Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.77 AVERAGE
3.77 AVERAGE
"That was a phrase with which a man bent of revenge could fall in love. It had a dark, smoothly portentous sound. The arc of descent."
Stephen King has done it again. Out of the 23 stories in the book, more than 70% of them were memorable ones, with some of the stories just waiting to be made into full-blown novels.
The thing I have always liked about King’s writing is that even though his books are sold under the genre of horror, more often than not, the stories have an uplifting end, and good always seems to prevail over evil. And man, that is so satisfying to read!
My top three favorites would have to be –
1) Popsy – when you have a vampire as your grandpa, there's nothing to fear in this world
2) Chattery teeth – Loved the whole idea of an inanimate object protecting somebody so fiercely.
3) The ten o'clock people – Now, this could make an amazing novel, not that it wasn’t perfect being a short story as it is, but there's nothing more satisfying to read than when a couple of people start a resistance band against evil.
Some of the stories may seem a little repetitive, but all of them have a unique message, while some of them are just so deliciously crazy, that you can't wrap your head around them, no matter how hard you try.
I would also like to give a special mention to King’s last story – a diary entry about the Little League championship his son played in. Even if the baseball terms went over my head, the whole style and feel of the writing was a perfect end to the book, filled with nostalgia and a sense of comfort, which made me forget that I was technically, reading a “scary book”.
I loved this bumper collection of not-so-short stories, and it may not have induced as many nightmares as it proclaimed it would, but certainly sparked my imagination to a great extent.
The thing I have always liked about King’s writing is that even though his books are sold under the genre of horror, more often than not, the stories have an uplifting end, and good always seems to prevail over evil. And man, that is so satisfying to read!
Spoiler
My top three favorites would have to be –
1) Popsy – when you have a vampire as your grandpa, there's nothing to fear in this world
2) Chattery teeth – Loved the whole idea of an inanimate object protecting somebody so fiercely.
3) The ten o'clock people – Now, this could make an amazing novel, not that it wasn’t perfect being a short story as it is, but there's nothing more satisfying to read than when a couple of people start a resistance band against evil.
Some of the stories may seem a little repetitive, but all of them have a unique message, while some of them are just so deliciously crazy, that you can't wrap your head around them, no matter how hard you try.
I would also like to give a special mention to King’s last story – a diary entry about the Little League championship his son played in. Even if the baseball terms went over my head, the whole style and feel of the writing was a perfect end to the book, filled with nostalgia and a sense of comfort, which made me forget that I was technically, reading a “scary book”.
I loved this bumper collection of not-so-short stories, and it may not have induced as many nightmares as it proclaimed it would, but certainly sparked my imagination to a great extent.
I thought this compilation of short stories were just OK, definitely not as suspenseful as some of his earlier works. Some of the stories are so farfetched as an actual finger crawling up through the a sink drain and scratching around in the sink. I remember reading this and wondering what the hell was going on half the time. Maybe I should give it a second chance in case I missed some things that might make the stories clearer.
Mix of quality. Some stories incredible, some so boring I skipped.
Best : Dolan’s Cadillac, The Moving Finger
Best : Dolan’s Cadillac, The Moving Finger
Best stories in the collection:
-Dolan’s Cadillac
-Suffer the Little Children (4.5 stars)
-It Grows on You
-The Moving Finger
-You Know They Got a Hell of a Band (5 stars)
-Rainy Season
-The House on Maple Street (5 stars)
-Dolan’s Cadillac
-Suffer the Little Children (4.5 stars)
-It Grows on You
-The Moving Finger
-You Know They Got a Hell of a Band (5 stars)
-Rainy Season
-The House on Maple Street (5 stars)
...in Western Maine there is no early spring; only late spring and winter before it...
alright friends, i tried to do a 2020 reread of this and with everything going on i just need to set it back down for now. below is my very incomplete review (essentially just the notes i took while reading) of the first half:
1. Dolan’s Cadillac, 5
2. The End of the Whole Mess, 4.5
3. Suffer the Little Children, 4
4. The Night Flier, 2
5. Popsy, 2
6. It Grows on You, 2
7. Chattery Teeth, 3.5
8. Dedication, 2
9. The Moving Finger, 2
10. Sneakers, 4
This used to be one of my favorite Stephen King books, I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve reread it. I was a little apprehensive going in after realizing how old it is (the introduction was written in 1992 and many of the stories were written in the ‘70s and ‘80s), as even modern King isn’t the most politically correct. That apprehension was well-warranted. Take the content warnings at the bottom of this review into consideration because if these things are dealbreakers for you, you will hate this collection. I think the only thing that kept me holding on was the nostalgia and knowing that there are some real gems in here.
Even so, I had to take a break halfway through. I told the group chat that I was keeping incognito mode open on my phone browser so I could look up words I didn’t know in case they were slurs — spoiler alert: they were all slurs. One can only take so much jam-packed bigotry at a time, whether intentional or not.
content warnings: racism; death of a loved one; homophobic slurs; child death; misogyny; ableist slurs; child abduction; antisemitic slurs; child sexual abuse; fatshaming; racial slurs; predatory gay trope
Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | Ko-fi
I've said it before and I'll say it again, Stephen King excels at writing solid, short horror stories. There are a number of good ones in this collection and while no single one sticks out to me and the story of the collection, I found that I enjoyed almost all of them upon reflection. It always surprises me that King can write something so short and concise when he so often struggles to end his longer novels. This is definitely a collection to check out and it made for good reading in fall around Halloween.
I found these stories hard to get through, and thought only about half of them were good when I finished. There are better short story collections by S.K. Maybe I'm just not easily creeped out anymore.