I love his short stories, although the quality and style are varying, best to see when comparing publication date with probable intoxication. The strange thing is, that there isn´t always the correlation of drug induced boo or jay and therefore the quality of the work, it´s more a result of King´s working method of letting the characters and his subconsciousness tell the story. This can go luckily well, average, or, rare exception and seen with pink fanboy goggles, average average, because there...

Lots of King shorts, best of bunch being The Mist, which, by the way, is a lot better than the movie in my opinion. 8 out of 12.Mrs. Todd's Shortcut, from Skeleton Crew is one of my favourite short stories - it is as this simple story that I found so compelling and delightfully dark, with Mrs Todd's obsession in finding the quickest route between two pints with something a but off-kilter about the journey. 10 out of 12!The Jaunt - a story that I consider simply King's best ever sci-fi / horror s...

There will be some of you that think three stars is kinda harsh for this collection. After all, it includes such amazing tales as The Mist and The Jaunt. It must be amazeballs, right? Not so much. Even the epically awesome stories in this collection need to be trimmed down. Most of them start slower than a Lars Von Trier movie, and over half of them never really pay off. There are some serious WTF stories within this collection; stories I didn't understand ten years ago and still do not understa...

“I stood there for a moment, first surveying the damage, then glancing out at the mist again. It seemed closer, but it was very hard to tell for sure. If it was closer, it was defying all the laws of nature, because the wind – a very gentle breeze – was against it. That, of course, was patently impossible. It was very, very white. The only thing I can compare it to would be fresh-fallen snow lying in dazzling contrast to the deep-blue brilliance of the winter sky. But snow reflects hundreds and

You can find this review and more at Novel Notions. Stephen King is such a master storyteller. I’ve come to love him over the past few years, and I now count him among my favorite authors. I have to agree with the masses, however; King tends to fall flat when it comes to endings. Thankfully, that’s not really an issue when it comes to short stories. They’re not supposed to really end, which I think is a huge boon in King’s favor. As with Night Shift, the first of King’s short story collections I...

There are two short stories that I read over and over. The Mist has always been a favorite, and I can't believe how many people haven't read Survivor Type! It's awesome!I've lost three copies of this from lending it out. Don't ask--you can't borrow it! ;o)

“Life goes on - that's what I should have said. That's what you say to people when a loved one dies. But, thinking it over, I was glad I didn't. Because maybe that's what she was afraid of.”How to describe the experience that is reading Skeleton Crew... The highs are high, and the lows... my god, are they low. A crazy collection where you get to see the best - and worst - of King’s work.Let’s start with the positives. There are some FANTASTIC stories in here, such as The Jaunt, The Raft, Survivo...

Skeleton Crew is my least favorite Stephen King story collection. Its not a bad collection, but something just felt off. The six stories I loved are probably some of my favorite Stephen King stories but the rest were just blah! The Good: 1)The Raft is my favorite story in this collection. A group of friends on a raft find themselves being picked off by some mysterious black slug in the water.2)Word Processor of the Gods. A man who hates his life discovers he can delete or add people and things i...

Revisiting Skeleton Crew, Stephen King's collection of twenty-two short stories published in 1985, for the first time since I was in 7th grade -- a time when I was trying to dress like Don Johnson and get Madonna's "Into the Groove" out of my head -- was a wonderful experience. The horror stories I loved as a 12-year-old were each better than I remember. A couple I didn't have the patience for back then became new discoveries. A lot of the stories I never cottoned to are still terrible. Five sta...

Skeleton Crew. What a great name for this book of short stories. Many pack a scare. Some not so much. I thought I’d just highlight a few of my favorites:The Mist - It’s by far the longest “short story” in the collection. Really, it could be called a novella. I’m glad it was included here instead of a novella collection (something that SK has become famous for doing). The Mist starts things off with a bang, or should I say a storm. After the storm comes the mist, and within that mist is the stuff...

I thoroughly enjoyed this short story collection. I made a few notes about some of the stories:- The MistBrilliant. Really want to see the movie version, and check out the audio version that Scott mentions in the comments! - The Monkey Particularly creepy. I found this uncomfortably believable! Anything with ominous toys/dolls tends to get under my skin.- Mrs Todd's Shortcut Quite beautiful -- loved it with an unexpected intensity. - The RaftI hate LaVerne so much. She's that female character th...

Out of all the stories in this collection, it’s The Mist that’s not only the longest but strongest and well known - it also possibly overshadowed the others for me.The novella length tale easily makes this collection worth reading, whilst some of the other stories that have also been adapted were the pick of the rest.‘The Raft’ (from Creepshow 2) was my next favourite along with ‘Gramma’ being creepily good.Out of the stories that I’d had no prior knowledge, the diary entries by Richard Pine in

I finished Skeleton Crew with tears in my eyes. I thought I'd read "The Reach" — the story that closes out this collection — before, but I guess I hadn't. It was an entirely new experience for me, and it packed quite the emotional wallop. As I write this review I'm still trying to mentally recover from that one, so pardon me if my thoughts are a little scattered. My Fornit died, and I'm stuck doing the job myself. By the time this collection was published in 1985, Stephen King was a bona-fide li...

While Skeleton Crew overall doesn’t reach the heights of Stephen King’s previous collection for me, it still contains some fantastically brilliant stories. I found when I was reading Skeleton Crew that the stories within it could be split into three different categories. The first category is something I thought of as pedal-to-the-floor King were the story has no fat or tangents and is all go, go, GO!. The second category I thought of as being for folksy tales that tend to go off on tangents, an...

Whew! I started the new year with this collection of novellas and short stories by Stephen King. It’s taken me all year to read it. That seems to sum up my 2020 nicely. This is a good collection of weird and unnerving stories. I loved The Mist, Gramma and The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet - some of the longest pieces. They are all upsetting in different ways. They have that creepy feel from the long burn of King’s suspenseful description. Like you’re walking around a twisted haunted house and yo...

While this definitely isn’t my favourite collection of King short stories, it does have some gems that I really loved. My favourite by far were Nona, The Mist and The Monkey. Something about each of those three stories really got to me and sunk their claws deep into me. The rest of the stories were quite enjoyable as well but they just didn’t leave me with the same delicious feeling of unease as the three stories I mentioned above.

Some stories were awesome and some not so much but none were terrible.I reread some of these and finished the book. I bumped my rating up from 3 stars to 4. I really enjoyed this collection. my favorite 2 were the mist and GRAMMA. OMG that one was so good and unexpected. the only one I didn't care for was the jaunt. I didn't listen to the whole story so it may have been great but spacey stuff just isn't my thing. Dylan Baker reading the milkman stories was FANTASTIC!! Because of his stellar perf...

I'm really surprised this collection doesn't have a higher overall rating here on GR. There are some real gems in this book. Probably the fifth time I've read it since it's release, and it certainly won't be the last.

Several stories, but nothing great in my view. 4 of 10 stars

Stephen King seems to be a bit hit and miss with me. Sometimes there can be a Joyland and sometimes there can be a Under the Dome. But they have never been bad or unreadable, just seemingly poor, rushed and formulaic. I am noticing that I like his more modern tales greater than his 80s and 90s huge output.So here is a short story collection from that time. The time where it seems like he was writing a book every couple of months. And it was just how I find myself feeling about all of his works.

overall, a good collection. I rated every story individually on my youtube channel and the average was about 4 stars. I found some new all time favorite short stories in this collection and then of course some fell flat. I think The Mist, The Monkey, The Raft, The Jaunt and Word Processor of the Gods were maybe my top 5. There were a few other 5 star stories though too.

When I rate a (short) story collection I don’t necessarily go with my average rating of the individual stories. But three stars seems about right for this one.Truth be told, this was always going to have a hard time getting a higher rating from me, because I don’t particularly like this kind of books. Now, if you follow my reviews you may wonder why that is. I read a lot of short fiction, right? True. But what I like about short fiction is that whenever I’m in the mood for something particular I...

I first read this collection about a thousand years ago while I was a sophomore or junior in high school. That was the mid-late eighties, and my Stephen King fascination was in full bloom. Now, nearly thirty years later, I am rereading all of King's books mostly in chronological order, attempting to recapture the ecstasy I felt upon reading them initially.To my delight, Skeleton Crew has withstood the effects of the passage of time, held up impressively, in fact.This collection of stories, most

After finishing this I must confess that: it was quite cathartic.One of those of books you need to put down for a second when you finish a chapter just to think about what you've just read.

I finished Skeleton Crew with tears in my eyes. I thought I'd read "The Reach" — the story that closes out this collection — before, but I guess I hadn't. It was an entirely new experience for me, and it packed quite the emotional wallop. As I write this review I'm still trying to mentally recover from that one, so pardon me if my thoughts are a little scattered. My Fornit died, and I'm stuck doing the job myself. By the time this collection was published in 1985, Stephen King was a bona-fide li...

A bit of a mixed bag, this one, but then, I think most of King's short story collections are the same. Some of the tales here rank among my favourite King moments (The Mist; Mrs Todd's Shortcut; Nona), plenty are perfectly enjoyable slices of King mayhem (The Raft; The Jaunt; Survivor Type; The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands)... but there are some real misses here, too - the kind of trash where you wonder just how sozzled he was when he dreamed them up (both #Milkman stories). Points of interest,...

I used to have an aversion to short story collections. I’m not sure what has changed, but we’re five months into 2018 and I’ve just finished my second of the year. Granted, they’re both works from Stephen King, but I’ll take my little victories however I can get them.Sandwiched between The Talisman and It, Skeleton Crew was King’s lone release in 1985 and his second short story collection. Similar to his prior collection, Night Shift, Skeleton Crew is mostly previously published work with only a...

Overall, a great collection of short stories by the King. We've since seen a number of these made into films - notably The Raft being included in George A Romero's Creepshow 2 and The Mist which was brought to the screen by, he of the Shawshank Redemption adaptation, Frank Darabont. But it is some of the less talked about stories in this collection that shined for me. The Jaunt, which first appeared in The Twilight Zone Magazine in 1981 was a fantastic melding of science fiction and horror that

1. The Mist - 5/52. Here There Tygers - 4/53. The Monkey - 4/54. Cain Rose Up - 4/55. Mrs. Todd's Shortcut - 2/56. The Jaunt - 3/57. The Wedding Gig - 4/58. Paranoid: A Chant - 3/59. The Raft - 4/510. Word Processor of the Gods - 4/511. The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands - 2/512. Beachworld - 5/513. The Reaper's Image - 3/514. Nona - 5/515. For Owen - 4/516. Survivor Type - 4/517. Uncle Otto's Truck - 3.5/518. Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1) - 3/519. Big Wheels: A Tale of the Laundry Game (Milkma...

4.5*Individual ratings for my second read through. This might be my favorite short story collection of all time.The Mist-5Here There Be Tigers-2The Monkey-4Cain Rose Up-4Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut-4.5The Jaunt-5The Wedding Gig-2Paranoid-4The Raft-3.75Word Processor of the Gods-4The Man Who Would Not Shake Hands-3.5Beachworld-3.5The Reaper’s Image-3Nona-5For Owen-3Survivor Type-5Uncle Otto’s Truck-3.5Morning Deliveries (Milkman #1)-3.5Big Wheels-5Gramma-4The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet-4The Reach-3.5...