Whether or not you love Stephen King's novels, this is an excellent book about his life and how he writes. One of the best books I've read in awhile and found it hard to put down. I read this for a book club through the Fayetteville Public Library and the other members also enjoyed it.

Definitely more of a rambling memoir than a writing manual. It's interesting to get an insight into Stephen King's childhood and general worldview, and some of the advice seems useful, even if it's nothing you won't find elsewhere. He does tend to belabour some points with over-the-top metaphors. He portrays himself as the low-brow populist that the critics hate, but ends up coming across as quite pretentious himself.

It is a light read, but even then I was really pushing myself through it by the end.

As a memoir, it was fascinating to read about the development of the author as a writer. As a practical book on writing, nothing really earth-shattering. I've read much of what he had to say elsewhere, and I disagree with some of it! Nevertheless, worthwhile as a look into the mind of Stephen King.

This was meant to be a professional book but I think it is less helpful to my profession. I found the first part (C.V.) very interesting and inspiring, and recognized some oft-quoted (in other writing books) passages). I found the parts on writing more heavy handed and less interesting. Each time he said this was a light, short book on writing ideas, I found myself flipping to the back to check on how many pages if really was. I don't find books nearing 300 pages to generally be light, fast reads. It was good, and perhaps better for someone who is actually writing a novel (not me) than for someone who wants to be inspired to teach writing to children (me).

i feel like i've learned SO much from this book

More like 3.5 stars.

I’m a little shocked that the parts of this I was really looking forward to - the writing process parts - were what I wish there was less of. Yes it was interesting, but it felt flat and wedged in there while I had been enjoying just listening to him talk about his life.

The first half and last fifth of this book, where we got to hear about his life and be immersed in that were amazing, 5 stars from me. But maybe they were too good as I didn’t want them to end and would have rather have had the writing component itself as its own seperate thing. I know that would somewhat defeat the purpose of the book itself, but that’s where I landed.

5/5 for the life story
3/5 for the writing advice