If you want to start reading Stephen King, you're probably going to feel overwhelmed with choices, just because he’s written so much. It’s fair to start with one of his novels, though. Technically, his earliest published works were short stories that appeared in magazines as early as the 1960s, and then some more in the early 1970s, but starting with Carrie, his first novel (from 1974), feels a bit more sensible. It’s not his very best novel, but it is generally very good, and it’s also not long. “Not long” is not something you can say about many Stephen King books… thankfully, though, some of those lengthy novels are great. If you're not scared by many pages and a good many disturbing scenes, then both The Stand and IT are also very compelling, and the kinds of works that'll help you see the light, regarding King as an author (more so than the adaptations of those novels, with all of them, so far, being flawed in one way or another). There’s also The Shining, which is a good bit longer than Carrie, but not quite as comparable to a brick in appearance as The Stand or IT, so that’s a good middle-ground, and another strong entry point.