Rita Hayworth and Shawshank redemption
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption is a novella by Stephen King from his 1982 collection Different Seasons, subtitled Hope Springs Eternal. The novella has also been published as a standalone book. The story is entirely told by the character Red, in a narrative he claims to have been writing from September 1975 to January 1976, with an additional chapter added in spring 1977.
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- "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" is one of my favourite Stephen King short stories (From "Different Seasons"). I actually read it after watching the film (which is just amazing) and still ended up liking the short story more than the film. I would highly recommend it to just about anyone.
- Have Space Suit Will Travel (Heinlein)
Stranger in a Strange Land (Heinlein)
Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (one story in the book "Different Seasons" by Stephen King)
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck)
The Martian Chronicles (Bradbury)
Roadside Picnic (Strugatsky)
Frankenstein (Shelley)
Brave New World (Huxley)
Farenheit 451 (Heinlein)
Never Cry Wolf (Mowatt)
A Whale for the Killing (Mowatt)
The Machine Stops (Forster)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad)
Starship Troopers (Heinlein)
The Jungle Book (Kipling)
Lost in the Barrens (Mowatt)
The Republic (Plato)
Rendezvous with Rama (Clarke)
Ringworld (Niven)
The Stainless Steel Rat (Harrison)
The Hobbit (Tolkien)
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Stevenson)
The Odyssey (Homer)
The Man who Would be King (Kipling)
The Pearl (Steinbeck)
Thus Spake Zarathustra (Nietzsche)
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Dick)
A Scanner Darkly (Dick)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams)
Dracula (Stoker)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee)
The Count of Monte Cristo (Dumas)
Romeo and Juliet (Shakespeare)
The Wind in the Willows (Grahame)
A Christmas Carol (Dickens)
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass (Carroll)
Watership Down (Adams)
Gulliver's Travels (Swift)
Animal Farm (Orwell)
- Naw, King's novella "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" was totally solid in its own right before the movie. Same with "The Body" and its earlier subsequent "Stand By Me". Both of those from "Different Seasons".
- Anything from Salinger. Go beyond Catcher in the Rye. Nine Stories; Raise High the Roofbeam, Carpenters; Franny and Zooey.
Hemingway's short fiction really kicked off a lot of reading for me. Men Without Women is a nice little collection.
A couple others to go deeper on ... Stephen Kind and Roald Dahl. King has many incredible novelas: The Body (Stand By Me); Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (Shawshank Redemption); Hearts in Atlantis. Likewise, Dahl, known more for his children's books wrote some adult fiction, short stories.
I think it is less about the book and more about when in your life you pick it up.
- The translations of the title (Finnish, Greek, others?) referencing Rita Hayworth make more sense if you know the title of Stephen King's novella the movie was based on (Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption).
