3 1/2

I picked up this book for a few reasons: I was between books and undecided on what to read, I did want to read a short story collection for a group book challenge task, I had wanted to read '1408', and my b/f is a big fan of King and, thus, recommended this collection. Notice that none of these reasons include a burning desire to read it. I mention this to give my review proper context, I suppose.

As a collection of short stories, I liked some better than others - and most of this commentary is found in my updates, so I don't really feel the need to expand all that much.

I do want to comment on the fact that the story for which I picked it up - 1408 - was interesting, but I think I actually preferred some of the changes the movie made, including everything with the daughter, and definitely the ending. Also, for much of the strory I was sort of chuckling to myself instead of being frightened - but this is more my b/f's fault than anything. He likes this story quite a lot, and has told me of many of the changes, and things he missed from the translation from story to screen. He's also quite fond of randomly quoting from the story at odd times...

"That's not a real plum. That's a plastic plum."
"Fuming oranges"
"Tango light!"

In other words, he's completely ruined the story for me, making it read more like a running in-joke than a story of terror. For all that, I did enjoy it, though, as I've enjoyed the movie.

Other than that, as I said in my statuses, I liked 'The Death of Jack Hamilton' and 'The Sisters of Eluria' the best. Both of these were interesting and touching and sad in parts. Poor Roland. Next were 'Everything's Eventual', parts of 'L.T.'s Theory of Pets' (particularly the part that the dividing line amongst people is not men and women, but cat-people and dog-people) and, yes, '1408'. I might've liked the autopsy story and 'Road Virus' more is I hadn't already experienced them via adaptation, too, but 'The Luckey Quarter' was so blah and predictable, I didn't think it was a good closing story at all.