The story seemed а simple оnе. А young solicitor named Jonathan Harker travels to Transylvania to assist Count Dracula in а real estate transaction. While the first chapter starts off pleasantly enough, Harker soon begins to note odd happenings and details of the people and events he experiences while traveling deeper and deeper into the Carpathians. Gloomy castles standing high in the mountains, odd figures half-obscured by the dark, eerie landscapes with flashing lights, and howling wolves trail Harker as he journeys ... unaware of the mystery and horrors he and his love Mina Murray are soon to become entangled with. Only with the help of such noted characters as Professor Van Helsing, John Seward, Arthur Holmwood, and Quincey Morris does good prevail over evil.

There was talk in literary circles that Stoker had been inspired by the stories of Vlad The Impaler and а few others, but had he been inspired by anything, I believe it was Joseph Sheridan LeFanu's (1814-1873) Gothic vampire novella Carmilla (1872) that was the main influence. Nobody will ever know, for Bram Stoker took the secret to his grave, but not before he penned а sequel, Dracula's Guest, which was published posthumously.

While Stoker wrote numerous novels and short stories, he is chiefly remembered today as the author of this best-selling novel.

Of all the monsters in my closet, this is the one that scares me most, and probably always will.

- Stephen King
10 JAN 11

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1936828154/

[Robert Fulman]

I would be willing to call BS on that one. The book seems amateurish enough that the foreword might be lifted from some other source. My main evidence is that the CP page doesn't even show that the preface is copyrighted by Stephen King. It simply says "Copyright 2011 - Bram Stoker", which is an unlikely claim.

[DanishCollector]

I somehow can't access the Amazon preview page...can someone add the actual preview page, unless it's of course against copyright issues.

[herbertwest]

The preview looks awfully cheap...


http://img31.imageshack.us/img31/4756/introskpart1.jpg
http://img842.imageshack.us/img842/2048/introskpart2.jpg[/URL]

[DanishCollector]

Yes, it does, but I agree that it's mighty risky for someone to publish a book with a "fake" intro by King. Could be they are a small publisher who simply can't produce good looking books but that the intro is still King. Spelling errors can easily be done by them, transcribing King's text.

[Robert Fulman]

I am almost 100% positive that the book is print on demand, probably through Createspace.

[Brice]

It looks to me like each sentence is a randomly selected and exactly worded sentence from the parts about Dracula in Danse Macabre....am I wrong?

[DanishCollector]

It could be, will need to look through my copy of Danse Macabre.

[herbertwest]

Might be easier to ask Marsha directly?

[Ari_Racing]

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Lie/Hesh-Kestin/9781476740119?cp_type=end&rmid=20140304_The-Lie-A&rrid=3115819

The Lie
A Novel By Hesh Kestin

"A page-turner that will engage your mind and emotions in a way few novels do. The narrative is headlong, the issues have never been more current, and the characters come alive from the page. This is a story about the lies we tell until the truth is forced upon us, and about divided countries, including those of the human heart. I started reading; I ended up experiencing. The Lie is what great fiction is all about."
– Stephen King

[becca69]

http://pages.simonandschuster.com/the-troop

The Troop by Nick Cutter

“The Troop scared the hell out of me, and I couldn’t put it down. This is old-school horror at its best.” —Stephen King

[Patrick]

Yesterday I finished, THE SHINING GIRLS, by Lauren Beukes. I read it because SK recommended it. What a disappointment.

[Bev Vincent]

The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman & Jesse Kellerman

“An extraordinary work of detection, suspense, and supernatural mystery. I spent three days totally lost in the world Jonathan and Jesse Kellerman have created. This is brilliant, page-turning fiction with mythic underpinnings that give it a special resonance; a rare collaboration where the sum is truly greater than the parts. The book is like nothing I’ve ever read before. It sort of took my breath away.”—Stephen King

[Nickelwise]

This is in F. Paul Wilson's FAQ on his site:

9. Is there a Repairman Jack fan club? And is Stephen King really the president?

The closest thing to an "official" fan club would be the Grand Unification (GU), an occasional meetup that consists of friends from the Repairman Jack Forum. Started in 2001 as a means for the people on the board to meet in person, the GU has met about seven times since. The gathering usually happens for three or four days over a long weekend and F. Paul Wilson joins the group for at least one of those days.

As for Stephen King the short answer is "no". The reason this question comes up every so often on the forum is because King wrote a blurb for the Forge edition of Conspiracies. The blurb states:

"THE TOMB is one of the best all-out adventure stories I’ve read in years."
Stephen King (President of the Repairman Jack fan club)

This was nothing more than a jest on King’s part.

http://www.repairmanjack.com/forum/content.php?108-faq

There's another Stephen King blurb that I remember reading years ago, but for the life of me, can't remember what book it was for or who the author was, but it was pretty unique. Paraphrasing, it started "This is the first blurb I've ever done that I sent unsolicited after reading the book..." I'm pretty sure I ran across it in a library probably 10-15 years ago. I'm sure I read the book, but all I can recall about it was that it was probably a female author, and I may be wrong about that.

[goathunter]

FWIW, the blurb he provided for Robert McCammon's The Five (which was reproduced earlier in this thread (http://www.thedarktower.org/palaver/showthread.php?8866-Endorsed-by-Stephen-King&p=621070&viewfull=1#post621070)) was also unsolicited. Marsha contacted me (actually twice, as her first message was swallowed by my anti-spam filter, and I never saw it) to tell me that Steve had read and enjoyed The Five and wanted to know if we wanted a quote from him about it. Naturally, we were happy to get it. (Re: the "we," I run Rick McCammon's website and FB page.)

Not mentioned in this thread, unless I missed it, was Steve's blurb for McCammon's Speaks the Nightbird, which read, in part:


"Given Rick McCammon's ten-year silence, I was curious about NIGHTBIRD...eager for a new dose of one of America's truly fine story-tellers...delighted it was a BIG dose...and nervous, too. 'Cause writing novels is NOT like riding a bike--you can forget how to do it. Twenty pages in, I forgot everything but the book itself.

"...an excellent story, full of tension and suspense...

"Speaks the Nightbird is a rarity in popular fiction, a book that manages to be thoughtful as well as entertaining---think 'Burn, Witch, Burn' crossed with Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

"...The week I spent listening to the nightbird every evening between eight and eleven was a very fine one."

Hunter

[Nickelwise]

slightly OT but great avatar Goathunter. I'm a big Alice fan myself. I've never met him, but I did call in and get through on his radio show about 10 years ago. He even gave me an assignment and told me to write a movie for him based on his Brutal Planet and Dragontown albums. I recently bought a flatsigned 1st of Golf Monster and while it may not be as valuable as some of my other books, I consider it one of the gems of my collection.

[herbertwest]

This is in F. Paul Wilson's FAQ on his site:

9. Is there a Repairman Jack fan club? And is Stephen King really the president?

The closest thing to an "official" fan club would be the Grand Unification (GU), an occasional meetup that consists of friends from the Repairman Jack Forum. Started in 2001 as a means for the people on the board to meet in person, the GU has met about seven times since. The gathering usually happens for three or four days over a long weekend and F. Paul Wilson joins the group for at least one of those days.

As for Stephen King the short answer is "no". The reason this question comes up every so often on the forum is because King wrote a blurb for the Forge edition of Conspiracies. The blurb states:

"THE TOMB is one of the best all-out adventure stories I’ve read in years."
Stephen King (President of the Repairman Jack fan club)

This was nothing more than a jest on King’s part.

http://www.repairmanjack.com/forum/content.php?108-faq

There's another Stephen King blurb that I remember reading years ago, but for the life of me, can't remember what book it was for or who the author was, but it was pretty unique. Paraphrasing, it started "This is the first blurb I've ever done that I sent unsolicited after reading the book..." I'm pretty sure I ran across it in a library probably 10-15 years ago. I'm sure I read the book, but all I can recall about it was that it was probably a female author, and I may be wrong about that.




This one is a bit tricky... because it is not related, as such, to a book, but to a collection : ABYSS, a collection of books by DELL !
Here it is :


Thank you for introducing me to the remarkable line of novels currently being issued under Dell's Abyss imprint. I have given a great many blurbs over the last twelve years or so, but this one marks two firsts: first unsolicited blurb (I called you) and the first time I have blurbed a whole line of books. In terms of quality, production, and plain old story-telling reliability (that's the bottom line, isn't it), Dell's new line is amazingly satisfying...a rare and wonderful bargain for readers. I hope to be looking into the Abyss for a long time to come

This is titled as a "mission statement" that is available in most of the books of the collection.
You should take a look at this page
>>> http://toomuchhorrorfiction.blogspot.fr/2011_02_01_archive.html


http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cdIOxNPPMO4/TWjmNSPfF4I/AAAAAAAADLo/1-HFmI-APq4/s1600/2-26-2011%2B6%253B37%253B23%2BAM.JPG

[herbertwest]

Here is something that I posted in the random thoughts thread the other day :





http://club-stephenking.fr/img/NEWS/avril/2014/recommended-by-stephenking--jeremyguerineau.jpg

Early in 2009, I started thinking and working on a project related to Stephen King, whose original (working) title was "Recommended by Stephen King" and deal with King's recommendations for books, movies and music.
Despite the fact that I started it, i also did let it go for awhile which allowed me to think more about it and consider how to develop it further.
Later on, I went back to it, and a lot more seriously. Browsed hundreds of essays and texts by King in order to make it more "comprehensive". I also started contacting publishers as well as agents (as in the english speaking world agents seems extremely important for contacting "major" publishers who are more likely to be able to deal with the copyright issues).

After trying to make it work for several years (with breaks in the meantime), I am just giving up. Especially since at the end of last year, when meeting King in France I mentionned it to his agent who asked me to contact him by email. We exchanged couple of quick emails but I didn't even get a reply to my second (and more detailed) email which as presenting further the project and idea behind it (which is not solely a project about Stephen King, but more like a discovery guide, based on Stephen King's recommendations).
So here is a picture of one of the ~250 pages manuscript copies that I have sent to some agents and publishers (therefore have been destroyed for most of those) and of some of my copies left.

Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that this project will see the light of the day. I wont either be posting it online for obvious copyright reasons cf King's excerpts.
It's a shame, because I am sure that most collectors would have been interested by it since in the making of it I found quite a few unknown texts / little known texts written by King : from blurbs to couple of lines to sometimes even some paragraphs and longer texts.

[Bev Vincent]

Today on Twitter:
I saw a screener of OCULUS and loved it. Very scary. I may never eat an apple again.

[Bev Vincent]

Not exactly an endorsement, but interesting nonetheless:


Stephen King went so far as to intervene on Rushdie’s behalf when a number of bookstores in the U.S. announced plans not to sell the book or to remove it from their shelves. At the behest of two Viking editors, King called the chief of bookstore chain B. Dalton and gave him an ultimatum: “You don’t sell The Satanic Verses, you don’t sell Stephen King.” The store reversed course. “You can’t let intimidation stop books,” King now says, recalling the episode. “It’s as basic as that. Books are life itself.”

>>> Source (http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2014/04/salman-rushdie-fatwa-satanic-verses)

[frik]

http://pages.simonandschuster.com/the-troop

The Troop by Nick Cutter

“The Troop scared the hell out of me, and I couldn’t put it down. This is old-school horror at its best.” —Stephen King

I read this book because of King's endorsement, and was very disappointed: Thin, simplistic plot, two-dimensional characters and not scary.
Only disgusting.

sk

[becca69]

Today on Twitter:
I saw a screener of OCULUS and loved it. Very scary. I may never eat an apple again.

I saw this last night and was drinking lots of water... I had to get up and don't you know, this is the scene I missed :(

[jhanic]

I read The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski on the basis of King's blurb/review on the back cover of the proof and was underwhelmed. If you're not a true dog person, it's meh.

John

[Bev Vincent]

I liked Sawtelle, but I agree about the Cutter novel -- it was easier to remember the characters' stereotype traits than their names.

[carlosdetweiller]

I've read four or five books solely because King recommended them highly. I didn't really like any of them but Sawtelle was the best of the bunch. I don't pay any attention to what King says he likes anymore.

[Cook]

Did you happen to read "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt
Just curious.



I've read four or five books solely because King recommended them highly. I didn't really like any of them but Sawtelle was the best of the bunch. I don't pay any attention to what King says he likes anymore.

[Bev Vincent]

You mean, the book that just won the Pulitzer for fiction?! I did: here's my review (http://www.bevvincent.com/onyx/tartt-goldfinch.html)

[Cook]

You mean, the book that just won the Pulitzer for fiction?! I did: here's my review (http://www.bevvincent.com/onyx/tartt-goldfinch.html)

Damn, don't I feel like a idiot.
Great review, definitely hit the mark.
But I did think it was a nice change of pace.
I have a feeling I should bookmark your page.
Thanks

[carlosdetweiller]

Did you happen to read "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt
Just curious.


No. I didn't. Why? Is it good?

[idlewarnings]

Did you happen to read "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt
Just curious.


No. I didn't. Why? Is it good?

I thought The Goldfinch was fantastic. A little long, a little heavy-handed with the description in some spots but a great story overall.

[idlewarnings]

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Lie/Hesh-Kestin/9781476740119?cp_type=end&rmid=20140304_The-Lie-A&rrid=3115819

The Lie
A Novel By Hesh Kestin

"A page-turner that will engage your mind and emotions in a way few novels do. The narrative is headlong, the issues have never been more current, and the characters come alive from the page. This is a story about the lies we tell until the truth is forced upon us, and about divided countries, including those of the human heart. I started reading; I ended up experiencing. The Lie is what great fiction is all about."
– Stephen King

I just got this from the library. The NYT review made me curious about it. I didn't know King endorsed it. We'll see how it is.

[Cook]

Did you happen to read "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt
Just curious.


No. I didn't. Why? Is it good?

I highly recommend it, but to each their own.
It just felt different, new author (to me) , new style.
I hope you read it, I would love to hear your opinion.

[Bev Vincent]

Natchez Burning by Greg Iles is: “Extraordinarily entertaining and fiendishly suspenseful. I defy you to start it and find a way to put it down.”

[Nickelwise]

Natchez Burning by Greg Iles is: “Extraordinarily entertaining and fiendishly suspenseful. I defy you to start it and find a way to put it down.”

Nice! I've been eagerly awaiting for a new Iles book for a long time, I just recently found out he'd been seriously injured in a car wreck :

In 2011, Iles sustained life-threatening injuries in a traffic accident and ultimately lost part of his right leg. He has since recovered and is now finishing a trilogy of novels featuring Penn Cage which is set in Natchez, Mississippi, Iles's hometown. The first volume is titled "Natchez Burning" and will be published in April 2014.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Iles

His novella The Death Factory that came out last month was solid, and he's one of the few in his genre that have never let me down.

[herbertwest]

Natchez Burning by Greg Iles is: “Extraordinarily entertaining and fiendishly suspenseful. I defy you to start it and find a way to put it down.”

The blurb, yes. The whole text seem to be on the publishers website :

'Natchez Burning is extraordinarily entertaining and fiendishly suspenseful. I defy you to start it and find a way to put it down; as long as it is, I wished it were longer. There's a bonus: you'll finish knowing a great deal about the deep south's painful struggle toward racial equality, and the bloody road between Then and Now. Only a southern man could have written this book, and thank God Greg Iles was there to do the job. This is an amazing work of popular fiction.' STEPHEN KING

>>> http://www.harpercollins.com.au/books/Natchez-Burning-Greg-Iles/?isbn=9780007304851

[Bev Vincent]

He wrote one of the four stories in Hard Listening, too. As I recall, it was one of the two longer tales.

[idlewarnings]

http://books.simonandschuster.com/Lie/Hesh-Kestin/9781476740119?cp_type=end&rmid=20140304_The-Lie-A&rrid=3115819

The Lie
A Novel By Hesh Kestin

"A page-turner that will engage your mind and emotions in a way few novels do. The narrative is headlong, the issues have never been more current, and the characters come alive from the page. This is a story about the lies we tell until the truth is forced upon us, and about divided countries, including those of the human heart. I started reading; I ended up experiencing. The Lie is what great fiction is all about."
– Stephen King

I just got this from the library. The NYT review made me curious about it. I didn't know King endorsed it. We'll see how it is.

I finished The Lie in two sittings. It's a fast-paced thriller about terrorism, torture, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There's an unnecessary twist at the end, but other than that I thought it was a good read.

[Ari_Racing]

He wrote one of the four stories in Hard Listening, too. As I recall, it was one of the two longer tales.

It was THE ROCK AND ROLL DEAD ZONE

[Bev Vincent]

No -- that was King's.

[Ari_Racing]

Oh, I got it wrong. I thought you mean which one was written by King. :)

[herbertwest]

Here is something that I posted in the random thoughts thread the other day :





http://club-stephenking.fr/img/NEWS/avril/2014/recommended-by-stephenking--jeremyguerineau.jpg

Early in 2009, I started thinking and working on a project related to Stephen King, whose original (working) title was "Recommended by Stephen King" and deal with King's recommendations for books, movies and music.
Despite the fact that I started it, i also did let it go for awhile which allowed me to think more about it and consider how to develop it further.
Later on, I went back to it, and a lot more seriously. Browsed hundreds of essays and texts by King in order to make it more "comprehensive". I also started contacting publishers as well as agents (as in the english speaking world agents seems extremely important for contacting "major" publishers who are more likely to be able to deal with the copyright issues).

After trying to make it work for several years (with breaks in the meantime), I am just giving up. Especially since at the end of last year, when meeting King in France I mentionned it to his agent who asked me to contact him by email. We exchanged couple of quick emails but I didn't even get a reply to my second (and more detailed) email which as presenting further the project and idea behind it (which is not solely a project about Stephen King, but more like a discovery guide, based on Stephen King's recommendations).
So here is a picture of one of the ~250 pages manuscript copies that I have sent to some agents and publishers (therefore have been destroyed for most of those) and of some of my copies left.

Unfortunately, it is very unlikely that this project will see the light of the day. I wont either be posting it online for obvious copyright reasons cf King's excerpts.
It's a shame, because I am sure that most collectors would have been interested by it since in the making of it I found quite a few unknown texts / little known texts written by King : from blurbs to couple of lines to sometimes even some paragraphs and longer texts.



A few weeks ago, I submitted my project to a publisher (to which I sent it a few years back) that has published what I consider is a sort of similar book.
And a sort of similar collection seem kind of successful as I have seen translations in France and other countries etc.
They quickly sent me an email, saying : "It looks like a great idea and we very much enjoyed looking through it in the office, but I would like to ask if you have cleared the copyright permissions with the author or the publications which the reviews come from?"

I replied, and I am now waiting for a reply from their editor.
>>> I know that this isnt an "easy project", but as this is my very attempt to get this project out there, let's hope that it will be positive reply...

[idlewarnings]

King endorsed "Niceville" and "The Homecoming" by Carsten Stroud on Twitter.

"NICEVILLE and THE HOMECOMING, by Carsten Stroud: crazy-good supernatural/crime/horror epic. Blew me away."
https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/481181038979600384

[Bev Vincent]

From Twitter: Remember when paperback originals were cool? Sex, action, suspense? Try FRANKENSTORM, by Ray Garton. It's old school. (https://twitter.com/StephenKing/status/499878091360309248)

[Robert Fulman]

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,201,404 in Books

This corresponds to a very small number of books sold in the last few days. Let's see how the rank changes after the tweet.

[Robert Fulman]

Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/) Best Sellers Rank: #157,075 in Books

Skyrocketing up the charts.

[Bev Vincent]

That change could be the result of just a few sales.

[Robert Fulman]

Well, you jinxed it because now it's back down to #189,273.

(I was being semi-facetious with my skyrocketing comment.)

[carlosdetweiller]

I like Garton so I will probably give this one a try. But I have really not enjoyed a number of books that King has given high praise to in the past. It is probably because I am not smart enough to "get it" but whatever the reason I don't rush to get books based on his recommendation anymore.

[The Library Policeman]

I enjoy Garton's books too.

[DoctorZaius]

I don't really follow King's blurbs on books - they seem like just another cheap marketing tool. What I have enjoyed quite a bit, however, are the year's best books, music, tv, movies he does (and used to do) for Entertainment Weekly. I have enjoyed most of the books the recommends, many of which are out of the horror mainstream. One of my favorites was a book King raved about was A. M. Homes, This Book Will Save Your Life, and while it didn't truly save me, it really caused much reflection - a funny, tender, and human tale.

[jhanic]

I like Garton so I will probably give this one a try. But I have really not enjoyed a number of books that King has given high praise to in the past. It is probably because I am not smart enough to "get it" but whatever the reason I don't rush to get books based on his recommendation anymore.

This is generally true for me too. King's recommendations don't rate too highly with me.

John

[Bev Vincent]

Broken Monsters, a new thriller by Lauren Beukes: When Stephen King calls a book “scary as hell and hypnotic,” don’t read it late at night in a tent in the woods. (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/09/02/the-horror-novel-that-stephen-king-couldnt-stop-reading/)

[Bev Vincent]

Here's one I'll second whole-heartedly: A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, by Paul Tremblay: Scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare.

[jreitan47]

Here's one I'll second whole-heartedly: A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, by Paul Tremblay: Scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare.

This book is on my Top 10 this year....READ IT, folks!

[zelig]

Here's one I'll second whole-heartedly: A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, by Paul Tremblay: Scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare.

This book is on my Top 10 this year....READ IT, folks!

Well, based on all these glowing reviews I think I will have to read this one. Will add it to my list, but I'm also a little apprehensive because, well, it may sound strange but the older I get, the less I want to be 'scared' by books or movies...

By the way, this (http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/4816194-debra?shelf=sai-king-recommends) may have been posted before, but it's the biggest list of King recommended books I've ever seen.

[biomieg]

I guess I will also have to find me a copy. It does sound intriguing. I read Ilium, The Martian, Jaws and Ready Player One in the past two months or so - all very good reads but none of them scary. Time to change gears!

[Merlin1958]

Here's one I'll second whole-heartedly: A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, by Paul Tremblay: Scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare.



Here's one I'll second whole-heartedly: A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, by Paul Tremblay: Scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare.

This book is on my Top 10 this year....READ IT, folks!


Okay, I bought it.

[sgc1999]

Ill stop back here and add when i can.
for now ill start with
1) im guessing, The girl next door by Jack Ketchum has been mentioned
2) but i doubt , stalking the nightmare by Harlan Ellison has?

[zelig]

Here's one I'll second whole-heartedly: A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, by Paul Tremblay: Scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare.



Here's one I'll second whole-heartedly: A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, by Paul Tremblay: Scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare.

This book is on my Top 10 this year....READ IT, folks!


Okay, I bought it.

Just bought it too! Cause I don't have enough books already.

[needfulthings]

Ill stop back here and add when i can.
for now ill start with
1) im guessing, The girl next door by Jack Ketchum has been mentioned
2) but i doubt , stalking the nightmare by Harlan Ellison has?

http://imageshack.com/a/img540/2940/0X4xAf.jpghttp://imageshack.com/a/img673/7383/MCoKUu.jpg

[needfulthings]

http://imageshack.com/a/img913/7379/Mx6mVu.jpg
http://imageshack.com/a/img537/1590/j1ZNKX.jpg

[herbertwest]

A few years ago (roughly at the same time that this thread that started : OMG 6 years ago!!!), I worked on a book related to that : recommandations by Stephen King.
I spend a few years working on it, going through hundreds of essays by Steve, to list and quote recommmendations of books, music and movies recommended by Steve. I then spend couple of years or so trying to find agents/publishers for this project, which... never happened. And I still keep track of those in a list, in case that I need to update my project.

I have over a thousand entries, listing blurbs, and quotes from essays by Steve (I have quotes then details of where it was published : any of those were personally checked and I have proofed of those) but I dont really know what to do of it, without infringing copyrights.
Do yous have any ideas, any recommendations? I know that there is a group on Goodreads that sort of does the same. I contacted Marsha about this project a few years ago.
I just dont like that it probably will be on my computers for years without being shared while there are quite lenghtly texts by Steve that may be unknown from collectors...

Would sharing the project for free (but suggesting donations) be infringing copyrights?

[Bev Vincent]

Possibly. The "fair use" doctrine has no absolute answers. I always make sure I have a signed letter of permission before quoting anyone for my books, even when it was a formal interview with the understanding that I would be publishing the conversation. If the book consists mostly of King quotes, some of them long, then you might be treading dangerous waters--not only from King, but from the venues in which the quotes originally appeared if they were, for example, in essays in EW or book reviews in Ny Times, etc.

Not profiting from the work is not a defense in copyright infringement.

[herbertwest]

Hello Bev,
Thanks for your feedback, and I agree with everything you said. As you mentionned, there is nothing really set about "fair use".

It just annoyes me to have this and not being able to do anything with it.
To be absolutely transparent about what this project is and what I tried / didnt try to do :

The main sources of the project are :
- the EW articles : a few years back, I contacted EW and they told me that they would only allow to reprint those for an astronomical sum of money + some editor fees for making sure that this is the accurate text, or something like this :
- Danse Macabre : I contacted the publisher, and if i remember correctly, they gave me a quote of roughly $4,000 per edition (which seem fair to me)
- numerous essays (well over a hundred): I didnt contact every single publisher whose texts are partially quoted as it didn't seem a priority so far as I didnt get the main sources sorted
- blurbs : what about those? are blurbs the property of their writer or the publisher? I believe that they are copyrighted, but it is interesting to note that those are marketing tools often on the back cover, who are often reproduced for free online, for instance on amazon. I guess that this is a grey zone : those texts are copyrighted, but their reproductions are ignored as it promotes the book.
- Obviously : King because everything was written by him.
I contacted Marsha, but without an interest from a publisher, King would not have the time to even look at the project.

I contacted several hundreds agents (as apparently in the english speaking world, agents are highly recommended in the publishing industry), and also directly contacted dozens of publishers which I believe were relevant.
Among the few interesting answers I got, the questions of the copyrights was obviously always an issue. I mentionned the project to King's agent while in Paris who asked me to email him, but no reply (and that doesnt surprise me as it's not a "real" book by Steve).

I think that I would never be able to, legally, do anything with it, despite that there is for instance a group on Goodreads that sort of do a similar thing but obviously not as comprehensive. But it is funny because although the content is free on Goodreads (that have been bought by amazon a few years back), they do give affiliate links to buy those books. So once again it's like promoting the works that are commented...
I gave up on it a few years ago, but... it's still on my laptop..

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

I'm reading this...

https://faulknerhousebooks.files.wordpress.com/2015/06/photo3.jpg

[idlewarnings]

Sounds like everything Finders Keepers is not.

[herbertwest]

sarahPinborough's The Death House :
"Moving and totally involving. I couldn't put it down (Stephen King)"
>>> http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Death-House-Sarah-Pinborough/dp/057509690X

https://twitter.com/orionbooks/status/680139420956258304?refsrc=email&s=11


http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51p7%2BITAp9L._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

Stephen King on Twitter.
4:26 p.m. - 25 Aug 2015
Don't let the summer go by without checking out THE NICEVILLE TRILOGY, by Carsten Stroud. It's a real rocket ride.

I'm nearly finished book 3. King was spot on.

Edit: Picture added.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51HKRdhqdDL.jpg

[Bev Vincent]

I had a hard time with the first Niceville book, for some reason. I loved The Death House, though.

[herbertwest]

From Subterranean Press' newsletter :

A LONG DECEMBER by Richard Chizmar
"Powerful...I love it...Richard Chizmar writes clean, no-nonsense prose...sets his tales in no-nonsense, middle class neighborhoods I can relate to...and writes terrific stories served with a very large slice of Disquiet Pie." Stephen King.
>>> http://subterraneanpress.com/store/product_detail/a_long_december

[herbertwest]

BRIGHTON by Michael Harvey :

"BRIGHTON, by Michael Harvey: Helluva Boston crime novel. Helluva novel, period. If you liked THE DEPARTED, you'll like this." —Stephen King
>>> http://www.michaelharveybooks.com/brighton/

'Turned' into the following blurb on the cover (???)
“BRIGHTON is the f***king bomb! I loved it.” (Stephen King)
>>>> http://www.amazon.com/Brighton-Novel-Michael-Harvey/dp/006244297X/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

[herbertwest]

THE MARAUDERS, by Tom Cooper

"“The Marauders is so damned good you won’t believe it’s a first novel…and by the time you reach page 20, you won’t care. It’s rollicking, angry, eye-popping, and fall-on-the-floor funny, sometimes in the course of a single scene. The cast is winning, the post-Katrina bayou setting is richly evoked, the dialogue crackles, and the story rolls on a wave of invention. It’s a little Elmore Leonard, a little Charles Portis, and very much its own uniquely American self. Basically, Tom Cooper has written one hell of a novel.” – Stephen King"

>>> https://tomcoopernola.com/the-marauders-a-novel/

[Aronstg]

Has anyone read HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt? The author is going to be in town on Sunday and I'm debating if I should go see him.

Here is the SK endorsement ""Totally, brilliantly original" - Stephen King"

[herbertwest]

"A wicked witch holds an upstate New York town prisoner. This is totally, brilliantly original. (Stephen King)"

[Cwalker]

Has anyone read HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt? The author is going to be in town on Sunday and I'm debating if I should go see him.

Here is the SK endorsement ""Totally, brilliantly original" - Stephen King"

I have just started it, but I also met him in Brookline, MA earlier this month. Great guy, lotta fun, interesting to talk to. Worth at least one visit IMHO. Plus his sig is pretty cool! :)

[Aronstg]

Has anyone read HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt? The author is going to be in town on Sunday and I'm debating if I should go see him.

Here is the SK endorsement ""Totally, brilliantly original" - Stephen King"

I have just started it, but I also met him in Brookline, MA earlier this month. Great guy, lotta fun, interesting to talk to. Worth at least one visit IMHO. Plus his sig is pretty cool! :)

Thank you! With that endorsement alone I'll go see him and pick up his book on Sunday.

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

Has anyone read HEX by Thomas Olde Heuvelt? The author is going to be in town on Sunday and I'm debating if I should go see him.

Here is the SK endorsement ""Totally, brilliantly original" - Stephen King"

I've read it. Well worth King's endorsement.

[biomieg]

Looks like I need to pay more attention to authors from my own country! I haven't read Dutch books in years, maybe I'll pick up an English translation :smile:

[Joe315]

They changed the story for the us/UK market so you may want to read the original.

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

They changed the story for the us/UK market so you may want to read the original.

Yes. Here's what the author writes:

The book you’ve just finished is different from the original novel HEX, which appeared in the Netherlands and Belgium in 2013. That book was set in a small Dutch village and ended on a rather different note. As an author, you rarely get the chance to rewrite a book after its publication. But when my agents sold the English language rights to publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, I was suddenly presented with the opportunity to make the original book work in a wholly new environment, with a fresh backstory.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I didn’t like the Dutch setting. I loved the Dutch setting, and I loved the utter Dutchness of the book. Not in the sense that the witch smoked pot or stood behind some Amsterdam red-framed window; I’m talking about the secular nature of small-town Dutch communities and the down-to-earthness of its people. If a sane person sees a disfigured seventeenth-century witch appear in a corner of the living room, he runs for his life. If a Dutch person sees a disfigured seventeenth-century witch appear in a corner of the living room, he hangs a dishcloth over her face, sits on the couch, and reads the paper. And maybe sacrifices a peacock.

But when I see a creative challenge, I take it. And what fun it would be! I had a book that I loved, featuring characters whom I loved, and here I had the opportunity to relive it all without having to face the horrors of a sequel. Instead, I could create an enhanced version—a HEX 2.0, if you will—with new rich and layered details, culturally specific legends and superstitions, all without losing touch with the Dutch elements of the original. Katherine Van Wyler came to the new land on one of Peter Stuyvesant’s early ships. The rural town of Beek became the Dutch trapper’s colony of New Beeck, later renamed Black Spring. The Dutch characters became Americans, but with the down-to-earth quality of the Dutch. The dishcloth stayed. So did the peacock. And the public flogging of minors, a common and fun tradition we celebrate annually in many a small town all over the Netherlands.

The upshot of being Dutch—this is a cliché about us, but it’s true—is that I speak several languages. English almost as fluently as Dutch. That allowed me to not only read but also edit Nancy Forest-Flier’s fantastic translation of the book and find my own voice in English. Working on the book in a language that’s not my mother tongue gave me strong new insights into the plot, the most important of which was about the ending. It had to go. It felt off. There was a much scarier and better way I could end this tale.

So that’s what you’ve just read. The last several chapters, from the moment things pretty much start going downhill for Black Spring, are all new. I wrote them in English, and I had a blast while I was at it. In my opinion, it’s become a better book.

Of course, I hear you wondering: how did the Dutch version end?

I’m not gonna tell. I’m not gonna tell.

Bribe a Dutch person—maybe they will.

[biomieg]

So, maybe I will!

[Br!an]

And maybe we'll have to bribe you to tell us how it ends. :orely:

[WeDealInLead]

I have the UK edition of Hex. I think the cover is much nicer and for some reason it was cheaper to get it shipped from the UK than get one locally. Weird.

I wonder if there are any differences in the text.

[Br!an]

I doubt it, other than the difference between British and American English.

[Bev Vincent]

102 books recommended by SK

http://www.ranker.com/list/books-stephen-king-recommends/jacobybancroft?&source=tshare

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

102 books recommended by SK

http://www.ranker.com/list/books-stephen-king-recommends/jacobybancroft?&source=tshare

This is taken from the list of books at the back of "On Writing", which is pretty old. You might be better checking his Twitter account as he recommends books quite regularly. He also used to do it in his EW column, but that's old hat nowadays as well.

[peripheral]

102 books recommended by SK

http://www.ranker.com/list/books-stephen-king-recommends/jacobybancroft?&source=tshare

This is taken from the list of books at the back of "On Writing", which is pretty old. You might be better checking his Twitter account as he recommends books quite regularly. He also used to do it in his EW column, but that's old hat nowadays as well.

Although the Ranker article refers to King's recommendations from "On Writing", Ranker lists some books published since "On Writing" that King has endorsed via Twitter (e.g., #21: "Head Full Of Ghosts" by Paul Tremblay). I'm not sure how this Ranker list was compiled.

[Mr. Rabbit Trick]

King plugged this on Twitter a few weeks ago...

http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQbTgzcbououlTK8RkJ4vape6Chrrbwn eFmSTx_1SpQJBmuUx1w

[Ari_Racing]

I don't know if it's present in the book but the latest book by Michael Robotham promoted via email by Scribner had this blurb by King:

“I always have a huge stack of books to read, but a Michael Robotham novel automatically goes to the top of the pile.”

—Stephen King

[herbertwest]

Yep, noticed that
It is from an old tweet => https://twitter.com/stephenking/status/1162178047954624512?lang=fr

[craigobau]

From SK’s Twitter feed yesterday;

“ As an old rocker, I have to say I fucking loved David Mitchell's new novel, UTOPIA AVENUE, about the flowering of British rock and roll in the mid- to late-60s. It's a hit on my Billboard list.”

[Curly]

"If John Irving ever wrote a horror novel, it would be something like this. I loved it.” —Stephen King

A Cosmology of Monsters, By Shaun Hamill

https://images.booksense.com/images/921/563/9780525563921.jpg