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June 12, 2006

A Week of Literacy

Nightmares and Dreamscapes
by Stephen King

A common criticism of Stephen King is that he typically writes too much. 

That is to say, his books are too long, padded with unnecessary detail and repetition. Fans say that in describing the fantastic, he overloads the detail of normal life until we're fully in his descriptive thrall, then when he turns the world upside-down we're already firmly attached.  We're not going to debate that here, but we'll say that in the short story form it really isn't an issue.

Nightmares is a bunch of short stories, typically 30 pages or so, that run the gamut of King's writing. We're bringing this up for your review for two reasons.  First, we just love King.  And second, N&D is being made into a mini-series on the TNT network starting next month. 

Here's your chance to do a good contrast and compare with your friends as you drop lines like "I never saw William Macy in the Umley role" or "It's too bad they had already made The Night Flyer into a movie, the short story was so much better."

Yeah, the combined volume is huge, but remember that it's digestible in small pieces.  And you don't have to finish the whole thing.