Bracket #1: Night Shift (1978)

[mae]

Night Shift, 1978
http://www.thedarktower.org/gallery/data/510/medium/Night_Shift_face.jpg

Please vote for Night Shift (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Shift_(book)) using the following scale:


5
4.5
4
3.5
3
2.5
2
1
0
Never read


If you haven't read this book yet, please vote Never Read. Feel free to discuss your votes in this thread.

[Jean]

are we voting collections again? I don't know even how to begin to evaluate them. First, I don't remember which story is in which collection, next, the stories are so different, good, bad, brilliant and mediocre inside the same collection...

[mae]

are we voting collections again?

Yes of course, we're voting on each King book. Here were are asking for your overall rating for the book as a whole.


First, I don't remember which story is in which collection

That why each book is linked to its Wikipedia article in the poll.

[Jean]

yes... it's that I could never grasp the concept of a collection being a "book" the same way as a novel is

[Ben Staad]

This one is tough. In my mind I keep comparing this to other collections and not novels.

[mae]

This one is tough. In my mind I keep comparing this to other collections and not novels.

It shouldn't be compared to anything else. Just your own rating for the book. Think of it as if this was a new release and you had to write a book review for a magazine. How many stars would that review be?

[Jean]

ok...

Jerusalem's Lot 5
Graveyard Shift 2.5
Night Surf 5
I Am the Doorway 4.5
The Mangler 4.5
The Boogeyman 5
Gray Matter 3
Battleground 2
Trucks 3
Sometimes They Come Back 5
Strawberry Spring 4
The Ledge 3.5
The Lawnmower Man 5
Quitters, Inc. 4
I Know What You Need 3.5
Children of the Corn 5
The Last Rung on the Ladder 2
The Man Who Loved Flowers 2
One for the Road 3.5
The Woman in the Room 1

The average is around 3.5, plus half a grade just for containing some great stories

4

[mae]

The Woman in the Room 1

Ouch...

[Jean]

Yes, sorry.

[BROWNINGS CHILDE]

This is one of the first King books I read. I would have been in 4th or 5th grade. I remember very little. I know that I liked it enough (along with Pet Sematary) to inspire me to the become the King fanatic that I am today, but I dont remember half of the stories at all. I have been planning on reading it again for sometime, but alas, it is one of the very few that I don't have a copy of. Hopefully, I will get a copy soon.

[Girlystevedave]

5.

It started it all for me.

[Heather19]

This is easily my favorite of his short story collections.

Jean, glad to see you gave Night Surf a 5. That's a favorite of mine :)

[Jean]

it's one of my favorite King stories (they are not very many)

[Shannon]

"The Last Rung on the Ladder 2"

You have GOT to be kidding me. To me, this is easily one of the most perfect things ever written.

[Jean]

yes, I know. I could have made it 1, but I thought of you and my other friends who for some reason value it.

I hate it when King endeavors to write "Real Literature". He immediately starts sounding phony - at least to my ears; let alone that his writings immediately become trivial, predictable and just plain boring. It's when he's doing the "genre" stuff that he transcends - and then it's real, great literature.

[Girlystevedave]

I know I've said this over and over elsewhere, but...Strawberry Spring.
This will forever be my favorite short story. I was maybe 11 or 12 when I first read it, and it floored me. Given, I have read so much in my life since then that has impacted me profoundly, but Strawberry Spring was the first thing I had ever read that made me realize you could do anything with fiction. It was the first story that didn't have a "happy ending". The first story that made me put a book down, and marvel at how the author had tricked me.
So, yeah. Strawberry Spring pretty much started my love affair with SK's books, and all books thereafter. :)

[divemaster]

My favorite King collection. Perhaps because it was the first one I read? As Jean mentioned, there are hits and misses, but the hits have stuck with me for almost 30 years; whereas the stories I read in, say, Nightmares & Dreamscapes (which I read much more recently) I can hardly remember any of them. Anyway, my breakdown is below (I don't do half-points in my personal rating system for stories, and my rating scale is 1 to 4):


Jerusalem's Lot 3
Graveyard Shift 3
Night Surf 2
I Am the Doorway 2
The Mangler 4
The Boogeyman 4
Gray Matter 4
Battleground 4
Trucks 3
Sometimes They Come Back 2
Strawberry Spring 2
The Ledge 4
The Lawnmower Man 2
Quitters, Inc. 4
I Know What You Need 2
Children of the Corn 3
The Last Rung on the Ladder 4
The Man Who Loved Flowers 2
One for the Road 2
The Woman in the Room 2

I gave the collection a 4.5 in this poll. First of all, there were no "1-star" stories, which is unusual for any collection. And while the so-so stories are just that, the good and excellent stories are extremely strong, so I weighted upwards.

And I also consider The Last Rung on the Ladder a masterful work.

[Tito_Villa]

My favourite short story collection, 5 from me!

[mae]

The poll has closed. Night Shift has earned a FAS (final average score) of 3.928571429 or 78.57%. It received a rating of 4/3.5 with 7 votes.