I've probably mentioned it before... but...
Stephen King got me into reading for fun. And I mean real novels, not the kid stuff we read when learning to read. It started with The Stand and went until I had read most of his stuff, then I moved to Piers Anthony (The Xanth novels), other fantasy (D&D stuff mostly- Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman), and from there to including Sci-Fi. Basically, I credit Stephen King with convincing me that reading was cool. I also started including higher-level thinking stuff like Book of Five Rings and The Art of War.
But today... holy fuck has he cucked out. I haven't read any of his new stuff from the past... 10, maybe 15, years. Once it became apparent that pushing The Message was more important than the story he was trying to tell, I was done. Come to think of it, that's not entirely true. I did read The Institute because a friend suggested it was fucked up enough to give it a shot. But even that was like 5 years ago or something. I'll forever hold a place in my heart for some of the early stuff (The Stand, The Talisman, Eyes of the Dragon), but the man who wrote those stories is dead and gone.