 Hello everybody, E here. Welcome back to another Stephen King review, and if you are confused, don't be. I have not actually reviewed these books. I have done Thursday theorist, and that may be what you are thinking about if you're confused whatsoever. But I'm going back through and reviewing all of Stephen King's books that I have not reviewed yet, and today we are talking about four past midnight. Stephen King's second novella collection. I'm going to go through each story, tell you why I liked or disliked each story. Overall, for those of you that just want the TLDW, get in here, get dirty, get out. I'm giving the entire collection nowadays. My review on Goodreads might be different, so don't come after me. My opinions change a lot, and I have read each of these books, you know, again after those reviews were posted. But this one, I'm going to give three stars as an average for all of the stories. I have one story in here that bothers me quite a bit, but we'll get to that as we discuss them. So the first story out of the gate is the Langoliers. The Langoliers is a story about a group of strangers on a flight, and they end up going through a rift in the sky. There's been spotted over the desert a rora borealis, which happens very, very rarely. They fly through this anomaly, and they end up pretty much where they're supposed to be, but there's no people. It's like the apocalypse has happened, and they're the only ones who have survived. The story, I love this story. I give it five stars, but I do prefer, for enchantment purposes, and I guess time consumption. I prefer the absolutely horrible miniseries, or maybe it was a two-episode event, something like that. The four-hour movie that was released on television all those years ago. Bronson Pinchot, I loved his performance in it, and everybody else is so either over the top, or it also has hilariously bad computer-generated graphics for the Langoliers, which reminded me so much of Critters. How many of you guys out there remember Critters? Anyways, but I do love the story. I love the idea a lot, and it's one of the ones, anytime I read this collection or reread it, I save the Langoliers for last because it is the height of the collection for me. On to the next story. We have Secret Window, Secret Garden. I like this one, but I'm only going to give it three stars. This one is a story of Mort, who is an author, who way back into way back. I'm trying to remember if this is a spoiler or not. Yeah, well, I think I can talk about this. So Mort, earlier in his career, before he was a famous author, stole a story off of one of his students. I can't actually remember, but he stole the story off of someone because it was so good. And all of a sudden, this stranger named Shooter shows up at his doorstep while he's estranged from his wife living out in the woods and says, hey, mister, you stole my story. And the twist at the end is good. But I do find that I like the dark half better than this one. And the more I look back on it, the more the dark half is the better version of these two stories. And I say that only because they kind of hold the same themes, you know, an alternate, a second. That's spoilers. But if you want, if you want to read this, I definitely suggest that you do it. And I don't want to say anything else. I want to say it so badly, but I don't the reason why the dark half and Secret Window, Secret Garden are connected. And from what I understand, Stephen King wrote those two back to back. First the novel, then the novella, could have been the other way around. I'm not sure, but he does this quite often. He'll take an idea. He'll write a full blown novel about it, and then he'll have other ideas, maybe ideas that he didn't use. And he'll put those into the novella that comes afterward, or the short story. I believe he does this as kind of a routine. He'll write a novel, and then either a short story on novella, and that's how he works. At least that's what I have read, and what I've seen him talk about in interviews. So the next one is The Library Policeman. This one is very controversial. I'm not a huge fan of the story itself. I do like the way it connects to the Dark Tower universe and to the Stephen King universe. I do like that stuff. But Ordilia, the main baddie in this one, I think this story is creepy because of her. But it is a very, very difficult read, because there is child molestation in it. And it's one of King's more disturbing ones. So I'm going to give this one two stars. I don't suggest it often, which is funny, because the last time he wrote about a character like that, there was child sex. Well, it's molestation in this one. It's consenting in it. But there's child sex in both of these. And I find that interesting, a bit bothersome. But anyways, we're going to move along. I give this one two stars. I don't care too much for it, and I don't like reading it. But it's not worthy of a one star. It's not Billy Summers after all. Anyways, the next one we have is The Sun Dog. And The Sun Dog, I am also going to give three stars. It is the story of Pop Merrill, who is, I believe, Ace's uncle. Ace from Ace Merrill, from what's it called? Dang, The Body, or Stand By Me. He was played by Tifa Sutherland in Stand By Me. Pop is either his uncle or his grandfather or something like that. But his real name is Reginald, I believe. Pop Merrill has a camera called a Sun 660, I believe it is. Polaroid Sun 660. And every picture that this takes, whenever Pop takes it, there is a lingering presence of a dog that seems to be getting closer and closer. It's a black dog. It's menacing, that kind of thing. This story is okay. I'm giving it three stars. So not really Goodreads' staple for three stars, because three stars means you liked it. Two stars is just okay. So I guess 2.5 here, because I'm somewhere right in the middle. I don't like reading the story anymore. I don't know why. I do know that Merrill is, what's your name? Billy? There was a guy that was always in the live streams, always talking about the Merrills and how much he, I think he loved this story. I can't remember. Thugged Out White Boy is his name, who was the guy's handle. But anyways, that's beside the point. The last story, this whole collection, after Lingoliers, is kind of lackluster for me. Even though I've heard that it is some very few people's favorite collection of his. Now when we talk about collections, that he has the novella collections, and he has a short story collections, when you guys talk, this is my question for you today, when you guys talk about Stephen King's collections, do you differentiate between the novella collections and the short story collections? If you do, tell me why down in the doobly-doo, or do you just refer to them as his collections? So does he have, you know, a dozen, so odd 14 collections, something like that? I think it's seven and seven, or maybe it's six and six. I can't remember. But anyways, are they all lumped into his short work for you? Or do you designate between novellas and short stories? Let me know down there in the doobly-doo. Also, let me know whether or not you like this collection. Which story is your favorite? Which one did you hate the most? All that stuff, just the normal questions. But if you felt any kind of way about any of these stories, express that in detail down there in the doobly-doo, so that we can have a discussion. But until next time, I have an E, you have an U. This has been another Stephen King book review. I'll talk to you guys later. Bye-bye!