A quite interesting summary of King's early life and career up to 2008, although it is a little confusing at times, not making it clear which date is meant, as the narrative tends to dart around. For example, at one point, the book talks as if King's novel 'IT' was already published, and then, some pages later on, deals with that as an event a few years afterwards.

One thing that became obvious from the list of quotes and their sources at the back is that a lot of it is gleaned from previous biographies, interviews, introductions by King to his books and other secondary sources. In the opening section, the author describes going to chat with his assistant for half an hour and being aware of King in the corridor outside, never entering the room. She was told that she could talk to his friends and they could tell her things if they wanted, but it was not an authorised biography. So there certainly aren't any big revelations though it is clear that one or two people still felt sore about the way they felt King had treated them, especially one person who felt a story of his had been entirely ripped off (they had shared an apartment at one point and he had also been writing and had discussed a story of his). It was also interesting that he had professional relationships with certain people, such as his agent, and then dropped them with no reason given in the book.

There are probably better biographies available, but as an introduction for the general reader as opposed to dedicated fan who has already read a lot of other books about King, it is certainly adequate. So a 3 star rating for me.

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If you truly want to find out why Stephen King's the greatest Horror fiction writer of all time, then you should definitely read this book. If you truly want to find out more about Stephen King and his childhood and adulthood, then you should definitely read this book. However, if you don't want to read the story of Stephen King's life through the prism of his works in a very descriptive detail, then I'd strongly advise against it, for as rich as this book is with the story of Stephen King's life and his works, it's way too detailed, for it's shows way too big of a glimpse inside of Stephen King's character and Stephen King's personality. ( )

Although this is an unauthorized biography, it covers all the major milestones of King’s career and is a good overview of his work.

Seems like those who didn't like this book already knew about Stephen King. Since this is the first book I read about him, I thought it was great. Quite an interesting guy! But he wouldn't be my first choice to tell me a bed time story! ( )

Interesting but rather breezy coverage of King's life and career. Clearly, the author harvested most of the contents from other sources -- so the value here, I suppose, is the convenience of having it "all in one place." This is sort of a hard-cover Wikipedia entry... but still, worthwhile for King fans (like me).

FYI, a fair amount of King's Paris Review interview made it into this book:
http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/5653/the-art-of-fiction-no-189-stephen-... ( )