{"id":5343,"date":"2015-12-17T17:22:04","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T23:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.delirium.org\/?p=5343"},"modified":"2015-12-17T17:22:04","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T23:22:04","slug":"the-bazaar-of-bad-dreams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/?p=5343","title":{"rendered":"The Bazaar of Bad Dreams"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"81fc9NgRyuL\"This is the first King short story collection I’ve really liked in quite a while. My first instinct is to claim it’s because the last couple, I had seen a lot of the stories in other publications, and so they were old hat to me. But then I think, no, I’ve read other, older collections lately and my familiarity with those<\/em> stories bred no contempt. Plus, also, I’d already read a handful of these as well.<\/p>\n

So, what makes The Bazaar of Bad Dreams<\/a> a return to form? Man, I wish I knew. I’m so terrible at reviewing short story collections; it is pretty much my greatest weakness as a reviewer[1]. But here’s what I’ll do. Looking at the table of contents to refresh myself[2], I remember and actively like more than half the stories. Ur<\/em> (originally published as a Kindle exclusive and which only briefly flirted with being a paid advertisement, right at the beginning) has possibly the coolest conceit a consumer of fiction could imagine, but even the stories whose ideas did not blow me away, I am nodding in fond memory of.<\/p>\n

Or maybe he caught me on a good day. But I’m pretty sure this is a solid collection instead.<\/p>\n

[1] Well, besides inability to get paid and sometimes falling days or weeks behind on reviews. Not this time, though. I finished the book in line for Star Wars, and I’m writing the review in line for Star Wars. (This should not be taken as a contractual obligation to provide a timely Star Wars review. ….but maybe?)
\n[2] The book took me most of a month to read, which is a reflection on how well I’ve been reading lately and not on the book. I mean, short stories have natural breakpoints between them, y’know?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the first King short story collection I’ve really liked in quite a while. My first instinct is to claim it’s because the last couple, I had seen a lot of the stories in other publications, and so they were old hat to me. But then I think, no, I’ve read other, older collections […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[30,219],"class_list":["post-5343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words","tag-horror","tag-short-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5343"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5343\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5347,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5343\/revisions\/5347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/delirium.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}