Ditto "The Langoliers." Four Past Midnight was the first Stephen King book I read. Picked it up in the airport gift shop to read on a redeye flight to the west coast. Couldn't sleep on the flight LOL.
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I love the collections of short stories also. I own tons of anthologies. I still don't understand why publishers would rather do a novel of an up and coming author than a collection of short stories. Short stories show an author's chops I think. They have very little time to build this world, so the writing has to be wicked tight. If I read a particularly good short story by someone I have never read before, I will THEN seek out their other work, the longer stuff.Short stories happen to be my favorite thing to read. I try to get America's Best.., The O'Henrys, Best Southern Shorts, and other collections every year. While I love a nice long 1200 page SK epic, I am equally thrilled with 30 pages or so that wraps up nicely and I can read in one sitting. A friend of mine found me an old, old copy of Guy de Maupassant short stories - what a treasure!
I love the collections of short stories also. I own tons of anthologies. I still don't understand why publishers would rather do a novel of an up and coming author than a collection of short stories. Short stories show an author's chops I think. They have very little time to build this world, so the writing has to be wicked tight. If I read a particularly good short story by someone I have never read before, I will THEN seek out their other work, the longer stuff.
And the one that I forget the name off, about the travelling salesman who collected graffiti in a book, and is trying to decide whether to kill himself. I could go on and on and ON about the shorter stuff.
Short stories happen to be my favorite thing to read. I try to get America's Best.., The O'Henrys, Best Southern Shorts, and other collections every year. While I love a nice long 1200 page SK epic, I am equally thrilled with 30 pages or so that wraps up nicely and I can read in one sitting. A friend of mine found me an old, old copy of Guy de Maupassant short stories - what a treasure!
Welcome to the SKMB (I really enjoyed The Langoliers, too)The Langoliers.
Good to see you Todash"Man in the Black Suit." That, along with "Mars Is Heaven" by Ray Bradbury, are the two horror shorts (because "Mars Is Heaven" is horror, no doubt about it) that have been burned into me like slow acid.
Pick up a copy of the Best American Short Stories - it comes out annually, and you can occasionally find an older volume. Every year they have a guest editor (Sai King was "it" in 2007), several great authors have taken a turn. I have been turned on to so many writers I would have never read by this series. The editors read them blindly so you end up with a collection that includes authors you know and some you've never heard of. And then there's a blurb by each author in the back of the book where they explain how the story came to be. I have the collection from 1993 forward.Gosh girl, help me out then. I am trying to find other short stories to read and having a hard time because they are soooo ....mmm what's the word? Boring? Predictable? Blech? Mr. King is really, really spoiling me--I'm having trouble reading anyone else.