adapt "the long walk" as a film someone, please. - Rated 
I've read three of the stories, "Rage" "The Long Walk" and "The Running man" and thought they were excellent. They're remarkable when you consider King wrote "the Running man" (hugely entertaining sci -fi thriller which is far superior to the film) in just 72 hours and was pretty much a kid when he originally wrote the "the Long walk" which features a stunning premise and is an exciting, poignant and very satisfying read.
I urge all Stephen King detractors to buy this book, the man is a great writer and its a shame that he's tagged with the misleading Horror writer label, which I think does him a great disservice, he's so much more than a James Herbert or a Richard Laymon. If you want thought provoking, character driven, unflinching, very readable tales then start with this.
Can't wait to read "Roadwork" now.
This here review only concerns "Rage" - Rated
This 1977 novella is prophetic of the various high school massacres still to come by then and that have flourished over the last twelve years or so, and particularly the one at Columbine High School. A teenager gets berserk one day and takes his class hostage after killing two teachers. The class is then turned into a reality show during which the students reveal themselves and settle accounts. "Where is the monster that walks tonight?" Stephen King asks. The monster is inside the teenager because teenagers have learned how to stifle their own screams and to let the poisoned apple grow on the branches of the inner tree, a poisoned apple that bleeds inside like some cancer. The monster is the apple of knowledge proposed by the snake to Eve and Adam but it gets swallowed by the snake itself. When the snake swallows its apple it becomes catatonic like Ted at the end of the novella. But to get to that point Charles Decker, the student who brought a weapon to school and took his class hostage, uses the Stockholm syndrome to manipulate the class into revealing their secrets which will bring Ted to his catatonic state. There Stephen King forgets absolutely no causes for this inside bleeding reality of the teenager who has swallowed his scream. Fathers and mothers are taking advantage of their children. The high competitiveness that is imposed onto the children who become real mental cannibals against their own friends. The school system and the teachers, particularly the administration of the school, principal and guidance counselors, are severely accused of warping the children into monstrosity. Not necessarily by evil acts, though the imposed silence of the inner suffering is a crime against humanity, the monster is carefully and very actively nourished with all kinds of rules that lock the suffering inside the heart and the mind of the kids. Sooner or later it must break and it does break. After the drama then justice with three bullets will miss killing the rebel who will survive in some psychiatric hospital as insane and irresponsible. Psychiatry will get the mission of keeping that crazy young man inside some locked walls forever or at least for a very long time, and the catatonic one, the one who did not manage to get his evil out like the others will be progressively plunged into some deeper state that will become a coma and death. Psychiatry is the jailer and the undertaker. Add that that the guidance counselor who is shown as a cowardly and vain false scientist and even doctors who are only interested in their own balance that they keep by nurturing the suffering of others, here children who become the guinea pigs of their own psychosis and frustration. Medicine is not better I must say and is the institution that is entrusted with giving the sick and the guilty the last rites before dying, some kind of secular extreme unction. The horror of this novella is in that depicting a society that inseminates and then grows and raises with great care the very evil that will destroy the weak and the impatient, those who will not be able to resist and those who will rebel and will be brought down like weeds in a field. In a way it is at times poignant to see that sorting out of those who will have the right to survive in this society because they do not jeopardize it.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID
the best KING's short stories collection i have read!!!!!!!!!!!! - Rated
every single story here are briliantly written and paced. they differ from one another and that is why King for me will always be unbeatable!
RAGE: A great insight in teenagers minds and how they cope with tragic situation like being held hostage by a classmate. This was way before the Columbine tragedy and that alone makes you think...
THE RUNNING MAN: Way better than the film with Schwarzeneger and surprisingly a tight thriller/chase that i never knew King could tackle so well. The setting is in cities and not some dark studio like in the movie,therefore making the chase amongst civilians way more relentless and surprising. Wonderful.
ROADWORK: I really loved the main character and his foreseeable downfall from the start had me gripped. I couldn't help cheering for him despite knowing that the guy was unhinged. This story has no element of horror and is a human nature exploration, like Dolores Claiborne's tale was. Loved it.
Finally THE LONG WALK: King's imagination again strikes gold. 100 contestants musn't stop walking for an inhumane amount of miles that even by the stretch of my own imagination i could never consider doing. Like The Running Man, King might just be the first one to have predicted the future of what TV reality will one day sadly become. Sadistic, inhumane and yet unavoidable. The contestants each had a story and I cried at the end, King has that gift of finding my sympathy with a lot of his characters.
The best 4 short novels compiled, simply unmissable.
florence, london, 30
what a pleasure.... - Rated 
....every couple of years I reread my favourites from SK.. this collection is one of them favourites. It never fails to capture me and make me wonder.
Emminently Missable - Rated 
I'm a fan of Stephen King (especially Salem's Lot & Bag of Bones) but these novels published individually and then collected here were written under the Bachman pseudonymn and show potential but nothing more. Not essential reading.
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