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r/suggestmeabook•
TSTC

Follow-up to 11/22/63

So I just finished King's 11/22/63. It was the first King novel I've read and it seems like it's probably fairly different from a lot of his other works. Either way, I was absolutely hooked on it in a way I have not experienced in years.

I'm having trouble pinpointing exactly what it was about the book that I resonated so much with. It wasn't necessarily the genre. I usually read a wide variety (more fiction than non-fiction but that's about it) but something about the writing style just drew me in and I could actually feel everything going on. A lot of times, I find myself having to slow down because I'll get impatient and start skimming paragraphs but not with this book.

Would anyone recommend another King novel? Is there another book you think is a good follow-up to 11/22/63? I'll list some of the other books I've read in the past few years and enjoyed, in case that helps narrow down recommendations:

  • Handmaid's Tale (took me awhile to get used to the style but I'd give it a solid 4/5 after I got into it)
  • Good Omens
  • American Gods
  • Anansi Boys
  • Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling
  • The Snowman
  • The Mistborn Trilogy (although I have not liked some of Sanderson's other works that are more of the epic fantasy)
  • The Dresden Files (despite my personal dislike of Butcher and his general awful writing of women)

Some things I've been considering include more King (I thought about The Gunslinger but his writing style is just not doing it for me in that book, which I know is likely due to his inexperience when he wrote it), The Man in the High Castle, Circe, Gone Girl, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (I'm pretty sure I've read this before, but maybe I just saw the foreign movie), and Agatha Christie (no specific book in mind).

Posted Jan 8, 2020, 12:41 AM UTC

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jdg84530•

King’s Mr. Mercedes trilogy is pretty fantastic. It’s a noir mystery series with some King-ish elements.

3
ThisVicariousLife•

Stephen King is a brilliant writer. Today's writers don't come anywhere near his ability to develop a plot and characters in such a tangible way. His language is beautiful, precise, descriptive, creative, and yet somehow realistic! I have only ever been artistically enamored by two authors... King and Poe. Doesn't mean that I don't love other works (I do enjoy the Brönte sisters, Jane Austen, Shakespeare, James Patterson, Nicholas Sparks, R.L. Stine) but King and Poe both make me feel something in a way no other writer has ever been able to do! You are correct that 11-22-63 is vastly different from most of his other works. He usually has an element of horror in his sci-fi. But that book was sci-fi meets historical fiction. Amazing book! I don't usually say this, but there's one book of his I do not recommend to any new King reader (because it's just not great), and that's Under the Dome. It was great until the end, but that ruined it. I think you could go back and enjoy some of his older works like The Dead Zone, Misery, Thinner, Rose Madder, Dolores Claiborne, Needful Things, and many others (but these are my favorites). One thing he's extremely gifted about is linking his books together in ways that you don't need to have read the other books to read these, but when you do, you'll love how you understand the references he's made in his books to the stories in his other books. It's so fascinating (I hope that made sense). Were you the person I recommended 11-22-63 to a couple months ago?

3
Lorilye77•

I love the Shining. I feel that it one of his best that I have read.

2
flowbot3•

I think over the last years King has been rehashing some of his major plots as a now sober writer. So you have The Stand/Cell, Tommyknockers/Dreamcatcher, and The Dead Zone/11/22/63. Castle Rock on Hulu is doing a similar thing in visual media. You have the Mr Mercades trilogy that is a continuation of The Dark Half? I can't quite remember if it's that or The Shining.

I'd just mention that if the characterization is something you like about his novels, the meta for popular novels allowed more of that in the past then it does now. So you'd get more the earlier you go.

2