The Essential Stephen King: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels, Short Stories, Movies, and Other Creations of the World's Most Popular Writer

by Stephen J. Spignesi

Book Overview

In this newly available paperback edition, Spignesi selects and ranks the top 101 works out of the more than 550 created by Stephen King during his prolific career. Each chosen work is synopsized and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1564144852
• ISBN13: 9781564144850
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: New Page Books
• Length: 360 Pages
• Weight: 1.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.7" x 10.7"

Customer Reviews

Great book, entertaining, interesting

This book is good. It has a lot of interesting facts about the worlds greatest authors books. Things you might have missed when reading. It's worth the money.

9

Spignesi is a great fan(atic) of King's and his enthusiasm shows in this listing of the top 101 King writings. He includes a wide variety of King's material from across his career. Anyone who is a fan will enjoy remembering the great stories already read and will be inspired to read ones Spignesi mentions that haven't yet been read.Not all of Spignesi's opinions are correct, of course, but he is well-informed enough to make a strong case for each of his picks.

A Good Ranking, Even Better Writing

Spignesi is probably the biggest King fan out there. He knows every book, novella, short story and essay the man has written in and out. There isn't one work he isn't totally familiar with. I actually wonder if he knows more about King's writing than King does himself.In The Essential Stephen King, Spignesi tries to rank the 101 best things king has ever written. And although every major King work is featured (all of the novels are there, so are the novellas), many of King's best short stories didn't make the cut (where are The Night Flyer and Lawnmower Man?). And I was disappointed when I saw some of my favorite King novels ranked so high up the list (Dolores Claiborne, The Dark Half, Needful Things and Storm Of the Century aren't even near the top 10!). Of course, this is a fan ranking his favourite works. No two fans will think alike.The reason the book is so powerful is because of the author's writing skills. Spignesi writes with passion and dedication. Every sentence is like a love confession for the King of horror. And I also enjoyed the articles written by King fans/experts at the end of the book. This books makes you want to revisit King's best writings. It's a book every King fan will enjoy and will use time and time again as a reference manual.

A wonderful resource for all levels of King Fans

Stephen J. Spignesi has been a passionate follower of Stephen King's work for a good number of years. His extraordinary (and expansive) resource - The Stephen King Encyclopedia - placed him at the forefront of King experts. With this new volume, Spignesi examines what he determines to be the prolific author's top 101 works (actually 102 including a special note for a non-fiction eulogy that King wrote following the death of John Lennon, which Spignesi places in "a class of its own"). Although the rankings are primarily Spignesi's opinions and not all of King's wide fan base will necessarily agree with the author's opinions, in the end, Spignesi makes a strong case arguing that King is an essential author of modern American literature who should not be so easily pigeonholed into the "just a horror writer" category, but whose works can (and should) be subjected to the same tedious academic scrutiny that Authors such as Steinbeck and Faulkner have undergone. Efficiently written with energetic synopses for each of the selections as well as a qualifying explanation as to why the particular work received its ranking, The Essential Stephen King is a wonderful resource for all levels of King Fans to either learn of his exceptional works, or merely revisit them along with Spignesi.