Nightmares in the Sky: Gargoyles and Grotesques

Surprisingly compelling prose in a book I read just for completeness and because, you know, reading is what I do. Like many I've been reading King since adolescence, and although I've largely outgrown him as a reader and as an increasingly serious writer myself — serious is how I take the task and not necessary how I write — I'm on dedicated path to read everything the man has written, if only because I can. And even when the prose groans the man still knows how to tell a story. As of finishing Nightmares in the Sky — and according to the spreadsheet I'm staring at — I'm 67.1% finished with King's current oeuvre by total number of books and 65.7% done by total words written. (If you think I don't keep track you're crazy.) I didn't expect to particularly enjoy the book. As I said, it was a chore, a check mark on a list, insomuch as reading can be a chore or just an item on a list. As is often the case, however, the book we expect and the book we receive are different beasts, and in this case a collection of beasts, which “alternately grinned and leered, sobbed and smirked, snarled and cringed”, these gargoyles of New York City. I'll stop now lest the review become larger than the essay which inspired it.