Rating: 
Summary: It Was A Pleasure To Burn...
Review: Despite what it say's about the novel Rage on King's own website there was no "association" between this book and common murderers, and if there is then Catcher In the Rye is associated with John Hinckley.
So I find King's act of banning his own book irresponsible it will only act as an accelerant & pretext for censors, book burners and moral zealots under the reign of G.W. Bush Jr. And his National Rifle Association supporters with their many paid advertisements on TV.
Nor does it lead long time admirers to think King has much confidence in the genuine artistic merits of his own books.
Rating: 
Summary: I'm looking for the book
Review: I have heard every thing about this book. I have been looking for it for the longest time. If any body knows how or when to get it please e-mail me.
krisstarlee28@earthlink.net
Thank you,Persephone Star
Rating:
Summary: All very gripping and original stories so far.......
Review: I have only read the stories The Long Walk and Rage and just started Roadwork. The Long Walk is my favorite Stephen King book of all times. I have read many of Stephen Kings books, but this one really makes you feel like you are there and can feel what each of the characters. There are 100 choosen boys to walk a marathon until they can walk no longer. This is a marathon unlike any others where if they fall below 4mph, they get three warning and after 3 warnings, they get their ticket, which is death. The winner is the last one standing. Through this walk you feel the characters tiredness and their minds slowly wandering until some cannot take much more. The book keeps you reading until the suprising ending.
I had heard that Rage was a great story but was banned. To be honest, I was curious to why it would be banned and I wanted to see what the story was all about. It starts out with a boy in high school who walks into school one day and kills a couple teachers and takes his math class hostage. I thought it was an interesting story, but I didn't feel like I really knew the main character as I have in Kings other books. I also thought that the ending wasn't something that would really happen, I know that if I was held hostage and watched my teacher get killed in front of me, I wouldn't have acted like most of the students in the class did. Overall, I didn't think it was his best, but was interesting and kept me wanting to read it to the end.
Rating:
Summary: All very gripping and original stories so far.......
Review: I have only read the stories The Long Walk and Rage and just started Roadwork. The Long Walk is my favorite Stephen King book of all times. I have read many of Stephen Kings books, but this one really makes you feel like you are there and can feel what each of the characters. There are 100 choosen boys to walk a marathon until they can walk no longer. This is a marathon unlike any others where if they fall below 4mph, they get three warning and after 3 warnings, they get their ticket, which is death. The winner is the last one standing. Through this walk you feel the characters tiredness and their minds slowly wandering until some cannot take much more. The book keeps you reading until the suprising ending.
I had heard that Rage was a great story but was banned. To be honest, I was curious to why it would be banned and I wanted to see what the story was all about. It starts out with a boy in high school who walks into school one day and kills a couple teachers and takes his math class hostage. I thought it was an interesting story, but I didn't feel like I really knew the main character as I have in Kings other books. I also thought that the ending wasn't something that would really happen, I know that if I was held hostage and watched my teacher get killed in front of me, I wouldn't have acted like most of the students in the class did. Overall, I didn't think it was his best, but was interesting and kept me wanting to read it to the end.
Rating:
Summary: Enthraling, suspensefull, makes your hackles rise
Review: I love the Bachman books collection, but I think my favorite story was The Long Walk. I couldn't put it down. It kept you waiting for the inevitable, then it gave to you what you least expected. Then again, doesn't all his books do that? Rage was very scary. By that I mean that I think we all know it could happen all to easy. Again they are all great works of art by the one and only master of terror
Rating:
Summary: Bachman (KINGman) is a genius.
Review: I received this book in high school as a gift and it really struck a chord. I was surprised to read that it is no longer published because of incidents concerning Rage. King always seems to get it right, was he a geek in HS too? I have since ordered the book again, surely I lent it out to someone who didn't appreciate it as much as I did, and I plan on rereading the whole book again.
Rating:
Summary: A Note on Censorship
Review: It's been a while since I read this, but I remember all of the stories being pretty good. I'm only weighing in here to point out that it was Stephen King himself who censored this book. In a speech to a library association, which you can read at , King states that after his book (specifically the story called "The Rage") had been mentioned in connection with 2 school shootings, and the FBI requested an interview with King, he called his publisher and asked them to take it out of print. While this is unfortunate censorship that King may have been driven to, he ultimately censored himself.
Rating:
Summary: Classic King
Review: Long ago, before Stephen King was hit by the money bus - and later a real van - he could actually write. This collection of novellas helps celebrate that time; a time before slavish devotion to formula had him cranking out the same story over and over. A time before King's new-found relgious zealotry had him extolling the virtues of steadfast belief in a higher power at the core of his every over-long, soapy new novel. This four-story collection is a distillation of the writer King used to be.
I have retained my copy of this set since I was a kid. Luckily it is a hardback, so it has withstood the test of time relatively well. Every now and then I pull it out to re-read one of the stories and I am reminded of just how good this guy was. There is real talent between these covers.
Unfortunately the collection starts off with what I feel to be the weakest story of the bunch. Perhaps I'm just not a fan of self-indulgent adolescent revenge fantasies. "Rage" is just that. It is markedly similar to "Apt Pupil" and a short story, found in one of the ten thousand compilations King has cranked out, about a college kid going amok with a sniper rifle. A lot of the other reviewers have decried the so-called censorship that has removed this story from publication. Frankly I applaud King for realizing how harmful the story is. It is a pointless revenge fantasy in which a student kills a teacher and threatens his fellow schoolchildren with a gun. Romanticizing this behavior is only harmful, as is evidenced by those who post how "prophetic" this is. As if the kids who shot up Columbine or the other copycat incidents were wounded, tortured souls who wanted to discuss philosophy. They were petty thugs. This story asks us to empathize with such petty thugs. While there is a good bit of King's patented adolescent angst writing (he must have had a crappy childhood), the story itself is just creepy.
In my mind, this first story seriously cheapens the collection. I read it once, when I first got the book, and haven't read it since. Perhaps the publisher could re-release the collection without "Rage". Unfortunately to fill it out they might include "Thinner", which is awful for different reasons.
The other three novellas in this collection are nothing short of sublime. "The Long Walk" is an amazing tale about a futuristic game in which 100 volunteers walk until only one man is left. Anyone who flags beneath the required speed is shot. Anyone who tries to desert is shot. They never stop, walking and walking until all but one can walk no more. Overall this sounds like a boring concept, but King works his psychological wonders with the characters and has you turning page after page, empathizing with them and actually caring about them.
"Roadwork" is an odd story. It, too, is a revenge tale but is much less reprehensible in that the person attempting to get revenge does so without taking hostages, without shooting innocent people, and without putting himself up on a soapbox. The hero sees his world falling apart and lacks the desire to reconstruct it. So he just goes along for the ride. In the introduction King says that he wrote this story to deal with his own grief when a loved one died. The truth of that statement shines through. This is a very powerful piece.
The final story, "The Running Man", simply shows the raw talent King embodied. Apparently the entire story was written in a span of 72 hours. Another futuristic game show tale, this one is about a society which is heavily splintered into have and have-not; the have-nots appearing on game shows to try to earn money to survive. The lead character, trying to earn money to take his daughter to the hospital, applies for a game show spot and is given a slot on the titular show, which sets a man loose to run while professional hunters - and all of society - track him down. The rules state that if he eludes capture for 30 days he wins, but there are reasons to doubt that. An effective update of "The Most Dangerous Game", this story grabs you and holds you. If all you know of "The Running Man" is the godawful Schwarzenegger film, you definitely need to read this one (the book version will definitely never be filmed, at least not with that ending).
So three novels of four are must-reads. I highly recommend picking this one up, even if you have to buy it used.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, some of King's best work
Review: Once again, this brilliant author has brought forth a collection of stories which prove that he does not simply write horror, and that his boundaries go far and wide. Unfortunately, it's hard to find all four of these novellas in a complete collection, due to censorship reasons, but if you can get your hands on all of them in this single volume, I would advise you not to hesitate. Built up from four different stories; "Rage", "The Long Walk", "Roadwork", and "The Running Man", King has expanded on his ability to examine the human mind and the very essence of sanity in "Rage" and "Roadwork", while looking at the future in a new light that seems too possible, almost to the point of terrifying in "The Long Walk" and "The Running Man". The first novella, "Rage", is the one and only reason that it is so difficult to find all four of these stories in a single volume, being the only one that wasn't re-printed and individually published. Banned from bookshelves due to censorship, this story seems to prophesize down to the finest points all the tragic school shootings which have taken place, even though it was written in the 1970's, far before such a thing was hyped up. Based around the main character Charlie Decker, the reader watches as his sanity slowly slips away and drives him to execute teachers at his high school, resulting in taking his math class hostage in a vicious standoff with the police force. Although the story may sound violent, predictable, and inappropriate depending on your opinion, it proves to be more than just violence and mindless bloodshed. As the class is held hostage, both Charlie and his classmates engage in a series of flashbacks and events looking back on life, each learning something about themselves. A very good read, by far, which should be re-printed. If censorship starts here, where does it end? "The Long Walk", which follows "Rage", is definitely the best of these four stories, and one of the two based around futuristic game shows played on violence, simply to entertain the brainwashed masses of America (along with "The Running Man"). The rules of the game shown in the story are simple. One hundred boys from the ages of 14-18 are to begin walking at the U.S/Canada border. With chronometers attached to them, they are to keep their pace above 4 miles an hour at all times. Every time one of them drops under this pace, they are issued a warning. If, after three warnings, the pace drops again, the boy is executed by soldiers armed with high-powered carbine rifles. The suspense and constant wondering of who is going to die next haunts this tale. As the plot thickens and the game starts to enter it's second and third day of straight walking, empathy sets in and the reader feels like they are among the characters, back and feet in pain from the constant work. One thing which is not mentioned about this story much is the Vietnam metaphor, reflecting how the country sends their best young men off to die, only a small number ever to return, and then pushed beyond their sanity if they survive long enough. Various other metaphors exist, but are purely speculative. The third novella, "Roadwork", was excellent, but my least favorite of all. All of the plot revolves around the main characters fall from sanity, just as in "Rage". Barton Dawes, the main character, watches as the government tries to tear his house down to build a freeway extension, his only child dies from a brain tumor, he loses his job, his wife leaves him, and he is left with no options. The story moves too slowly at first, and their isn't much action until the final pages of climax, but the characters are believable and the plot is original, similar to the film "Falling Down". The only real complaint is the fact that the story is extremely long, but only about the last 10 pages, give or take, are used to show the final steps of Barton's sanity disappearing. However, don't let that stop you. After getting into it, the story really grabs you, whether it's loaded with action or not. "The Running Man" finishes off this volume, telling the tale of Ben Richards, a poor man whose little girl is dying of pneumonia, as he enters a game show where he has 30 days to flee bounty hunters across the world, with all of society able to turn him in for money. If he is caught, he is brutally executed to entertain middle class America on television. If he escapes the whole 30 days, there is a billion dollar jackpot waiting for him. The end is completely unpredictable and keeps you in constant suspense. If you're going to compare it to the film, don't bother. The film is good action, but weak compared to this. The story simply grabs you in the first paragraph and doesn't let go, even after the ending. All four stories are excellent, even though the endings of "Rage" and "Roadwork" are a bit predictable. As far as "The Long Walk" and "The Running Man" go, they are some of the best suspense you'll ever read. Looking at modern television, with "survival" game-shows such as "Survivor", "The Mole", and "Bootcamp", along with a million other clones, the reality of game shows based around death seems all too near. Frightening and exhilarating to think about. A must-have for any King fan.
Rating:
Summary: Halfway through- already touched and captivated!
Review: So far I've read Rage and The Long Walk and I'm extremely thirsty for more! Rage is a great book, because it relates to school violence and it might answer some of the WHY questions floating around. The Long Walk is about what the marathons might be in the future. In both books the dialouge is excellent and they give you a haunting feeling of what the present or the future holds. Just read it.
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