I want to apologize in advance if this has come up before.
My friend Ted was commenting on how he would like a short story collection that was the best of Stephen King that he could carry around instead of having them spread out over a bunch of books. I pointed out that his version of the best and other peoples might vary widely. So we both went off and picked our ten best Stephen King stories. That was harder for me than I thought, I first went through and picked up the stories I thought were best ignoring the total number picked, I came up with 42. I then pruned that down to 13 (a powerful bad number) and gave up cutting any more. Ted came up with eight and gave up. Furthermore he picked six from Night Shift, Dolan's Cadillac and The Cat from Hell. So neither of us can count. And he didn't know the names to all the stories (you know, the one where a guy drinks a bad beer and turns into a giant amoeba is on his list written as such).
For the record my picks were--
Strawberry Spring
Fair Extension
1408
Everything's Eventual
N
Nona
Dolan's Cadillac
Sun Dog
The Little Green God of Agony
The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson
Rita Hayward and the Shawshank Redemption
Low Men in a Yellow Coats
Uncle Otto's Truck
His were--
Grey Matter
Graveyard Shift
I am the Doorway
Children of the Corn
The Ledge
Quitters Inc
Dolan's Cadillac
The Cat From Hell
Half his picks didn't make my list of 42!
I know there is no way anyone could come up with a consensus list of the best of Stephen King, but it would be interesting to see what some of you other peoples list of the tenish or so best Stephen King short stories are.
Jimpy
If you can't take the heat don't swim with the big dogs.
My friend Ted was commenting on how he would like a short story collection that was the best of Stephen King that he could carry around instead of having them spread out over a bunch of books. I pointed out that his version of the best and other peoples might vary widely. So we both went off and picked our ten best Stephen King stories. That was harder for me than I thought, I first went through and picked up the stories I thought were best ignoring the total number picked, I came up with 42. I then pruned that down to 13 (a powerful bad number) and gave up cutting any more. Ted came up with eight and gave up. Furthermore he picked six from Night Shift, Dolan's Cadillac and The Cat from Hell. So neither of us can count. And he didn't know the names to all the stories (you know, the one where a guy drinks a bad beer and turns into a giant amoeba is on his list written as such).
For the record my picks were--
Strawberry Spring
Fair Extension
1408
Everything's Eventual
N
Nona
Dolan's Cadillac
Sun Dog
The Little Green God of Agony
The Revelations of 'Becka Paulson
Rita Hayward and the Shawshank Redemption
Low Men in a Yellow Coats
Uncle Otto's Truck
His were--
Grey Matter
Graveyard Shift
I am the Doorway
Children of the Corn
The Ledge
Quitters Inc
Dolan's Cadillac
The Cat From Hell
Half his picks didn't make my list of 42!
I know there is no way anyone could come up with a consensus list of the best of Stephen King, but it would be interesting to see what some of you other peoples list of the tenish or so best Stephen King short stories are.
Jimpy
If you can't take the heat don't swim with the big dogs.