Thursday, December 31, 2009 By: Suzanne

My Favorite Reads: The Langoliers

My Favorite Reads is hosted by Alyce on her blog At Home With Books. The idea is to take a book you read before you started blogging and tell your readers about it.

This week in honor of my Short Story Challenge, I'm going to discuss one of my all time favorite short stories: The Langoliers from Stephen King's Four Past Midnight.


This is the story of several passangers on a flight from LA to Boston. At some point along the way the past through a type of time warp unknowingly. When they land in Boston, they are the only people around. It appears as though the entire airport has packed up just a minute ago and disappeared. Where are they and how do they find everyone else?

I have always enjoyed Stephen King's books and style. Most people who complain about King, name his style as being a problem. "He's too wordy" or "He can't stay on subject" are common complaints. I actually enjoy his tangents and find they add to the story. However, there is less tangential thought in this story, which makes the thrill and horror almost constant as you follow the characters.

I am now going to shamelessly promote my new Short Story Challenge. It will be a monthly challenge throughout 2010. Please join me!

4 comments:

Laurel-Rain Snow said...

This sounds eerie, doesn't it?

BTW, I'm noticing your Short Story challenge and considering it...

Elizabeth Berg has some short story collections, as do some other authors. Does that meet your definition? Could someone read several of the short stories from one author and have them count?

Alyce said...

My problem with Stephen King isn't his wordiness, but that he scares the crud out of me. :) I love time travel stories though, so I may have to check this one out. I generally don't read anything with horror elements in it, so that rules out most of Stephen Kings' writing.

I am going to be reading some sci-fi short stories in 2010, but am not planning to read whole anthologies. I would think about joining if there was a wimpier level with options to just read a certain number of short stories regardless of where they are from. :)

Right now I am participating in a ridiculous amount of challenges, and so am only adding those that work with what I am already planning to read. I think your challenge looks like a lot of fun though!

Suzanne said...

Yep, that counts as long as each review is based on a separate collection, they could be ALL from the same author if you wanted.

Suzanne said...

hehehe, Alyce! I will think about adding a "wimpy" level! But it doesn't have to be large anthologies, some collections are short magazines.

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