Bag of Bones By Stephen King: Introduction

I'm starting off with a slightly "easier" book because that's what I've been reading lately. For the past two or three years I've been unable to read with anything like regularity for a number of reasons but now I have the time and the necessary focus to be able to read on a regular basis and I am very grateful for that.
When we begin a book we start first with what we know of the author and his previous books.
Stephen King: I loved him when I was in high school and probably read the majority of his works during that time. Since high school whenever I've tried to read one of his books I usually end up throwing it against the wall in disgust. The cliches are endless, the dialogue stilted and ladled with big fat spoonfuls of faux-New England slang and dialect. But King books were a big part of my life growing up and there are many worse things to read than King.
During the past month or so I've read three King books in quick succession. I started with his earlier books, they are better plotted and less bloated than his later books. I started with the Uncut version of The Stand. A 1000 page book that I had fond memories of in High School and I found it surprisingly good. Despite it's length it was tightly plotted and read very quickly. I did start to notice the King cliches or "tropes" if you want to dignify them with a fancy word. First, urinating in your pants a sign of fear or terror. This was so common in The Stand that I started to chuckle every time it happened and it happened what seemed like thirty times. This will reappear in all of King's books (as far as I know).
King also has alot of sex in his books. Not graphic descriptions but the characters have sex an awful lot. But in the Stand, for the most part it's just like brushing your teeth "Stu and Frannie went to bed and she reached out ready to recieve his love." Or something like that was at the end of every chapter it seemed like. Later on in his work the sex will be described in greater detail but I had forgotten just how constant it is.
King also has a "magical black person" in the Stand in Mother Abigail. This will reappear again and again culminating in The Green Mile. But it's a constant in a great deal of his work.
Then I read The Dead Zone: a very slim book for King. Nice little plot, not his best work but I liked the early carnival scene where he starts to become aware of his powers. The protagonist "John Smith" is just such a "nice guy" that he's kind of faceless and the reader never really feels like he knows him.
The Shining: I think the Shining is a good example of what most of King's work is like. A writer, trying to write starts to make contact with the "other side," with nightmarish results. This one has it all, the little kid with psychic powers, the menacing haunted house filled with ghosts, the magical black person. King does do a good job with his protagonist and his alcohol abuse and his attempts to quit. King has a well-documented history of drug and alcohol abuse until the mid-eighties when he quit due to family pressure. But it's interesting in this and other works that clear signs of alcoholism in the characters are never called alcoholism by King and his characters are never called alcoholics. King himself is the same way, refusing to call himself a drug addict or an alcoholic even when he admitted to being on so many drugs and drink he doesn't remember writing Cujo. Let's just say that Jack in the Shining doesn't deal with his alcoholism in a manner that works. Let's hope King has faced his issues a better way.
Let's get on to the current book, which I had gotten for Christmas in Hardcover in 1998. I remember reading up to page 100 or so and the psychic little girl was introduced and I stopped reading it. The opening chapter were still very vivid in my mind though because they are very good.
Bag Of Bones: By Stephen King
Scribner, Hardcover, first edition, 1998.