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Faves here are "Room 1408" and "Riding the Bullet," King at his character-driven and humanistic best. As a fervent fan of the 1980s over-stimulated King, I give him a little rope for mellowing and broadening out in his midlife and coming senior years. As a fellow author, I am simply inspired to do better and aim higher.Scott NicholsonThe Red Church FlowersAshesBurial To Follow A true American hero. He's earned it. And while the edges may not be as dangerous as they once were, the craft and high command of language have grown.
Great Gift for a Stephen King Fan. This was GREAT. Highly recommend this book.
And if the WORST parts of something you read are "just enjoyable", then you're doing PRETTY darn GOOD. People have started to drift too far from being able to enjoy an anthology. Very good book. Read this. This is a good one. Interesting tales, and I love the little blurbs by King before or after the stories that give a little background on the story itself. There are 2 maybe 3 'Great' stories in this collection, 4 or 5 'Pretty Good' stories and ther rest are just 'Enjoyable'.
As for myself, I think I'll stick with an author who writes nothing BUT short stories. If you want a collection of stories that get your hopes up and then dashes them against the rocks at the last second, then this book is for you. Some endings (like in the story 1408) were totally lost on me because the last sentence had almost nothing to do with the story in the first place.
Blah.Most of his stories started off SLOW, which is understandable, because it takes a while to get to know the characters and figure out what is going on.Then, most of his stories got GOOD, heck, even GREAT about halfway through. But what is up with his endings. That's how I felt after reading 14 of Stephen King's short stories.
With such strong middle-sections I was expecting big-bang endings and all I got was a little puff of smoke. HARLAN ELLISON. I love how he writes as if you're in the same room with him and he's TELLING you this story out loud, not just writing it.
And to give credit where credit is due, he often has some interesting ways of describing things or different situations.
My favorites where:The Man in the Black Suit - a little boy out fishing has a run in with the devil himselfIn the Deathroom - an American in a foreign country is about to be tortured and killedEverything's Eventual - Dinky Earnshaw has a special power, now he's using it for good, or not.The Road Virus Heads North - a man buys a painting at a garage sale that seems to change everytime he looks at itRiding the Bullet - everyone has to ride the bullet, but its a question of now or later1408 - not one of my favorites in this book, just really basic when compared to the movie, probably much better if you haven't seen the movie alreadyBefore every story in the book Stephen King talks about how he found / came up with the idea for the each one. I figured if King wrote all these great movies as (short stories) first, maybe I should be reading his other work."Everything's Eventual" has 14 (dark) tales as you can cleary see from the cover of the book. It's simple, but I reallly enjoyed reading those.Looking forward to reading more of King's short stories~ A great collection of Stephen King's short stories.Unlike alot of reviewers, I haven't read alot of Stephen King, I've never read one of his novels yet and other then a few of his short stories in magazines over the years, this was my 1st King book. I'm a big fan of the movies, "Stand By Me", "The Shawshank Redemption", "Hearts in Atlantis" and "1408".
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