★★★☆☆ | Horror | Audio | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
My multi-year quest to read the entire Stephen King catalog continues with this 2015 short-story collection. I listened to this one, which included a bonus story (Cookie Jar) not in the original print edition.
King shows his range of writing styles in this collection. There are straight-up horror stories, mysteries, a western, a creepy noir story, a sparse, depressing story that felt very much like a Raymond Carver story, and a short epic poem.
My favorite was UR, a novella featuring an e-reader that taps into books and news stories from millions of parallel universes. This is a must-read for any diehard Dark Tower fans.
In looking back over the twenty other stories, there were two really good ones (A Death and Summer Thunder), but the majority were just okay. King wrote introductions for most of the stories, which I often liked as much as the stories themselves. There were some terrific insights into how he approaches the craft of writing. Our generation’s greatest storyteller makes it look effortless, but, as he says in one introduction, “easy reading is the product of hard writing.”
I’ve now read all twelve short story/novella collections King has written (so far). For me, this one ranked near the bottom in terms of overall enjoyment. My top two recommendations in this category are Night Shift and You Like It Darker.