Daren
Added to listFiction Short Story Ieswith 233 books.
Short fiction - categorised as dark fiction, but I am not so sure.
A guys dog dies, and this story is him telling his friends a story about how it lost it's leg in a fight with another dog while he was fishing for catfish at night. This other dog was thought to be an urban myth, but it was real enough when it attacked Dave and his dog after it ate his rotting chicken liver baits. But was it just a dog, or was it more?
A story about a story. It was ok, but didn't send me out looking for more by this author.
Free on TOR.com (now Reactormag.com).
2.5 stars
Short fiction - categorised as dark fiction, but I am not so sure.
A guys dog dies, and this story is him telling his friends a story about how it lost it's leg in a fight with another dog while he was fishing for catfish at night. This other dog was thought to be an urban myth, but it was real enough when it attacked Dave and his dog after it ate his rotting chicken liver baits. But was it just a dog, or was it more?
A story about a story. It was ok, but didn't send me out looking for more by this author.
Free on TOR.com (now Reactormag.com).
2.5 stars
Added to listIndonesiawith 89 books.
Added to listMyanmarwith 76 books.
I am probably guilty of not having read more of Maugham's work - I have read only one other - a novella called Up at the Villa, which I liked well enough.
This collection of short stories all take place in the British colonies of Malaya, Burma (now Myanmar), Kuching (now Malaysian Borneo), Singapore, Indonesia, or on the voyage to or from these places to Britain. While this collection was published in this form in 1993, the stories are presumably much older and appear to be set in the 1930's.
Maugham paints a detailed picture of life in the outposts of the empire, but more they capture the aspects of human nature and the way of life in these places. Particularly it shows the way behaviour's differ in the colonies from the homeland, and how the acceptability of actions and behaviour's differ also.
Footprints in the Jungle - told in the first person, a newcomer to Tanah Merah (in Malaya) meets the locals, and learns the back story of a planter and his wife - that the wife had a previous marriage where her husband was brutally murdered in the jungle under strange circumstances.
Mabel - A very short story about a woman on her way from Britain to join her fiancé after several years apart, although both harbour fears that their partners will have changed.
P. & O. - Set on the P&O liner returning to Britain, Mrs Hamlyn and Mr Gallagher are the main characters who both have different reasons for returning home, and their stories are told during the journey.
The Door of Opportunity - Anne and her husband Alban have just landed in London, having departed from Malaya where Alban was a District Officer in fictional Sondurah. The reason for their departure is the heart or this story and examines Alban's character and behaviour during an uprising in his district.
The Buried Talent - When Convers arrives in Penang on route to his new job in Bangkok he receives a note from a women from the past who was close friend of his girlfriend from long ago, who hopes to meet up with him. This he does and they recount the story of Convers' girlfriend and what happened to her.
Before the Party - Set in the UK, a family about to attend a memorial for Millicent's husband, who died in Malaysian Borneo, where he was the Resident at Kuala Solor (a fictional town). Millicent's sister, mother and father are the only characters in this story and they tease out the story of Harold's death, but end up wishing they had not!
Mr. Know-All - Another ocean liner-set story, in this case told in the first person by a man returning home whose cabin-mate is known on the ship a Mr. Know-all, not well liked as he is a self professed expert at all things. Over the authenticity of pearls, he ends in an argument.
Neil MacAdam - A young Scotsman (Neil) arrives to assist a scientist researching insects and is invited to life with the scientist and his wife. When Neil hears rumours being spread about the wife he defends her, but later discovers that he may have been on the wrong side of the argument and if forced to take steps to extract himself.
The End of the Flight - A new arrival accepts a bed at the Resident's bungalow, and despite being very tired and just wanting to go to sleep is told a story about the last man who stayed with the Resident!
The Force of Circumstance - Newly married and returning to a post he has held for the previous 10 years Guy and Doris are settling into life in a far-flung corner of the empire (Sembulu in Indonesian Kalimantan) when Doris notices some light coloured children in the Kampang. There is also a young Indonesian woman hanging about with a young baby. Finding out about Guy's history doesn't go down so well with Doris.
All of these stories are depicted with the background settings fully intact. With tennis rackets, Gin Pahits and Singapore Slings, an administrators overview and natives needing to be kept in line.
I have heard from others than Maugham's short stories are more favourable than his longer works, but I am still game to try a longer novel if they come close to the amusement value of these stories as I enjoyed these short stories more than I might have expected.
4 stars.
I am probably guilty of not having read more of Maugham's work - I have read only one other - a novella called Up at the Villa, which I liked well enough.
This collection of short stories all take place in the British colonies of Malaya, Burma (now Myanmar), Kuching (now Malaysian Borneo), Singapore, Indonesia, or on the voyage to or from these places to Britain. While this collection was published in this form in 1993, the stories are presumably much older and appear to be set in the 1930's.
Maugham paints a detailed picture of life in the outposts of the empire, but more they capture the aspects of human nature and the way of life in these places. Particularly it shows the way behaviour's differ in the colonies from the homeland, and how the acceptability of actions and behaviour's differ also.
Footprints in the Jungle - told in the first person, a newcomer to Tanah Merah (in Malaya) meets the locals, and learns the back story of a planter and his wife - that the wife had a previous marriage where her husband was brutally murdered in the jungle under strange circumstances.
Mabel - A very short story about a woman on her way from Britain to join her fiancé after several years apart, although both harbour fears that their partners will have changed.
P. & O. - Set on the P&O liner returning to Britain, Mrs Hamlyn and Mr Gallagher are the main characters who both have different reasons for returning home, and their stories are told during the journey.
The Door of Opportunity - Anne and her husband Alban have just landed in London, having departed from Malaya where Alban was a District Officer in fictional Sondurah. The reason for their departure is the heart or this story and examines Alban's character and behaviour during an uprising in his district.
The Buried Talent - When Convers arrives in Penang on route to his new job in Bangkok he receives a note from a women from the past who was close friend of his girlfriend from long ago, who hopes to meet up with him. This he does and they recount the story of Convers' girlfriend and what happened to her.
Before the Party - Set in the UK, a family about to attend a memorial for Millicent's husband, who died in Malaysian Borneo, where he was the Resident at Kuala Solor (a fictional town). Millicent's sister, mother and father are the only characters in this story and they tease out the story of Harold's death, but end up wishing they had not!
Mr. Know-All - Another ocean liner-set story, in this case told in the first person by a man returning home whose cabin-mate is known on the ship a Mr. Know-all, not well liked as he is a self professed expert at all things. Over the authenticity of pearls, he ends in an argument.
Neil MacAdam - A young Scotsman (Neil) arrives to assist a scientist researching insects and is invited to life with the scientist and his wife. When Neil hears rumours being spread about the wife he defends her, but later discovers that he may have been on the wrong side of the argument and if forced to take steps to extract himself.
The End of the Flight - A new arrival accepts a bed at the Resident's bungalow, and despite being very tired and just wanting to go to sleep is told a story about the last man who stayed with the Resident!
The Force of Circumstance - Newly married and returning to a post he has held for the previous 10 years Guy and Doris are settling into life in a far-flung corner of the empire (Sembulu in Indonesian Kalimantan) when Doris notices some light coloured children in the Kampang. There is also a young Indonesian woman hanging about with a young baby. Finding out about Guy's history doesn't go down so well with Doris.
All of these stories are depicted with the background settings fully intact. With tennis rackets, Gin Pahits and Singapore Slings, an administrators overview and natives needing to be kept in line.
I have heard from others than Maugham's short stories are more favourable than his longer works, but I am still game to try a longer novel if they come close to the amusement value of these stories as I enjoyed these short stories more than I might have expected.
4 stars.
Added to listGreecewith 75 books.
Added to listUsawith 322 books.
Added to listFrancewith 119 books.
The form of this novel is a series of interconnected short stories from three generations of an Afghan family, plus some bystanders! Separated at a young age brother and sister Abdullah and Pari go on to live very different lives, and their stories are told in both their own sections of the book and those of others.
Each of the stories have overlapping timelines, flashbacks and some non-linear sections. They vary slightly within their format for each character, but are largely able to be followed as one section leads to the next. The author does have some fun with starting a section vague and not sharing who the character is for the first few pages.
Based initially in Afghanistan, the story is sad and often the circumstances grim. Later the story moves to other settings, Paris, the Greek island of Tinos and San Francisco.
Hosseini is a great storyteller, but the multiple point of view format didn't work as well as the dual narrative in his earlier books. It was still an enjoyable enough read, but on the basis it was just less satisfying that his others, this sits at 3.5 stars.
The form of this novel is a series of interconnected short stories from three generations of an Afghan family, plus some bystanders! Separated at a young age brother and sister Abdullah and Pari go on to live very different lives, and their stories are told in both their own sections of the book and those of others.
Each of the stories have overlapping timelines, flashbacks and some non-linear sections. They vary slightly within their format for each character, but are largely able to be followed as one section leads to the next. The author does have some fun with starting a section vague and not sharing who the character is for the first few pages.
Based initially in Afghanistan, the story is sad and often the circumstances grim. Later the story moves to other settings, Paris, the Greek island of Tinos and San Francisco.
Hosseini is a great storyteller, but the multiple point of view format didn't work as well as the dual narrative in his earlier books. It was still an enjoyable enough read, but on the basis it was just less satisfying that his others, this sits at 3.5 stars.
Idriess states in his author's note "For long I have wanted to write whatever comes into my head. And here it is. I have written on man, woman, insect and diprotodon, stories, incidents, articles....". Published in 1954 it focuses on stories from Western Australia's north, but does dip briefly in to New Guinea.
I don't think I am being unfair or inaccurate when I say this book is a bit of a muddle - less organised and less structured than this authors other works. I found the fragmentation disengaging, where normally this author is very engaging. It felt clearly like he had lots of fragments of stories he couldn't work into real pieces and perhaps that had been edited from other works as they weren't quite right. There were pages in here with only semi-related stories each of a paragraph, that didn't carry the narrative for me. Seldom are eh chapters directly related, so really this is a collection of short stories, non-fiction of course.
There were also other more focused chapters which did measure up to Idriess's other works, so it is not that this book has nothing to offer, but if this was your first book by this author, it may not encourage you back.
As usual it outlines quirks in Aboriginal culture, introduces dozens of real characters, Aboriginal a white living and working in remote desert country, their experiences, some stories and plenty of oddities. There ae numerous pages of photographs (black and white) of average quality for the era, mostly illustrating the story but not necessarily directly.
Three stars.
Idriess states in his author's note "For long I have wanted to write whatever comes into my head. And here it is. I have written on man, woman, insect and diprotodon, stories, incidents, articles....". Published in 1954 it focuses on stories from Western Australia's north, but does dip briefly in to New Guinea.
I don't think I am being unfair or inaccurate when I say this book is a bit of a muddle - less organised and less structured than this authors other works. I found the fragmentation disengaging, where normally this author is very engaging. It felt clearly like he had lots of fragments of stories he couldn't work into real pieces and perhaps that had been edited from other works as they weren't quite right. There were pages in here with only semi-related stories each of a paragraph, that didn't carry the narrative for me. Seldom are eh chapters directly related, so really this is a collection of short stories, non-fiction of course.
There were also other more focused chapters which did measure up to Idriess's other works, so it is not that this book has nothing to offer, but if this was your first book by this author, it may not encourage you back.
As usual it outlines quirks in Aboriginal culture, introduces dozens of real characters, Aboriginal a white living and working in remote desert country, their experiences, some stories and plenty of oddities. There ae numerous pages of photographs (black and white) of average quality for the era, mostly illustrating the story but not necessarily directly.
Three stars.
A longer than usual novel from Mickey Spillane - a stand alone story, published in 1972. In 1964 Spillane published a short story "The Bastard Bannerman", contained within a slender book with two novella called Return of the Hood. This is a longer version of that story where 'Cat Cay Bannerman' becomes 'Dogeron Kelly', obviously referred to as 'Dog'. Both were bastards and had come home to deal with family business. There were a lot of similarities, but this novel was a lot more complex.
It felt like Spillane shoehorned a few extra storylines in to this one, padding it out to over 300 pages. He does have a good thing going where he gives Dogeron a backstory without the actual detail, and doesn't share the details until right at the end which was pretty successful. It is also the most sexually explicit of the Spillane stories I have read, there is plenty of sex and a lot of inner monologue about sex (the inner monologues felt a bit of a lazy information dumping writing technique to be honest).
I also can't not mention the cover Spillane chose for this book - his wife (or wife at the time, who knows) nude and reclining with a leg in the air, and the awful title (which has no practical link with the story other than there is a film set involved) which combine to make this book one that can't be read in public.
Plenty of tough guy action, fighting, shooting etc etc, entertaining enough at a basic level. This achieved the usual 3 stars I end up with for most Spillane works!
3 stars.
A longer than usual novel from Mickey Spillane - a stand alone story, published in 1972. In 1964 Spillane published a short story "The Bastard Bannerman", contained within a slender book with two novella called Return of the Hood. This is a longer version of that story where 'Cat Cay Bannerman' becomes 'Dogeron Kelly', obviously referred to as 'Dog'. Both were bastards and had come home to deal with family business. There were a lot of similarities, but this novel was a lot more complex.
It felt like Spillane shoehorned a few extra storylines in to this one, padding it out to over 300 pages. He does have a good thing going where he gives Dogeron a backstory without the actual detail, and doesn't share the details until right at the end which was pretty successful. It is also the most sexually explicit of the Spillane stories I have read, there is plenty of sex and a lot of inner monologue about sex (the inner monologues felt a bit of a lazy information dumping writing technique to be honest).
I also can't not mention the cover Spillane chose for this book - his wife (or wife at the time, who knows) nude and reclining with a leg in the air, and the awful title (which has no practical link with the story other than there is a film set involved) which combine to make this book one that can't be read in public.
Plenty of tough guy action, fighting, shooting etc etc, entertaining enough at a basic level. This achieved the usual 3 stars I end up with for most Spillane works!
3 stars.
Having read Simon Winchester's ‘Pacific' I had expected this book to follow a similar format, but it doesn't. Pacific was a series on unconnected stories from locations in the Pacific Ocean. This book does contain various stories from locations within the Atlantic, but it is far more heavily invested in an overall narrative (or more accurately several narratives).
For a framework Winchester has divided the book into sections paralleling the 7 stages of man, as listed in Shakespeare's As You Like It which seems somewhat arbitrary, but does sort of work as the life of an ocean - starting with ancient history and discovery and ended with environmental change and what mankind is doing to the ocean.
Winchester uses plenty of sources in history and science, but also manages to include in his narrative plenty of travels - whether that this the explorers of old or drawing from his own travels from the 1960s until now. He also writes of literary figures and their inspiration from and writing about the Atlantic, stories of overfishing and ocean management, pollution and climate change. Naval battles, shipwrecks, plate tectonics and vulcanology,
I certainly didn't read this book quickly. I found a couple of sections at a time was enough before I needed something else - reading 3 books between starting and finishing Winchester's offering. It isn't that it wasn't interesting and appealing, or even overly long at under 500 pages, it was just that it was a slow read. Even the action sections were slow, but then, he had a long history to cover.
There are a couple of decent maps, lots of small photographs and drawings which were ok, but don't make up for the lack of colour plates.
4 stars
Having read Simon Winchester's ‘Pacific' I had expected this book to follow a similar format, but it doesn't. Pacific was a series on unconnected stories from locations in the Pacific Ocean. This book does contain various stories from locations within the Atlantic, but it is far more heavily invested in an overall narrative (or more accurately several narratives).
For a framework Winchester has divided the book into sections paralleling the 7 stages of man, as listed in Shakespeare's As You Like It which seems somewhat arbitrary, but does sort of work as the life of an ocean - starting with ancient history and discovery and ended with environmental change and what mankind is doing to the ocean.
Winchester uses plenty of sources in history and science, but also manages to include in his narrative plenty of travels - whether that this the explorers of old or drawing from his own travels from the 1960s until now. He also writes of literary figures and their inspiration from and writing about the Atlantic, stories of overfishing and ocean management, pollution and climate change. Naval battles, shipwrecks, plate tectonics and vulcanology,
I certainly didn't read this book quickly. I found a couple of sections at a time was enough before I needed something else - reading 3 books between starting and finishing Winchester's offering. It isn't that it wasn't interesting and appealing, or even overly long at under 500 pages, it was just that it was a slow read. Even the action sections were slow, but then, he had a long history to cover.
There are a couple of decent maps, lots of small photographs and drawings which were ok, but don't make up for the lack of colour plates.
4 stars
The Body in the River, Pitlochry, January 1978
A three page story, sent out with an author's newsletter - a part of Aaronovich's Rivers of London series, although this is the only one I have read. Thanks to Maureen for sharing the temporary link: https://mailchi.mp/3f573405ff0d/winte...Set in Pitlochry, Scotland-a man wakes up from a coma after a near drowning in a river. Initially, he says he fell in, but soon admits he waded in to help another. The narrative features an interview between this man interviewed by a Detective Chief Inspector from the Metropolitan Police.Too short for more, or spoilers!3 stars
A three page story, sent out with an author's newsletter - a part of Aaronovich's Rivers of London series, although this is the only one I have read. Thanks to Maureen for sharing the temporary link: https://mailchi.mp/3f573405ff0d/winte...Set in Pitlochry, Scotland-a man wakes up from a coma after a near drowning in a river. Initially, he says he fell in, but soon admits he waded in to help another. The narrative features an interview between this man interviewed by a Detective Chief Inspector from the Metropolitan Police.Too short for more, or spoilers!3 stars
Having read Simon Winchester's 'Pacific' I had expected this book to follow a similar format, but it doesn't. Pacific was a series on unconnected stories from locations in the Pacific Ocean. This book does contain various stories from locations within the Atlantic, but it is far more heavily invested in an overall narrative (or more accurately several narratives).
For a framework Winchester has divided the book into sections paralleling the 7 stages of man, as listed in Shakespeare's As You Like It which seems somewhat arbitrary, but does sort of work as the life of an ocean - starting with ancient history and discovery and ended with environmental change and what mankind is doing to the ocean.
Winchester uses plenty of sources in history and science, but also manages to include in his narrative plenty of travels - whether that this the explorers of old or drawing from his own travels from the 1960s until now. He also writes of literary figures and their inspiration from and writing about the Atlantic, stories of overfishing and ocean management, pollution and climate change. Naval battles, shipwrecks, plate tectonics and vulcanology,
I certainly didn't read this book quickly. I found a couple of sections at a time was enough before I needed something else - reading 3 books between starting and finishing Winchester's offering. It isn't that it wasn't interesting and appealing, or even overly long at under 500 pages, it was just that it was a slow read. Even the action sections were slow, but then, he had a long history to cover.
There are a couple of decent maps, lots of small photographs and drawings which were ok, but don't make up for the lack of colour plates.
4 stars
Having read Simon Winchester's 'Pacific' I had expected this book to follow a similar format, but it doesn't. Pacific was a series on unconnected stories from locations in the Pacific Ocean. This book does contain various stories from locations within the Atlantic, but it is far more heavily invested in an overall narrative (or more accurately several narratives).
For a framework Winchester has divided the book into sections paralleling the 7 stages of man, as listed in Shakespeare's As You Like It which seems somewhat arbitrary, but does sort of work as the life of an ocean - starting with ancient history and discovery and ended with environmental change and what mankind is doing to the ocean.
Winchester uses plenty of sources in history and science, but also manages to include in his narrative plenty of travels - whether that this the explorers of old or drawing from his own travels from the 1960s until now. He also writes of literary figures and their inspiration from and writing about the Atlantic, stories of overfishing and ocean management, pollution and climate change. Naval battles, shipwrecks, plate tectonics and vulcanology,
I certainly didn't read this book quickly. I found a couple of sections at a time was enough before I needed something else - reading 3 books between starting and finishing Winchester's offering. It isn't that it wasn't interesting and appealing, or even overly long at under 500 pages, it was just that it was a slow read. Even the action sections were slow, but then, he had a long history to cover.
There are a couple of decent maps, lots of small photographs and drawings which were ok, but don't make up for the lack of colour plates.
4 stars
