Well, I think the responses you’ve gotten show exactly how major a figure he is, and how divisive he can be.

Any author is a matter of taste. Nobody is universally loved. That’s just the way it is, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

However, some writers manage to strike magic in minds so that their work resonates across generations, lifetimes. Shakespeare is still widely read. A person may not like his poems or plays, but he’s impossible to ignore entirely.

King is no Shakespeare. But he is damn good at writing things that stick in your head. And I firmly believe he’ll still be widely read in 200 years. Likely longer.

So, even if you end up not liking him in general, he’s worth reading some of his stuff Afghan anyway

Now, I mostly like King. Dude is weird, his stories reflect that, and even his worst stuff is interesting on that level.

My picks would be Cujo, Salem’s Lot, Needful Things, Hearts in Atlantis, Delores Claiborne, and the Bachman books. You read those, you’ll have a solid feel for whether or not you’ll want to ever read the rest.

Cujo is more of a real world horror story. Nothing supernatural, just a nightmare that could happen.

Salem’s Lot is a very unique take on a horror staple. But it’s still pretty normal horror.

Needful Things, that’s one of the most unique horror stories out there, imo. But it’s weird in the way that King does well.

Hearts in Atlantis switches gears. It isn’t horror, not really. But it’s a gentle introduction into his overarching inconsistently connected metaverse of sorts.

Claiborne is my favorite of his human conflict driven writing, where it’s about people in complex situations producing conflict and pointing a light at humanity in the process. It’s not horror at all.

And, the Bachman books. The collection of them is a glimpse into his most creative side, imagining slight twists on normality, akin to Claiborne. But they’re further removed. One is most definitely not set in our world. The others could be, but there’s still a sense of the alien to them. Once he abandoned the pen name, he eventually brought that kind of thinking into the rest of his work (and the best of his work imo), but there’s a rawness and ugliness to the stuff he did as Bachman that is hard to compare to anything else.

Out of the Bachman stories, Rage and The Long Walk tend to get the most attention nowadays because of the premise of each. Running Man is the most well known outside of his fandom, what with the movie loosely based on it. But the real gem is Road Work. The glimpse inside the mind of a man that’s just hit his limit and decides to stop fucking around and fuck things up instead. Hell, if you didn’t read anything else, you should read those.

But, honestly? I’ve read everything he’s written, and none of it is bad. It’s all worth at least one read, though some can be immediately consigned to the “never again bin”. His older stuff tends to be more accessible, but it’s all decent