★★★★☆ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
This is a wonderful collection of short stories and novellas by our generation’s master storyteller. I enjoyed every piece, but particularly liked Rattlesnakes, a sequel of sorts to Cujo. It’s meditation on the persistent grief of losing a child masquerading as ghost story. I’ve read most of Stephen King’s shorter works. This newest one tops them all.
★★★☆☆ | Horror | Print / Digital | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Continuing my quest to read every Stephen King novel … The Regulators was published on the same day as Desperation. Many of the same characters bedeviled by the same evil spirit Tak, but set in a parallel universe. The book covers of the two novels make up a single scene:
…★★★☆☆ | Horror | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
This book was nothing like I expected. Frankenstein (the scientist) is arrogant, self-absorbed, and makes incredibly bad decisions. The story itself is unbelievably far-fetched. There were times I wanted to throw my Kindle on the floor at the dumb-assedness of our unreliable protagonist.
Taken more broadly, it’s a cautionary tale about mankind’s continual push for scientific advancement, which feels more relevant today than ever.
…★★★☆☆ | Horror | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Maybe not one of Mr. King’s best efforts, but it was entertaining, and the ending came together better than I expected. ★★★☆☆
See also: The Regulators by Stephen King
★★★★☆ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
My 14th Stephen King book in 2023 and his most recent. The setting was some unnamed city in the Northeast, close to Philly maybe, during the second year of COVID-19. A big theme here was the idiocy of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers and Trump supporters. While I agree with King on these three groups, it felt very preachy in a horror novel. But, the story itself was good enough to look past this. In this one, there was no supernatural element at all, just the pure evil of two elderly professors preying on young “livestock” to prolong their own lives.
★★★★☆ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Continuing my quest to read the Stephen King books I missed along the way. This book flew by on my Kindle. Lots of supernatural fun mixed in with nostalgia for my late 1970s youth. I’m tempted now to watch the movie, which I somehow also missed.
…★★★☆☆ | Horror | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
I listened to this Richard Bachman book on audio. The story was OK. By the end, you felt sorry for Blaze, the thug who kidnaps a baby for money. Blaze led a hard life and physical abuse from his drunken father caused permanent brain damage, so he was “slow”, but kind hearted (unless you crossed one of his friends). He leads of life of small crime as an adult and hooks up with George, a fellow thief which is clearly a tip of the cap to Of Mice and Men by Steinbeck.
…★★★★☆ | Horror | Print | Own | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Working through the few books of Stephen King I haven’t read. This is a collection of his early stories. A few are dated, and a few are exceptional. There is a bleakness that pervades many of these stories. I hoped for a good outcome for the protagonist against all odds, but I was seldom rewarded. Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut and The Raft were my favorites.
★★★★☆ | Horror | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
A short novella. I read it in one sitting. Good retelling of the classic werewolf myth.
★★★☆☆ | Horror | Audio | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Continuing my quest to read all of the books by Stephen King. I listened to this one to start and then finished it on Kindle. We follow the story of a lost nine-year-old through the forests of Maine and New Hampshire over the course of a week, using the innings of a baseball game as chapter markers. Trisha McFarland is a diehard Red Sox fan and closer Tom Gordon is her favorite player. You can tell King is going through a baseball phase as he uses this story to share is love for the game though this precocious little girl.
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