Stephen King lists his 10 favourite books of all time
“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you’ll take my book when you pry my cold, dead fingers off of the binding.” – Stephen King
The horror genre may not ever be as commercial again as it was in the 1980s, when the slasher craze took over Hollywood, and every generation seemingly became obsessed with masked killers and the supernatural. Arguably, this was all the fault of filmmakers like Tobe Hooper and authors like Stephen King, with the latter creating some of the most iconic horror tales of the era.
Creating tales like Carrie, It, and Pet Sematary, King made a whole generation terrified of American suburbia, bringing the fear of mainstream horror to the doorsteps of everyday families and fragile adolescents. Hollywood was quick to catch on, too, with Brian De Palma adapting King’s Carrie into a feature film starring Sissy Spacek back in 1976, with the movie earning $33.8million and two Oscar nominations, kickstarting King’s career under the cinematic limelight.
Later, King worked with the likes of Frank Darabont, John Carpenter, and Rob Reiner, and his most famous collaboration came in the form of the Stanley Kubrick movie The Shining. Despite contemporary acclaim, King is resolute in his opinion of the movie: “I think The Shining is a beautiful film, and it looks terrific, and as I’ve said before, it’s like a big, beautiful Cadillac with no engine inside it…I kept my mouth shut at the time, but I didn’t care for it much”.
A great believer in the power of literature, King is an avid reader who is quick to recommend his favourite titles to his many online followers. In this vein, King once sat down with Goodreads to recommend ten of his favourite novels, though he admitted that “Any list like this is slightly ridiculous…On another day, ten different titles might come to mind, like The Exorcist, or All the Pretty Horses in place of Blood Meridian…But what the hell, I stand by these”.
One of the most notable books on the list includes J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, which presumably is a reference to the first novel in the iconic fantasy trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring. Famously remade into a trio of classic movies by Peter Jackson, there is much horror in Tolkien’s tale for King to get his teeth into, including the gruesome Uruk-hai, orcs and the great Lord Sauron, who the Carrie author calls one of the greatest villains of all time.
Elsewhere, it isn’t at all surprising that King enjoys the 1972 Richard Adams book Watership Down, the tale of a colony of rabbits who are driven out of their warren and forced to search for new land. Also adapted into a film in the form of the 1978 animation of the same name, the Watership Down movie is a notorious piece of British cinema that has long given children and adults alike sleepless nights.
Remaining in the realm of literary classics, another standout choice from King is the 1954 William Golding tale Lord of the Flies, which tells the story of a nuclear war which prompts an aeroplane to evacuate a group of prep-school boys out of Great Britain. Yet, when the plane crashes, the boys are forced to organise their own society, where a hierarchy is inevitably formed.
Speaking about the book on several occasions, King once stated: “What happens at the end of the book is that a submarine surfaces and sailors from the British Navy show up…the guy who’s commanding the expedition says ‘Well, I would have thought English schoolboys would put on a better show than that’, and that’s kind of where it’s left, and Golding writes in his afterword, I never forgot this, he says, ‘The sailors saved the boys but who will save the sailors’ because this takes place after a nuclear war”.
Continuing, the author added: “It kind of opened my eyes, and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, there’s a whole other level to this story right here”.
Elsewhere, what list of favourite novels would be complete without the great dystopian tale 1984 by George Orwell? Ripped off and rewritten countless times by other authors, the original dystopian novella tells the story of a society which is ruled by Big Brother, a massive omniscient figure who controls every aspect of people’s lives, and those who desperately try to escape the nightmare.
King’s own 1979 dystopian tale, The Long Walk, no doubt, took reference from Orwell’s classic, with the story following a group of contestants in a walking competition in which there can only be one winner. Soon, due to being made into a feature film, the concept also shares a likeness with Sydney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, which tells the tale of a dance competition that contestants are desperate to win.
Also included is the likes of Philip Roth, Cormac McCarthy, Thomas Williams, Adam Johnson and more, see the full list below.
Stephen King’s 10 favourite novels:
- American Pastoral (Philip Roth, 1997)
- 1984 (George Orwell, 1949)
- Blood Meridian (Cormac McCarthy, 1985)
- The Hair of Harold Roux (Thomas Williams, 1974)
- Invisible Man (Ralph Ellison, 1952)
- Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 1954)
- The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R. Tolkien, 1954)
- The Orphan Master’s Son (Adam Johnson, 2012)
- Ship of Fools (Katherine Anne Porter, 1962)
- Watership Down (Richard Adams, 1972)