Short Stories

[Darkthoughts]

I hadn't read any of SK's short stories for ages - Different Seasons being the last. But I just got Everything's Eventual, as I'd never read Little Sisters and I realised how much I'd enjoyed his short stories aswell as his novels.

I think his more traditional ghost type stories often work better as a short story - they tend to make you jump more as you know that the suspense is only going to build up for a few pages until you get the scare, so turning the page becomes quite nerve wracking!

Anyhow - just wondered which short stories you all like, or which collections in particular. What,even, would be your ultimate short story collection?

[funky dredd]

I don't have an ultimate..but I do prefer his short stories. Mainly because I get into them a lot easier than his full stories. The Body is one of my favorites along with The Ledge and a few others.

[Jean]

I don't like King's short short stories (with a few exceptions), but I love his long short stories - there's a Russian term for a piece of fiction that is much longer than a regular short story, but shorter and not as epic as a novel, but I don't know the English for it (maybe novella?) - like The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet, or Crouch End, or Children of the Corn.

[kithereal]

The mist is my favorite short story.....I believe it is the very first Stephen King I read.....it was very scary. Looking forward to the movie.
KIT

[Darkthoughts]

Yep, we use the term novella - infact the very first novella I ever read was Carmilla - Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, that was irrelevant but it popped into my head

I'd forgotten about The Mist - thats the one about them being trapped in the supermarket right? Yeah, that was good!!

The Body is classic - Stand By Me is also my favourite King movie adaptation.

[Jean]

thank you Darkthought!

[Randall Flagg]

Novella:

A prose fiction longer than a short story but shorter than a novel. There is no standard definition of length, but since rules of thumb are sometimes handy, we might say that the short story ends at about 20,000 words, while the novel begins at about 50,000. Thus, the novella is a fictional work of about 20,000 to 50,000 words.

[Jean]

and thank you Randall!

(it's interesting that in Russian, the word novella exists, too, and is slightly different.)

[Odetta]

Survivor Type

[Cutter]

besides novella, there is novelette. Around 50 pages is the length, where a novella is around 70-100 pages.

some of King's short stories I've loved (and I'm probably forgetting many):

The Mist
1408
My Pretty Pony (surprisingly)
The Man in the Black Suit
The Little Sisters of Eluria
Quitters, Inc.
The Raft

I guess the last one I've read that I though was very good was:
Umney's Last Case

Collections I would probably name Night Shift as #1, Skeleton Crew as #2 and Everything’s Eventual as #3.

[The_Nameless]

The short stories were actually the very writings that cemented my love of King. I read The Shining, then went directly to his short stories.

Favourite Short Story Collection: Skeleton Crew

Favourite Short Stories: Survivor Type, 1408, Beachworld, The Mist, The Jaunt, The Raft, The Man That Would Not Shake Hands (Oddly enough), Children of the Corn, Jursalem's Lot, The Crate, Everything's Eventual, The Fifth Quarter, Grat Matter, Lunch at the Gotham Cafe, Night Surf, Quitters, Inc., Riding the Bullet, The Road Virus Heads North, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Sorry, Right Number (one of the stories that have stuck with me, for reason or another, over the years), Strawberry Spring, Suffer the Little Children, The Ten O' Clock People, That Feeling, You Can Only Say What it is in French, The Moving Finger (hilarious),

Wow, I did not realize how large the list is.

[blackrose22]

The amount of short stories SK has released over the years is staggering. Most of them are enjoyable and most of them brilliant. When looking at the list of what is popular with others I couldn't believe nobody had The Langoliers and The Library Policeman from Four Past Midnight. Really loved these two stories and also enjoyed the TV movie of The Langoliers that featured Dean Stockwell in it. One of the stories in FPM was also one of my least favorite short stories as I could see where the story was heading and how it was going to end.
Have to buy both Nightshift and Skeleton Crew as I took them on hols one year and left them behind me in the place I was staying.

[Rjeso]

The short stories were actually the very writings that cemented my love of King.

Favourite Short Story Collection: Skeleton Crew[/b]

Same here. Skeleton Crew was the first King book I ever read, and to this day, I prefer his short story collections over his novels. I have every collection of King short stories out there, and I guess SC is my favorite because it was my first.

[Storyslinger]

The short stories were actually the very writings that cemented my love of King. I read The Shining, then went directly to his short stories.

Favourite Short Story Collection: Skeleton Crew

Favourite Short Stories: Survivor Type, 1408, Beachworld, The Mist, The Jaunt, The Raft, The Man That Would Not Shake Hands (Oddly enough), Children of the Corn, Jersalem's Lot, The Crate, Everything's Eventual, The Fifth Quarter, Grat Matter, Lunch at the Gotham Cafe, Night Surf, Quitters, Inc., Riding the Bullet, The Road Virus Heads North, Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Sorry, Right Number (one of the stories that have stuck with me, for reason or another, over the years), Strawberry Spring, Suffer the Little Children, The Ten O' Clock People, That Feeling, You Can Only Say What it is in French, The Moving Finger (hilarious),

Wow, I did not realize how large the list is.

This sums it up with a few corrections.

[razz]

by non-DT i mean Low men in yellow coats, little sisters of eluria etc.
short stories like the mist, which have a small reference or name resemblance are perfectly fine, though

[obscurejude]

Without a doubt, my two favorites are:

The Body

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

I love me some Different Seasons.

[Heather19]

The Body is at the top of my list too.

[obscurejude]

Razz, I just realized the thread is about short stories, but I posted two novellas because you mentioned some. Do you mean to include Novellas, or is it supposed to be short stories?

Favorite Short Story:

Children of the Corn*

*I have actually yet to read Nightmares and Dreamscapes, I know there's some good stuff in there, like the story about the town full of dead rock stars. I'm hoping to find a used copy soon.

[Erin]

My favorite short story is "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French". What a fantastic story it is.

I also really liked "The Jaunt". That story scared the hell out of me.

*edit* I just realized we already had a SK favorite short story thread, so I merged this with it.

[Brice]

Razz, I just realized the thread is about short stories, but I posted two novellas because you mentioned some. Do you mean to include Novellas, or is it supposed to be short stories?

Favorite Short Story:

Children of the Corn*

*I have actually yet to read Nightmares and Dreamscapes, I know there's some good stuff in there, like the story about the town full of dead rock stars. I'm hoping to find a used copy soon.

^^^^You Know They've Got A Hell Of A Band

[razz]

the mist is a novella, and that's one of my favorite. so novellas are fine

[The Lady of Shadows]

in no particular order:
All That You Love Will Be Carried Away ("my mother made me a whore. . .if i send her some yarn, will she make me one too?")
Strawberry Spring
The Jaunt
1408
That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is In French
The Raft

i don't think he's written a short story that i haven't liked but some (like those above) stay with me longer than others.

[razz]

the raft is good. i wanted to read the jaunt, but i forgot to read it before i returned the library book.

i'm watching the raft on youtube right now.

[The Lady of Shadows]

ummm? library book? you mean there's a sk book out there that one of us doesn't own?
if i dig my copy of "skeleton crew" out of it's box would you like to borrow it?

[razz]

or i could buy it new and save 40 dollars on shipping.