I Am Legend

Let's set aside "I Am Legend" itself, for the moment. Having a well earned reputation as a classic, you should read it. I'm here to persuade you to stick around for the "other stories" at the book. My edition had 10 stories after "I Am Legend" and I'm not going to pretend all were amazing. Like any other short story collection, some were just ok and the value of some was tied to taste. Here are three that made me vow to read more Matheson.

-"Dance of the Dead" - I once had a nightmare where my grandfather had died and we were preparing him for burial in a DIY funeral parlor in the mall. We had finished preparing the body when it began to reanimate. I once tried to write the story and it came out poorly. ...and then I read "Dance of the Dead" and there is a scene that describes the reanimation that I had seen in my nightmare so perfectly that I got goosebumps. Unless you've had the experience of someone else capturing your imaginings more perfectly than you could yourself, I don't know that I can adequately describe it. I was at once reliving the emotions of the nightmare and joyous at the craft of the story. I knew that I would never be able to write my own thoughts so skillfully and also that it could be done (and maybe learned).

-"Mad House" and "Person to Person" - both stories that build a character's insanity like a beautiful layer cake.