Everything's Eventual: Five Dark Tales

I think this collection includes some of my favorite stories by King that I've read to date.First, there were two Dark Tower connected stories in this book, "The Little Sisters of Eluria," which follows a younger Roland still early in his pursuit of Walter and his quest for the Dark Tower, and "Everything's Eventual," which follows a young man named Dinky Earnshaw who is suddenly and curiously employed by the mysterious TransCorp due to his very unique ability. This second story, as I understand it, will play an important part in later Dark Tower books.Many of the other tales seem to riff on classic writing fare, especially for horror writers, but are presented with that classic Stephen King style. Stories in this ilk include "Riding the Bullet," which King originally wrote as an instructional piece for his On Writing, but liked it enough to send it out to be published. Other tales that fit some of the classic tropes are "The Road Virus Heads North," "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What it Is in French," "The Man in the Black Suit," "Autopsy Room Four," and, of course, "1408," which I've wanted to read since I first saw the trailer for the film. Of course after reading "1408," I immediately wanted to see the movie, only to find that it isn't available on either of the streaming sites I'm subscribed to.Top stories in this collection, aside from "Little Sisters" and "Everything's Eventual," are "The Death of Jack Hamilton," a nice piece of historical fiction about the final days of the Dillinger gang, "In the Deathroom," in which a reporter finds himself in the worst possible situation, "the aforementioned "Man in the Black Suit," "Autopsy Room Four," and "1408," and, my personal favorite for sheer insanity, "Lunch at the Gotham Cafe," which is also the inspiration for the book's cover art.If you want to dip your toes in the waters of Stephen King, I feel like Everything's Eventual is a perfect collection to start with. He will lull you gently into his world with some familiar tropes, then tempt you into the world of the Dark Tower, and then play with your head as only King can. Definitely a pleasure reading this one.

My all-time favorite Stephen King book.

Stephen King quotes Amy Tan in his introduction to 'On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft' that as far as popular novelists are concerned 'No one ever asks about the language' - well, the stories in this collection are all about the language - just as much as the stories themselves.

He's not called the Master of Horror for nothing. King weaves a short story like no one else can. I loved every single word.And even better, each story was read by a different narrator and each was better than the one before. You couldn't ask for a better reason to sleep with the lights on.

This particular anthology is actually the author's first collection of short stories to be published in almost a decade. According to the introduction, Stephen King is an extraordinarily prolific writer who understandably loves his craft. Apparently, he and his wife also own two radio stations in their hometown of Bangor, Maine - one station is entirely dedicated to sports, and the other one is dedicated to classic rock music. It was while trying to decide how best to boost ratings for the radio station that Stephen King had an epiphany about his own writing career - about just how much he enjoys 'pushing the envelope' with his own writing.While his subsequent attempt at writing a radio play didn't quite work out the way he had expected, the experience served as an education of sorts - as much as a refresher course in the different styles of writing: writing for ebooks, magazines, journals and digests. In choosing which stories would actually be included in this particular anthology, Stephen King turned to a deck of playing cards to help him decide which stories would appear in the contents. He used the entire suit of spades plus a Joker card and shuffled them; the order in which he dealt the cards turned out to be where he would place a story in the contents. The contents features fourteen short stories that range from "the literary stories to the all-out screamers."I must say that in my own opinion, this compilation of stories were all rather different from each other. The synopsis of the book claims that Stephen King takes the reader down a road less traveled - and for a very good reason - and I do have to agree with that particular claim. I found this book to be if not easy reading, certainly relatively fast reading. I would give this book an A!To be perfectly honest, while there were some stories that were middle of the road for me, I also liked quite a few of the stories as well. I suppose that the two that would stand out the most for me would be: 'The Death of Jack Hamilton', which was about a subject that I don't usually like reading about: gangsters in the 1930s. The second story that I really enjoyed - I may even call it my favorite one of the anthology - was actually the twelfth story in collection: '1408'. I also have watched the 2007 movie that stars John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson.

I don't think Stephen King was very inspired when he wrote these stories and he indeed more or less says so in the afterword of each one. They are not bad, just not very exciting. Routine exercises. The best one is the first because of the humour.