5 – Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

This Douglas Adams work is just fun and while I love to get transported into big worlds, sometimes it’s nice to just get thrown into a small and silly world, which is kind of what Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is. Sure, it’s the whole galaxy, but we don’t need to know everything about it, so we don’t. This book is very absurd and silly with a lot of great British humor in it. Douglas Adams does a wonderful job of making all the humor work in my opinion and keep the story moving along as well, which isn’t something that can be said for a lot of comedy where it’ll stop and pause on a joke or an absurd moment.

4 – The Reckoners

Not the only Brandon Sanderson that you’ll see on the list, The Reckoners is a super power story, but everyone with super powers is bad. The main character wants to join a group known as The Reckoners in order to take down one of the villains in particular who had killed his father. Can he find the Reckoners, convince them to let him join and become part of their group? This is a young adult series, but really well written. I’m not always a big fan of bad super powered people, something like The Watchmen and The Boys don’t interest me that much as their current shows, but Brandon Sanderson weaves a really good story with that as a backdrop to it. I think that this story works well for both kids and adults as well, as I didn’t read it until I was out of college and I still really enjoyed it.

3 – IT

I like Stephen Kings work a lot. And IT is probably about the most iconic thing that he’s done. There are others, Carrie and Misery are two that come to mind that would be up there as well. But in terms of the one that I like the best, it is IT. One thing I love about Stephen King is that he does a wonderful job creating two types of characters. The first is the protagonists who have their flaws, they are good, but not perfect people by any mean, and sometimes have some very big flaws. And then he also creates amazing bad guys as well, obviously in IT there is Pennywise, but Henry as well is a great bad guy who doesn’t have redeeming qualities, while King’s good guys might be shades of grey, his bad guys are all bad. I also like that IT lands the ending pretty well. Sometimes Stephen King’s books just kind of fizzle out, but IT is strong through the whole of the book. Including the ending.

2 – Stormlight Archive

I have the newest book in this series just waiting for me to read it. Stormlight Archive is an epic fantasy series by Brandon Sanderson that just tells and weaves together such an interesting story. There are a lot of moving parts, but they come together really well. And like you’ve probably notices already, I like flawed characters, but I also like how this series has some characters that are paragons of good or honor. It doesn’t mean that they are perfect, but they hold themselves to such a standard that they strive to be. I also like that this book doesn’t shy away from being what it is, a truly massive and epic story. The audio books are 50 hours, and it feels like there’s no wasted space, unlike some epic fantasy series (cough cough Wheel of Time cough cough).

1 – Dresden Files

Such a great series, I talk about it all the time, but with the new books, it’s still the same. I do have a slight knock on the new books, it really feels like it should have been a single book, but it was getting too long for what would be considered a normal Dresden book length so it was split into two. The first of the two books is still great, but it feels almost like the first act for the second book. That said, I love Harry Dresden and the series and how Jim Butcher manages to create such an engaging world and characters with depth. I think he does a great job creating flawed characters who grow and change, and get new flaws over time, or sometimes who know they have a flaw and will still refuse to work on it it. Yes, these are pulpy summer reading books, but there is so much more going on than that as well.

Those are my Top 5, and writing about them really makes me want to dive into all of them again. Thankfully I have done Dresden Files book that I need to read still and the next book in the Stormlight Archive. And as always, I do have some honorable mentions.

Daughter of Smoke and Bones
Stardust
Harry Potter
Wheel of Time

What are some of your favorite books or series? What epic fantasy should I checkout next, I do need to get back to the Runelords series.

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here

5 – Misery
This book would probably be near the top for some people, and I enjoyed it quite well. I felt like it’s a little bit too indulgent at points with Stephen King almost being the author character in the book. However, the book is creepy, and it does a good job with a classic horror trope of limiting the scope of the story. It’s been a while since I read it, so I don’t remember precisely how well it ends, but from what I remember, it has a more developed ending as compared to some of his other books. Definitely a classic of King’s and one that is referenced a lot. Also one of the few that has had a good movie adaptation done of it.

4 – Firestarter
Probably not one of Stephen King’s most horrific books, but I feel like it has a solid Halloween feel to it. A story about a girl with pyrokinetic powers is very interesting to think about, and then it adds in a government twist, that is done fairly well. But what makes this book fit into the Halloween theme is the one government agent, basically an assassin that creeps out everyone else. But with that, just the psychology of how he tries to get into the little girls head and how he tries to gain her trust, it’s written very well, and just has that nice creepy factor to it. This book is really where a lot of the feel of Stranger Things comes from as well, in my opinion. The movie version of this, while I have enjoyed it, is not amazing.

3 – Dreamcatcher
We’re in the classic Stephen King location of Maine, and things start to go weird on a hunting trip. This is a very odd book with some interesting choices for characters in it, but it’s a story that works well. It definitely has that vibe of not knowing if the characters are quite who they say they are and who is good. If I remember for this one, been a bit since reading it, it ends okay, though not as good as some of them, like Misery. But this is one of those books that you could say is part of a Stephen King-a-verse and ties into a number of his other books or takes place near them. It’s also a large book, so be aware of that while getting into it, but overall, it’s one that I really enjoyed.

2 – Under the Dome
This is not one of Stephen King’s older books, but one that people might know more because it had a TV show. What works extremely well in this book is that the good characters are morally grey, and the bad characters are very evil. Stephen King is generally very good at writing bad characters and sometimes struggles with his heroes when he tries to make them too good, thankfully, most of them are not great people, and in Under the Dome, that is certainly the case. The premise is also interesting with a dome that cuts a town off from the rest of the world physically. I like the villain of the piece, and I like how they wrap up that part of the story. I think that a fair amount of the rest of the ending is just a little bit too weird to really work well, and that’s saying something for King, but he doesn’t quite land it to match the tone of the story, but it makes sense in the Stephen King-a-verse.

1 – It
Probably no surprise that It is my number one Stephen King book. I have read It multiple times, and it holds up to each reading. Yes, the ending is a bit weird, but overall, it makes sense for a story that is a bit weird. The creepy factor is high in the book, and Pennywise is such an iconic monster. If someone wants to read horror, there isn’t a better spot to start than It in my opinion. How King winds the modern and the past together is interesting and works well. I’m excited when there is that super cut of the new It movies to see how they can intertwine the story together. Overall, this is just a classic bit of horror that I couldn’t not have at the top of my Stephen King list.

There is more Stephen King that I definitely need to read sometime. I haven’t read The Mist which is a classic of his as well, and things like The Dead Zone, which had a fairly long running TV show, that I should reread. And then there are some that I would consider duds like 11/22/63 which does some interesting things, but in the end feels like a book that doesn’t do much. Or something like From a Buick 8 which is just weird.

What is your favorite Stephen King story? Is there a book or a movie that you really love?

Share questions, ideas for articles, or comments with us!

Email us at nerdologists@gmail.com
Message me directly on Twitter at @TheScando
Visit us on Facebook here.