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kultainenkettu's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75
rymrgard's review against another edition
2.0
This is not a bad book. It‘s just not for me, not at this time.
Maybe it‘s because I‘ve been told over and over again that this is King‘s best shortnovels collection, but I can‘t help being disappointed. I DNFed this at about 80%, roughly 2/3 done with The Body.
I liked Shawshank Redemption but it wasn‘t as phenomenal as I expected it to be. Still, I‘m glad I read it and this story is the reason why I picked this collection up in the first place, so it definitely wasn‘t a waste of time.
Apt Pupil I disliked, but finished. It certainly didn‘t help that one of the voice actors for the German audiobook version wasn‘t the best (if it had just been the other I might have enjoyed it more).
The Body was fine up until the point I stopped, but it didn‘t grip me. I‘m not in the mood for childhood nostalgia and I certainly don‘t look back to my years being a 12 year old fondly (nor do I think that my friends back then were the best friends I ever had. In fact, I cherish the ones I have now much more than any that came before them) — so I guess it‘s understandable that the emotions this story tries to evoke (with much success, if reviews are to be believed) left me rather cold. This doesn‘t make this story a bad one — just the timing.
The Breathing Method I haven‘t tried, so can‘t comment on that one.
If I owned this collection as a novel or if I had borrowed it from the library I would have finished it — especially since I had already come so far.
But since I listened to it from Audible — and returning a book one has finished, though possible, is rude and bad practice — I decided to stop here. Realising that opening the app felt more like a chore or a job waiting to be finished than entertainment feels like enough justification to DNF (a skill I‘m trying to learn this year).
Maybe I‘m also just oversaturated with King for the moment — I have read a lot of Stephen King in a row, which I usually don‘t — so maybe, if I feel like it, I will return to both The Body and The Breathing Method one day — or Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, at least.
___________________
This was read in March, 2024. No date is added since I added the stories individually.
2.5 stars
Maybe it‘s because I‘ve been told over and over again that this is King‘s best shortnovels collection, but I can‘t help being disappointed. I DNFed this at about 80%, roughly 2/3 done with The Body.
I liked Shawshank Redemption but it wasn‘t as phenomenal as I expected it to be. Still, I‘m glad I read it and this story is the reason why I picked this collection up in the first place, so it definitely wasn‘t a waste of time.
Apt Pupil I disliked, but finished. It certainly didn‘t help that one of the voice actors for the German audiobook version wasn‘t the best (if it had just been the other I might have enjoyed it more).
The Body was fine up until the point I stopped, but it didn‘t grip me. I‘m not in the mood for childhood nostalgia and I certainly don‘t look back to my years being a 12 year old fondly (nor do I think that my friends back then were the best friends I ever had. In fact, I cherish the ones I have now much more than any that came before them) — so I guess it‘s understandable that the emotions this story tries to evoke (with much success, if reviews are to be believed) left me rather cold. This doesn‘t make this story a bad one — just the timing.
The Breathing Method I haven‘t tried, so can‘t comment on that one.
If I owned this collection as a novel or if I had borrowed it from the library I would have finished it — especially since I had already come so far.
But since I listened to it from Audible — and returning a book one has finished, though possible, is rude and bad practice — I decided to stop here. Realising that opening the app felt more like a chore or a job waiting to be finished than entertainment feels like enough justification to DNF (a skill I‘m trying to learn this year).
Maybe I‘m also just oversaturated with King for the moment — I have read a lot of Stephen King in a row, which I usually don‘t — so maybe, if I feel like it, I will return to both The Body and The Breathing Method one day — or Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, at least.
___________________
This was read in March, 2024. No date is added since I added the stories individually.
2.5 stars
kendallkatherine's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
5.0
natnoble18's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
alexauthorshay's review against another edition
slow-paced
3.0
Having read <i>Night Shift</i> before this one, I assumed it would be another short story collection, only to find out it's actually four novellas. (And despite the afterword by King talking about the process of trying to place these long-short stories/short-novels into publication, they were <i>long</i>.) I don't know if it would have felt as painful had I read a physical copy, but my ebook copy just felt like it kept going and going, and each story took forever to get through.
Rita Hayworth - all the interesting bits happened off screen, only partially saved by the tone/style of the narrator, who was not even the protagonist.
Apt Pupil - the worst of the bunch, this story just went on for ever and ever. I actually liked it to start with, but as it dragged on over years and years and I came to understand the two main characters no better than when I started the story, it became quite the painful read.
The Body - Overall, I did like this one.
Breathing Method - Interesting setup, but ultimately not at all required for the story that's actually the namesake of the story.
All four stories went into a lot of backstory on the narrators/protagonists/central characters, and I think that's a large part of what made them so long. If you stripped them down to the essentials of the active plot only, they probably could have been short stories. Which is not to say I think they would have been better as short stories, but they all started out in such minute detail only to start skipping months or years or to flash forward in time to the narrator reflecting back on the experience and tying in other memories that weren't really related to the plot but illuminated the narrator's personality. Each story included so much information that felt tangential and bogged the pace of the main stories down, or was bookended by the setup to the actual story but said bookends ended up being such a large chunk of the story that switching to the actual namesake of the story felt like moving into an entirely separate, unrelated story that had nothing to do with the lead up before it.
Rita Hayworth - all the interesting bits happened off screen, only partially saved by the tone/style of the narrator, who was not even the protagonist.
Apt Pupil - the worst of the bunch, this story just went on for ever and ever. I actually liked it to start with, but as it dragged on over years and years and I came to understand the two main characters no better than when I started the story, it became quite the painful read.
The Body - Overall, I did like this one.
Breathing Method - Interesting setup, but ultimately not at all required for the story that's actually the namesake of the story.
All four stories went into a lot of backstory on the narrators/protagonists/central characters, and I think that's a large part of what made them so long. If you stripped them down to the essentials of the active plot only, they probably could have been short stories. Which is not to say I think they would have been better as short stories, but they all started out in such minute detail only to start skipping months or years or to flash forward in time to the narrator reflecting back on the experience and tying in other memories that weren't really related to the plot but illuminated the narrator's personality. Each story included so much information that felt tangential and bogged the pace of the main stories down, or was bookended by the setup to the actual story but said bookends ended up being such a large chunk of the story that switching to the actual namesake of the story felt like moving into an entirely separate, unrelated story that had nothing to do with the lead up before it.
sinimini's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I never get bored reading the Shawshank Redemption story or watching the movie. I never knew Stand By Me was based on a story by King. So that was a pleasant surprise.
racheyblue's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
4.5