Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“I go where I have to go, do what I have to do.”

The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

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“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” I have never read any of Stephen King’s non-horror works, like the Dark Tower series. I’m not sure what made me pick up the first book of the series, The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger, but I did enjoy it, as confused as I was half the time. The book follows Roland, also known as the Gunslinger. The story starts in media res, without any context or background, just the present moment. The […]

More than Okay, Boomer

Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King

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Hearts in Atlantis is Stephen King’s look at the Baby Boomers. Starting in 1960 and ending at the dawn of the new millennium, the five stories collected here feature an interlocking cast of characters dealing with the drastic changes taking place in America over those tumultuous decades. But if you’re worried about yet another paean to the peace-and-love generation, a gee-whiz, Forest Gump-ian account of seeing The Beatles on Ed Sullivan and burning draft cards, rest assured: King has no interest in singing the praises […]

For Sale, Short Stories, Fairly Used

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King

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Short story collections are always hard to review. They’re not one concrete entity by nature, but simply going through and reviewing each story feels tedious. The Bazaar of Bad Dreams presents a further complication, in that King’s conceit is that these particular stories are quite different from each other. Likening them to offerings for sale at a kooky marketplace, King dedicates each story in the collection to a different writer, suggesting that they served as an inspiration for the piece, though in most cases it […]

Sometimes, darker is better

You Like It Darker by Stephen King

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Stephen King has collected his most recent dark thoughts into a series of short stories in You Like It Darker, with some genuine thrills in the mix (most of these being the longer of the short tales contained within). Though not every short story was a hit, I find King as reliable as ever in the short-story game. Of the collection, I’ll slice it up into Superb, Good, and Middling Superb Laurie – A story of a lonely man who welcomes a dog into his […]

Let the Right One In

The Outsider by Stephen King

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A young boy is found violated and viciously murdered in a small town in the American heartland. Police inspector Ralph Anderson soon finds his prime suspect: baseball trainer Terry Maitland has been seen by multiple witnesses, his clothes covered in blood. His fingerprints are all over the place. Ralph, sure he has the right man, goes in to arrest Terry in front of the entire town. The only problem is that Terry seems to have an iron-clad alibi. So why was he in two places […]

Annie are You Okay, Are you Okay Annie?

Misery by Stephen King

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I am a professed Stephen King fan, and one of my don’t call it a goal, but it is like a goal, for 2024 was to read more of his backlist.  I have been avoiding Misery for many years because I like reading more about monsters that are supernatural vs. monsters that are evil people. But 2024 is the year I decided I would give it a chance and overall I am glad that I did. The plot of Misery is that author Paul Sheldon […]



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