Book Details
| Title: | You Like It Darker | |
| Author: | Stephen King | |
| Times Read: | 1 | |
| Last Read: | 09.04.24 |
Other Books Read By This Author (27)
- 11/22/63
- Bazaar of Bad Dreams
- Billy Summers
- Blockade Billy
- Cell
- The Colorado Kid
- Doctor Sleep
- Duma Key
- Elevation
- End of Watch
- Fairy Tale
- Finders Keepers
- Full Dark, No Stars
- Holly
- If it Bleeds
- The Institute
- It
- Joyland
- Just After Sunset
- Later
- Lisey's Story
- Mr. Mercedes
- On Writing
- The Outsider
- Revival
- Under the Dome
- The Wind Through the Keyhole
| Date Read | Note |
| 09.04.24 | New King, this one a collection of short stories. I'm kinda on record as not loving short stories because they typically don't stick with me. They're not long enough to really tuck into so often times reading them feels like an assignment. Maybe it's a psychic scar from english class or something, being assigned some Jack London short story to read that night, who knows. The exception to that rule are the Stephen King collections. I still can't remember specific stories from, say, Nightmares and Dreamscapes or Everything's Eventual but I do remember enjoying reading them. Often times King novels are so long, I feel like he enjoys fleshing out the space of a story and I think one of his great gifts as an author is placing us inside his character's head such that we immediately empathize with them. But with a short story it's just about an idea so he can't spend pages following his usual pattern. Sometimes they remain forgettable but others they really resonate because of their brevity. The novellas on the other hand, feel like typical King books that just peter out before they hit the requisite page count. In those cases, hey... multiple King books in one! So I liked this one pretty good. I still contend his work doesn't have the same bite that it did when he was young, but his work now feels like a comfy blanket to snuggle in. Not to say there aren't dark elements, I just know he'll telegraph anything really terrible and mostly he avoids that stuff now in favor of letting his characters live. I will say, some of his longer works in this book, while I enjoyed reading them, felt similar to previous work. Danny Coughlin's Bad Dream, I think the longest novella here, bears some resemblance to the first act of The Outsider for me in that an innocent man is put into legal trouble by happenstance. This veers in a different direction which is welcome. Rattlesnakes manages to be a sequel to both Cujo and Duma Key, The Dreamers shares some subject matter with Revival. They're different, but still kinda similar. I think I still liked all the novellas more than the short stories this time. Red Screen I liked, some of them - Laurie, On Slide Inn Road - I thought were ok, more like an anecdote. Others - Finn, The Turbulence Expert - were meh but short, and finally a couple - The Fifth Step, Willie the Weirdo - I already can't remember. After writing this out, the novellas I definitely liked more. ha! My favorites were probably The Dreamers, Rattlesnakes, and Danny Couhglin's Bad Dream. Although similar in some ways to Revival, The Dreamers had some good stuff in it whoo boy. |
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