Night Shift was a mixed bag, but overall that mix comes out as enjoyable. The duds are few, and the highlights more than make up for them. Even the mid-level stories are for the most part good reads, and one of the things about short story collections is that if you don't like a story, why, there's another one just around the corner.

The public was, I imagine, clamoring for everything Stephen King at this point in his career, where he had published three best-selling novels, each better and scarier than the one before it, and when he was in the middle of a slightly-longer-than-usual break between books, due to taking time to polish up Rage, and then working on his first enormous book, The Stand. So they slapped together 20 of his short stories in a somewhat willy-nilly fashion to give his fan's the first concentrated dose of King's short fiction. Some of the stories had been published in various magazines, while others were new.

But despite the disparity in quality level between the best and worst of this collection, it's worth it because there are some real gems in Night Shift. When King is on his game, short stories are an excellent way to display his talents. In short stories he can concentrate his ideas. He doesn't become bogged down in character detail or dialogue. He just sets out to make you feel something, and when he succeeds, he succeeds with ribbons on. A good King short story is worth the read, and there a fair few good ones in here.

If you were ever to read this collection but wanted to only read the best of them, here is my personal ordering of the stories, from my favourite to my least favourite, along with the grade I gave them in my summary/discussion. Anything that got a grade in the A-range is in my opinion a pretty damn good Stephen King short story. Anything in the B-range is a decent yarn if you're got the time to read it. Anything in the C-range is only worth it if you want to read the whole book. Nothing got a D here, but D would be a story I'd recommend actively avoiding.

A+ Children of the Corn
A+ The Last Rung of the Ladder
A Trucks
A Quitters, Inc.
A- I Know What You Need
A- Graveyard Shift

B+ Battleground
B+ The Ledge
B+ The Mangler
B Sometimes They Come Back
B- The Woman in the Room
B- The Man Who Loved Flowers
B- I Am the Doorway

C+ The Boogeyman
C+ One for the Road
C+ The Lawnmower Man
C+ Jerusalem's Lot
C Strawberry Spring
C Gray Matter
C- Night Surf

The six stories in the A-range, and even the three B+ stories, are definitely worth the read if you ever get a hankering for some Stephen King short fiction.

With so many stories it's hard to give it an overall score, but you guys pay me the big bucks for the big results, so here we go. Overall, on the Stephen King Quality Meter, Night Shift gets a 67/100. If you were to just pick out the top ten stories and ignore the rest, it would be up in the 80s, but I'm eating the whole pig here, so I've got to chew some hooves.

The Books So Far:

88/100 - The Shining
70/100 - 'Salem's Lot
67/100 - Night Shift
45/100 - Rage
40/100 - Carrie

Next: The Stand

Note: I've secured an original 1978 version of The Stand to use for this readthrough, so that I'm reading the same thing that people then did. King's editors cut out a bunch of stuff they thought was unnecessary in this book, but in 1990 King put all the old material back in and published the "Uncut" version of The Stand, which is now the only version in print. But I want the authentic chronological experience, so I'm going with the original published version. I read the Uncut version ten years ago, so if I notice any major differences I'll note them in my post, which will probably take longer to put together than the ten days these recent posts have been taking me, because damn guys, that book be large.