TL;DR - Customer at my work says Stephen King is “long winded” and “reading him is like reading Dickens”, then proceeds to say that she’s read all of his books and interviews because she can’t critique him if she hasn’t read his work. What do you guys think? Is he long winded? I consider him to be perfect at describing scenes and building suspense.

I’m at work going through my copy of If It Bleeds and the other 3 novellas (I have lots of free time), just finished the title novella yesterday and I am super impressed with Holly Gibney and am excited to read more of her story.

So as I’m sitting at work getting started on Mr. Harrigan’s Phone, a customer walks in. We chat about the hot weather and she picks out her stuff. She spots my book, recoils and goes, “ick, Stephen King? Really?”

At this point I’m just like, “yeah,” because it’s not like I’ve never heard of someone not liking him. “I love his books.”

Then she says that she can’t stand him because “he’s so long-winded, reading him is like reading Dickens.” I said “really? I get sucked into the pages and can’t get out of it. I think it’s good suspense building. I’ve read almost all his books.” To which she says she has too…”can’t critique the man if I haven’t read every book and interview,” she says. Cue my massive inner eye-roll.

She ends by saying that she understands why he does it, but she just can’t see how anybody can read it without getting bored. It wasn’t like a conversation about differing tastes, it was more of a one way bashing of someone’s preferences. I had no interest in asking what kind of books she liked to read, so I told her to have a good weekend.

Have you heard this argument from people that don’t like him? His books are long, but I don’t consider him “long-winded”. In my opinion there are descriptive writers (like SK) who can perfectly describe a scene with multiple protagonists from different points of view, and then there are overly-descriptive writers who use too many adjectives or take half a page to describe one single action made by a character.