Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption - I wonder if more people seen the movie than read the book? The movie I'd guess. I've seen the movie too, and this would be my second time reading the novella. There are some stark differences between them, but for the most part the story is the same. Red, played by Morgan Freeman, is one of those differences, in color more than anything else. Freeman did such a good job in the role. For the life of me, while reading, I could not separate his voice from the narration. Red tells how Andy Dufresne came to the prison, how they became unlikely friends, and how Andy suffered along the way. 
 "In all my years at Shawshank Prison, there have been less than ten men whom I believed when they told me they were innocent. Andy Dufresne was one of them..." 
 The beginning and middle of this novella are superb, but it's the ending that makes the story exceptional. The movie was also great, but I'll say the book is better, because there would be no movie without the book. 
 Apt Pupil - Who says King didn't include a horror story in Different Seasons? That was my thought as I finished the last page of Apt Pupil. I knew the story, or so I had thought. Todd Bowmen is certainly tough to identify with, but compared to the old man who could possibly have murdered thousands! Who do I like here? Neither mattered, it was the story I rooted for. A third of the way into it, I was perplexed in wondering what possible path it could take to the end. Well, it surprised me with its darkness. 
 The Body - The subtitle is "Fall from Innocence". That could be the perfect title for this multi-emotional tale about four, 12 year old friends and their journey, taken to see the body of a dead boy. That sounds so morbid, and so Stephen King. It is, sort of. At some point, early on, that morbidity takes a backseat in your mind. It did for me anyway (a second time), because I got lost in the words of Gordie, who narrates the story of many years past-tense. The bond these four friends share seems inseparable, their weekend together something that will never be forgotten. There is nostalgia here in looking back at childhood, and I realized there is also sadness because things never remain as they once were. 
 There is so much I could say about this story. Reading it a second time has secured it as one of my favorites. Stephen King places himself within many of his characters (how could he not?), but is there one closer to himself than Gordie? At times it seemed like looking through a window. 
 When night came, and the boys lay down in the woods to sleep, I caught a glimpse of the Castle Rock I remember from It, Pet Sematary and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Before they're restless night out there alone, there were these words that also resonated with me: 
 "There's something horrible and fascinating about the way dark comes to the woods, its coming unsoftened by headlights or streetlights or houselights or neon. It comes with no mother's voices, calling their kids to leave off and come on in now, to herald it." 
 The novella is full of gorgeous and haunted lines like that. 
 The Breathing Method - The final installment is like a slow train. I kept thinking, "This cannot last. This is King after all." It's a story within a story, each of about equal length. I enjoyed both, but part two is really the point of it all, and maybe the whole thing would benefit by being shorter. The payoff was just alright. 
 In the Afterword, King talks about the "type-casting" early in his career, why novellas can be such a conundrum for writers, and how Different Seasons came together as a novel. He said that The Breathing Method is really the only straight up horror story, but elements of horror can be found in each of these four tales. I think that without those elements, something big would be missing. 
 After this reread, I decided to up my initial rating from a four to a five. I'd previously only read 2 of the 4, so I had no business rating it before now. I have this urge to rank them in order of my favorite, but isn't it obvious?