Nightmares & Dreamscapes
Ratings4
Average rating3.4
A solitary finger pokes out of a drain. Novelty teeth turn predatory. Flies settle and die on an old pair of sneakers in New York, and the Nevada desert swallows a Cadillac. Meanwhile the legend of Castle Rock returns . . . and grows on you. What does it all mean? What else could it mean? First there was Night Shift (1978), then Skeleton Crew (1985), and now Stephen King is back with a third collection of stories--a vast, many-chambered cave of a volume, with passages leading every which way to hell . . . and a few to glory.
The long reach of Stephen King's imagination and the no-holds-barred force of his storytelling have never been so richly demonstrated. There's something here for readers of every stripe and predilection--classic tales of the macabre and the monstrous, cutting-edge explorations of the borderlands between good and evil, brilliant pastiches of Chandler and Conan Doyle, even a teleplay and a non-fiction bonus, a heartfelt piece of Little League baseball that first appeared in The New Yorker.
In story after story, several published here for the first time, he will take you to places you've never been before, places that are both dark and vividly illuminated. Fair warning: You will lose a good deal of sleep. But Stephen King, writing to beat the devil, will do your dreaming for you.
Can you believe? Then come . . .
([source][1])
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Contains:
- [Dolan's Cadillac][2]
- [The End of the Whole Mess][3]
- Suffer the Little Children
- [The Night Flier][4]
- Popsy
- It Grows on You
- [Chattery Teeth][5]
- [Dedication][6]
- [The Moving Finger][7]
- [Sneakers][8]
- [You Know They Got a Hell of a Band][9]
- [Home Delivery][10]
- [Rainy Season][11]
- [My Pretty Pony][12]
- Sorry, Right Number
- [The Ten O'Clock People][13]
- [Crouch End][14]
- [The House on Maple Street][15]
- The Fifth Quarter
- [The Doctor's Case][16]
- [Umney's Last Case][17]
- Head Down
- Brooklyn August
[1]: https://stephenking.com/library/story_collection/nightmares__dreamscapes_flap.html
[2]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14916968W/Dolan's_Cadillac
[3]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650789W/The_End_of_the_Whole_Mess
[4]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650747W/The_Night_Flier
[5]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650843W/Chattery_Teeth
[6]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650711W/Dedication
[7]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650782W/The_Moving_Finger
[8]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650831W/Sneakers
[9]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650807W/You_Know_They_Got_a_Hell_of_a_Band
[10]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650837W/Home_Delivery
[11]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650825W/Rainy_Season
[12]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL81590W/My_Pretty_Pony
[13]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650723W/The_Ten_O'Clock_People
[14]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650699W/Crouch_End
[15]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650797W/The_House_on_Maple_Street
[16]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL19650676W/The_Doctor's_Case
[17]: https://openlibrary.org/works/OL14917659W/Umney's_Last_Case
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This was a book I read as a teen, and recall enjoying enough to read several times. Unfortunately, I don't have as much love for it now as I did then. Most of the stories were mid at best, and this really was such a...mismatched collection.
There are a few stories I enjoyed, notably Chattery Teeth, Rainy Season, The Moving Finger, Popsy, and Suffer The Little Children. The rest were either just okay or...just downright bad.
I'd only recommend reading this one for a select few stories, but otherwise it's a miss.
...in Western Maine there is no early spring; only late spring and winter before it...
alright friends, i tried to do a 2020 reread of this and with everything going on i just need to set it back down for now. below is my very incomplete review (essentially just the notes i took while reading) of the first half:
1. Dolan's Cadillac, 5
2. The End of the Whole Mess, 4.5
3. Suffer the Little Children, 4
4. The Night Flier, 2
5. Popsy, 2
6. It Grows on You, 2
7. Chattery Teeth, 3.5
8. Dedication, 2
9. The Moving Finger, 2
10. Sneakers, 4
This used to be one of my favorite Stephen King books, I can't even tell you how many times I've reread it. I was a little apprehensive going in after realizing how old it is (the introduction was written in 1992 and many of the stories were written in the ‘70s and ‘80s), as even modern King isn't the most politically correct. That apprehension was well-warranted. Take the content warnings at the bottom of this review into consideration because if these things are dealbreakers for you, you will hate this collection. I think the only thing that kept me holding on was the nostalgia and knowing that there are some real gems in here.
Even so, I had to take a break halfway through. I told the group chat that I was keeping incognito mode open on my phone browser so I could look up words I didn't know in case they were slurs — spoiler alert: they were all slurs. One can only take so much jam-packed bigotry at a time, whether intentional or not.
content warnings: racism; death of a loved one; homophobic slurs; child death; misogyny; ableist slurs; child abduction; antisemitic slurs; child sexual abuse; fatshaming; racial slurs; predatory gay trope
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