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

The Essential Stephen King : A Ranking of the Greatest Novels, Short Stories, Movies, and Other Creations of the World's Most Popular Writer
Stephen Spignesi, the world's leading expert on Stephen King (Enertainment Weekly) ranks 101 greatest creations of the man he calls "our greatest living author."

Working from a body of King's work numbering more than 550 individual creations, Spignesi lists all of King's writings in every genre and then determines the top 101. Each chosen work is synopsized and reviewed.

The Essential Stephen King provides an unbiased, uncompromising review of King's work by an acknowledged King authority. As such, it is a must for all serious and casual Stephen King fans as well as all lovers of superb contemporary literature.
Customer Review: Not awful, but not great.
As another reviewer stated, this work is great for a casual or new fan, wanting to learn more about individual S.K. works and whether he or she might like to read them. For serious fans such as myself, this work is just one glaring error after another, coupled with the lackluster opinions of a self-proclaimed super-fan. In particular, the numerous factual errors that I have found in this book are at the very least distracting, and make me question Spignesi's assessment of S.K.'s writings, especially since he can't seem to keep his literary facts straight! For example, in his entry on "Bag of Bones," Spignesi asserts that Mattie Devore, one of the main characters, is divorced. She is actually widowed, and this facet of this story is important. Another error can be found in Spignesi's entry on "The Dead Zone" (a personal favorite of mine). In this work, Greg Stillson is a third-party candidate for the House of Representatives, not the U.S. presidency! This seemingly minor amount of power initially courted by Stillson is vital to the story. These are just two of many errors, both literary and grammatical, that I found when I read this work. By all means, check it out at the library or borrow it from a friend if you want to know which S.K. book to start with (or just ask an S.K. fan...there are lots of us!).
Customer Review: garbage
The idea for this book isn't a bad one: the ranking of the Top 100 of all Stephen King's works. However, in order for such a conceit to mean anything, there has to be some thought, skill, and insight involved on the part of the ranker. Spignesi showcases none of these qualities. Instead, what you are left with is something that goes no deeper than you might find on any fan-based website. Spignesi's knowledge of King's work is admittedly considerable, but in order for a work of literary criticism -- which this is, no matter how poorly-thought-out and poorly-presented -- to be worth reading, it has to cut a bit deeper than mere knowledge. There has to be insight. Perhaps Spignesi has such insights, but if so, he has no interest in demonstrating it in this book: his typical mode is to simply list what he liked in each work, and usually this consists of saying that he liked the characters, or something similarly facile. Spignesi himself is a TERRIBLE writer. This book is peppered with poor writing, with the misuse (or nonuse) of commas being especially prevalent. Why should we accept the critical judgment of a writer who himself cannot write? There is an attempt to make it plain that the idea behind this book is for it to stimulate discussion about King's works. Well, really, the best way to do that is to simply read them for yourself. You don't need a writer who ought to properly be confined to fanzines to tell you what King's best works are. And if you don't need that, then you don't need this book. Thank God, it was given to me as a gift; no dollars of my own were wasted on this sad excuse for criticism.