He did for years and I had never even read anything by him. I saw how his books scared my friends. They got obsessed with the books and could not put them down even though they were terrified. A girlfriend's mother grabbed Salem's Lot out of her hands and threw it on the fire (of course she went out and got another copy). Horror and romance are about the only genres I do not read, and Stephen King being the pinacle of horror, I would not touch him. Hey, at 41 I still get scared of the flying bloody monkeys in Wizard of Oz and hide my face behind a pillow until the scene is over. That said, I read King's non-horror Hearts in Atlantis last year and consider it the best book I read all year, with his Dolores Clairborne a close second. He may be primarily a horror writer, but the man can write! I also enjoyed his From a Buick 8, and Bachman Books. I discovered his Dark Tower dark fantasy series and finished the seventh and final book last night, and it is one of the finest sci-fi fantasy adventures, hell, of any work of fiction, I have ever read.