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Story time! Like many bookworms, I started reading Stephen King novels when I was too young for them. He's actually the author who got me into reading.

I hated reading when I was a kid. I didn't care about books until I was 11 and needed a book for silent reading time at school. I found an old Stephen King paperback in my parents' bedroom and decided to read that, even though I knew nothing about it. It was love at first page. I was obsessed. I devoured as much of the book as I could before my parents discovered I had it and took it away because it was "inappropriate" for an 11-year-old. How rude.

Even though I didn't get to finish the book, it transformed me into a bookworm. I became more open minded about other books and spent more time in the library. Now I read everything.

In honor of my reading heritage, let's discuss my teenage favorite Stephen King books. If I'm remembering correctly, I read all of these between the ages of 13 and 19. I'll try to remember why I liked them, but honestly, it's been a long time since I was a teenager. Who knows what I was thinking in the early 2000s.

Teenage Favorite Stephen King Books

The Shining

Jack Torrance’s new job at the Overlook Hotel is the perfect chance for a fresh start. As the off-season caretaker at the atmospheric old hotel, he’ll have plenty of time to spend reconnecting with his family and working on his writing. But as the harsh winter weather sets in, the idyllic location feels ever more remote . . . and more sinister. And the only one to notice the strange and terrible forces gathering around the Overlook is Danny Torrance, a uniquely gifted five-year-old.

Why I liked it: The Overlook Hotel was inspired by the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. I grew up in Colorado, and that hotel is iconic. I really want to stay there someday. Last time I looked, the rooms were $300 a night. Unfortunately, I don't have Stephen King's money.

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The Talisman

Twelve-year-old Jack spends his days alone in a deserted coastal town, his father gone, his mother dying. Then he meets a stranger and embarks on a terrifying journey. For Jack must find the Talisman, the only thing that can save his mother.

His quest takes him into the menacing Territories, a parallel world where violence, surprise, and the titanic struggle between good and evil reach across a mythic landscape.

Why I liked it: It's a portal fantasy. I could never resist a book about a character who goes through a portal to a parallel universe. Also, I seem to remember lizard people on snowshoes in a desert. Was that this book?

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Lisey's Story

Lisey Debusher Landon lost her husband, Scott, two years ago, after a twenty-five-year marriage of the most profound and sometimes frightening intimacy. Scott was an award-winning, bestselling novelist and a very complicated man. Early in their relationship, before they married, Lisey had to learn from him about books and blood and bools. Later, she understood that there was a place Scott went—a place that both terrified and healed him, that could eat him alive or give him the ideas he needed in order to live. Now it's Lisey's turn to face Scott's demons, Lisey's turn to go to Boo'ya Moon. What begins as a widow's effort to sort through the papers of her celebrated husband becomes a nearly fatal journey into the darkness he inhabited. 

Why I liked it: Another portal fantasy. This portal answers the question, "Where do authors get their ideas?"

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Pet Sematary

Rambling, old, unsmart and comfortable. A place where the family could settle; the children grow and play and explore. The rolling hills and meadows of Maine seemed a world away from the fume-choked dangers of Chicago.

Only the occasional big truck out on the two-lane highway, grinding up through the gears, hammering down the long gradients, growled out an intrusive threat.

But behind the house and far away from the road: that was safe. Just a carefully cleared path up into the woods where generations of local children have processed with the solemn innocence of the young, taking with them their dear departed pets for burial.

A sad place maybe, but safe. Surely a safe place. Not a place to seep into your dreams, to wake you, sweating with fear and foreboding.

Why I liked it: I think this was the first book that scared me. I don't want to give away spoilers, but what happens in the Pet Sematary is horrifying. Sometimes, dead is better.

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Needful Things

Leland Gaunt opens a new shop in Castle Rock called Needful Things. Anyone who enters his store finds the object of his or her lifelong dreams and desires: a prized baseball card, a healing amulet. In addition to a token payment, Gaunt requests that each person perform a little “deed,” usually a seemingly innocent prank played on someone else from town. These practical jokes cascade out of control and soon the entire town is doing battle with itself. Only Sheriff Alan Pangborn suspects that Gaunt is behind the population’s increasingly violent behavior.

Why I liked it: This was my favorite Stephen King book for years. It's about selfishness and desperation. Sometimes, the thing you think you want ends up ruining your life. And, I remember a giant spider in this one. Gross.

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On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft

Part memoir, part master class by one of the bestselling authors of all time, this superb volume is a revealing and practical view of the writer's craft, comprising the basic tools of the trade every writer must have. King's advice is grounded in his vivid memories from childhood through his emergence as a writer, from his struggling early career to his widely reported near-fatal accident in 1999—and how the inextricable link between writing and living spurred his recovery.

Why I liked it: When people ask which Stephen King book is the scariest, I say this one. King writes about getting hit by a car and the long, brutal recovery process. Reality is always more terrifying than fiction.

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Cujo

Outside a peaceful town in central Maine, a monster is waiting. Cujo is a two-hundred-pound Saint Bernard, the best friend Brett Camber has ever had. One day, Cujo chases a rabbit into a cave inhabited by sick bats and emerges as something new altogether.

Meanwhile, Vic and Donna Trenton, and their young son Tad, move to Maine. They are seeking peace and quiet, but life in this small town is not what it seems. As Tad tries to fend off the terror that comes to him at night from his bedroom closet, and as Vic and Donna face their own nightmare of a marriage on the rocks, there is no way they can know that a monster, infinitely sinister, waits in the daylight.

Why I liked it: I read it on a camping trip. I liked it because my mom hated it, and I've always been a Contrary Mary. I agree with my mom that it's possibly King's most devastating book. It'll make you glad that cell phones were invented.

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The Long Walk

In the near future, when America has become a police state, one hundred boys are selected to enter an annual contest where the winner will be awarded whatever he wants for the rest of his life. Among them is sixteen-year-old Ray Garraty, and he knows the rules—keep a steady walking pace of four miles per hour without stopping. Three warnings and you’re out—permanently.

Why I liked it: This one is bleak. I think it stuck with me because it's hopeless all the way down to the core. I had never read a book like that before.

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The Stand

After the days of the plague came the dreams

Dark dreams that warned of the coming of the dark man. The apostate of death, his worn-down boot heels tramping the night roads. The warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil.

His time is at hand. His empire grows in the west and the Apocalypse looms.

Why I liked it: This book is over 1000 pages. It was the fattest book I had ever conquered. The premise is also very scary. A plague kills pretty much everybody, and an evil man attempts to rule over the survivors. Now that I think about it, the plot doesn't seem so far-fetched anymore . . . .

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The Green Mile

The Green Mile: those who walk it do not return, because at the end of that walk is the room in which sits Cold Mountain penitentiary's electric chair. In 1932 the newest resident on death row is John Coffey, a giant black man convicted of the brutal murder of two little girls. But nothing is as it seems with John Coffey, and around him unfolds a bizarre and horrifying story. Evil murderer or holy innocent—whichever he is—Coffey has strange powers which may yet offer salvation to others, even if they can do nothing to save him. 

Why I liked it: This novel overthrew Needful Things as my teenage favorite Stephen King book. (Different Seasons might be my current favorite Stephen King book. I'm honestly not sure.) Anyway, here's a fun fact: When I was in college, I had a blog about the history and ethics of capital punishment. The Green Mile and Truman Capote's In Cold Blood sparked that obsession. A book must be thought-provoking if it inspired my lazy butt to start a whole blog.

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Which book did you read when you were too young?

(I bet it was Flowers In The Attic, right?)