The Book: 20th Century Ghosts, by Joe Hill

The Story: This is a collection of short stories by Joe Hill, author of Heart-Shaped Box and Horns. There is a lot going on here: a story about a kid locked in the basement of a lunatic with an old phone that seems to be connected to somewhere otherworldly, a story about an inflatable boy, a story about an autistic boy and his dad, a story about a ghost who haunts a movie theater, and a handful of others that I can’t recall off of the top of my head.

Although Joe Hill is mostly known for his horror novels, his scary stuff, not all the stories here are scary. They all touch on deep emotion and fear just happens to be one of them that he comes back to a lot.

What I Thought: If you guys have been around for a while, you’ve probably picked up on the fact that I love a good short story collection. I love the idea of sitting down and reading a whole story in one gulp. I know that for an author is quite a challenge to get whole characters, whole plot lines shoved into 20 or 30 pages, so honestly I don’t think that there are very many great collections out there. They are mostly hit-and-miss.

Guys, Joe Hill can write the heck out of a short story. I know that he probably gets so, so tired of getting compared to his dad, but Stephen King is the only other guy alive today that can put together short stories like this. Like I said earlier, they are not all scary. There are more scary ones than not, but there are also super heart-touching stories. The collection was put together impeccably and like a good album just flowed well.

The one story that really stuck out to me is the one that the book took its name from. It’s this story about a girl who was killed in the movie theater and then will sit close to a single guy and try to have a “date.” I know it sounds a bit lame, but the way Joe Hill wrote this ghost was so haunting and beautiful that I reread the whole story.

I’m going to be perfectly honest: I read this around Halloween and with NaNo, I’m just getting around to writing my review. It’s hard because I can’t really remember everything about it, but I do remember just a general love for the collection as a whole. Sorry that this is not super detailed, but here’s what I can say: Read this. It’s good stuff.

Conclusion: If you even kind of like short stories, you should check this out. It’s kind of great.

The Book: Trying to Save Piggy Sneed, by John Irving

The Story: This is a collection of short works by John Irving.  The first few are autobiographical and tell about his life growing up.  There are stories from his life growing up on a farm, but mostly the “memoir” section is about his life as a wrestler.  This includes but is not limited to seemingly every wrestling match he ever wrestled in, watched his kids wrestle in or officiated.  The middle section contains a handful of short stories.  In “Interior Space,” neighbors go to war over a tree that sits on their property line. The short story that Garp wrote in The World According to Garp was also included in this collection.  The last section was a couple of pieces John Irving wrote about Dickens that were included as forwards in different books.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this was kind of just a hodge podge- little bit of this, little bit of that.

What I Thought: If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know that I have a think for short stories.  There’s just something about a good short story question that just does it for me.  I love being able to sit down and take in a whole story in one sitting.  When I found this at a thrift store, I was thrilled.  I’ve been in the mood for John Irving and I love finding out more about author’s lives.

I was not disappointed.

My favorite part of this collection was the memoir section.  I read some reviews on Goodreads that talked about how maybe all the wrestling was too much, but I sort of loved it.  My brother wrestled when I was younger so I’ve been to my fair share of wrestling matches and I really got into John Irving’s play-by-plays.  I don’t really know how he remembers absolutely everything, but that in and of itself is pretty impressive. Some of the stories he told about wrestling- especially reffing- had me cracking up. So funny. His experience at the White House?  Also quite funny…

Having read quite a bit of John Irving, I loved knowing the origin of a lot of the themes that he focuses in on in just about every book.

The fiction section was hit and miss for me.  I loved the Garp story (which, for the life of me, I can’t remember the name of) and Interior Space, but looking back over the table of contents, I have to admit that there are a few that I don’t even remember.  Not at all…. and that’s never a good sign.  I’ll say this though: The ones that I liked, I really liked and they really made up for the ones that seemed to fall flat.

Probably what I loved most about this collection was that after each story there were a few words from John Irving about what inspired this piece, how he saw it then, how he sees it now and so on.  I frigging loved this.  Even with the stories that I didn’t enjoy, I loved getting to the end and finding out what the author thought of them.  In several he said that he felt that they were not great and almost embarrassing to publish. For me, this made this collection just that much better.

Conclusion: If you love short stories and/or John Irving, this is for you.  As in any short story collection, you have to take the bad with the good, but it’s worth it.

The Book: Full Dark, No Stars, by Stephen King

Yes, I read yet another short story collection by Stephen King.  It has kind of been my thing lately, huh?  Well this one was new and I couldn’t resist.  We even had some money left over from an Amazon gift card so I got this for free and delivered to my door on the release date.  Bliss.

Anyway, there are four stories here, so I’m going to review them each individually.  Here goes:

1922

The Story: Wilford James lives and works on his farm in Hemingford Home (Constant Readers- ya get the reference?! Squee!).  His wife has just inherited 100 acres from her father.  They connect to the 80 acres that Wilford already farms, so he is excited to be able to farm it and make more money.  His wife, Arlette, has other ideas.  She wants to sell the land to a slaughterhouse that is looking for land in the area, take the money and move the family to the city so she can open a dress shop.  For months and months they bicker about this and neither of them is giving.  Wilford decides that Arlette is never going to relent and will, in fact, ruin their family trying to get her way- so he decides to get his way, no matter the cost.

What I Thought: Spooky as heck.  There is imagery here that really got to me, and if you already have a little rat phobia, probably skip this one.  The thing that was the spookiest though is that when the story starts, Wilford just seems like this normal, down-home guy.  He has a little family, he farms and tends to animals, he knows everyone in his town… just a normal dude.  The whole story is written as a letter from him, confessing to what he’s done, and you just kind of get to witness his decline into total, total madness.  The fact that he brought his son into his madness and kind of destroyed his life too makes it all the more tragic.  This is super dark, even for Stephen King.

Big Driver

The Story: Tess is the author of a semi-sucessful book series about some old lady knitters who are also detectives.  She agrees to do a book talk & signing at a library not too far away.  For the trip home, she takes the librarian’s advice and takes a short cut to avoid the highway.  On a long stretch of deserted road she runs over some debris and her tire blows.  When a giant of a man comes along to help, Tess is thankful but kind of freaked out…. and with good reason.  The guy ends up raping her and leaving her for dead.  Somehow, Tess survives and makes it back to her house.  The next morning, she considers calling the police but starts freaking out and second guessing herself.  After renting a couple movies about revenge, she decides to take care of this herself.

What I Thought: Wow.  I know that some people have issues with how Stephen King portrays women in his books.  If you are one of those people, this may not be the best Stephen King story for you.  The rape scene and all the stuff surrounding it are seriously twisted.  I don’t generally get upset about scenes like this in books, but for some reason this just seemed so harsh that it was almost hard to read.  As the story unravels and Tess starts plotting, then going through with her revenge, I seriously found myself on the edge of my seat.  Super suspenseful and perfectly paced.  This would make a great movie.

Fair Extension

The Story: Streeter is dying of cancer.  He’s getting weak.  He can’t eat.  He’s doing chemo and losing his hair.  One day, he’s driving home and sees a guy at a roadside stand with a sign up that says “Fair Extension.”  Wondering what it is, Streeter stops.  There he meets George Elvid (move some letters around and you’ll see where this is going).  Elvid tells him that he is in the business of selling extensions, including life extensions- for the right price.  Streeter agrees to mail him 15% of his earnings for the rest of his life and to bring him something from the house of someone he hates.  Strangely enough, the person he hates is his best friend who seems to have it all going for him.  Within days his cancer is not showing up on scans.  He’s considered a medical miracle.  Not only does he get his life back, he also gets to watch the life of his best friend start to slowly unravel.

What I Thought: This one didn’t do it for me.  I could tell that there was supposed to be a touch of humor involved here, but I just thought it fell flat.  Streeter didn’t really resonate with me at all.  I thought that he was wimpy and selfish and just kind of boring.  I thought that the whole story was just kind of cheesy.  I don’t know.  It was short though- maybe only 30 pages or so.  The rest of the stories in this collection are really dark and creepy, so maybe this was just thrown in to lighten things up, but for me it just seemed boring.

A Good Marriage

The Story: Darcy is home alone while her husband Bob is out on business.  On a quest for batteries for the remote, she heads to the garage.  While she’s looking for batteries she finds something quite a bit more disturbing:  evidence that her husband is a serial killer.

What I Thought: I loved this.  Absolutely classic Stephen King.  It just brings to mind all these questions:  how did she not know!?  Stephen King talks about in the afterword that where he got the idea for this was from the BTK killer.  When he was caught, his wife was totally shocked.  He had been killing for years and she had no idea.  People speculated that she knew but just didn’t want to admit it, but what if she really didn’t?  And if she had found out before the police, what would she have done?  Darcy is put in just that situation and watching her wiggle out of it was suspenseful and wonderful.  I sort of wish that he would have fleshed this out into a full length novel.  Another one that would make a great movie.

Overall Thoughts: I think that this was a great collection overall.  There are little pieces and thoughts and ideas that tie all four stories together.  It’s kind of this idea of “what are you going to do when the things that you know go up in smoke?”  While I didn’t love Fair Extension, I see how it fits into that mold and I think that it really did break up some pretty hard-to-stomach stories. There are great little tidbits from Stephen King’s other novels and stories mixed in for all the Constant Readers, which is way fun.  At one point someone even says, “long days and pleasant nights.”  Love it \

Conclusion: While I loved this, if you haven’t read Stephen King, don’t start here.  This is good, but it’s not the best.  Four Past Midnight and Different Seasons are both set up the same way:  four novellas in one fat book, and I think that they are both probably better collections than this one.  If you have read Stephen King before though and know already that he’s for you, this is good stuff.  Don’t miss it.

Just wanted to let you know about a few that I thought were pretty great.

Of course, Stephen King is a gimme.  He has several collections of short stories and the short story is something that he’s kind of passionate about.  A lot of times when people say that they haven’t read Stephen King because they’re just not sure about him, I recommend a short story collection so that they can get a taste of his writing without a commitment to a 1000 page book.  Some of my favorites collections by him are Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Night Shift, Everything’s Eventual, and Four Past Midnight.  All of his are good stuff though and if you are new to him or to short stories, this would probably be a good place to start.

Another classic is Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger.  I read this several years ago and thought it was good but didn’t really realize how much it impacted me.  There are stories here that come back to me over and over and over.  They are kind of these perfect, model short stories.  They give you a glimpse of a life while blurring some edges and telling a full story.  The first one, Perfect Day for Banafish, really is one of the best short stories I’ve ever read.  So, so good.

I was first introduced to Elliot Perlman though Seven Types of Ambiguity and it was pretty much love at first sight.  I thought that mammoth of a book was great and when I found out that he also had a short story collection, I was totally sold.  The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming is a collection of stories that from the descriptions just sound totally quirky, but end up having real heart behind them.  They are normal people in semi-normal situations and he just takes these ordinary lives and writes about them in a beautiful, poignant way.  For some of the stories, that really really works.  Some of them, not so much.  Worth reading the full collection though, mostly because I like what he’s trying to say.

I started The Whole Story and Other Stories by Ali Smith in the bookstore, and in a very uncharacteristic move, walked straight to the check-out and bought it.  I liked it that much.  It’s a skinny little book but it is kind of beautiful and I really loved the stories.  The first one, The Universal Story, will stop you in your tracks. So frigging good.  All of them are good, but for me, this one was worth buying the collection for.  So, so good.

I thought that The Memory Keeper’s Daughter was only so-so, but I thought that The Secrets of a Fire King by Kim Edwards was pretty great.  What struck me about this collection and what I remember most is how each story was its own deal, but that similar themes kept popping up in one story after the other.  There was a little spark every time there was this feeling of “recognition” and I think that it made the collection so much more powerful as a whole.  That flow took some mediocre stories and bumped them up a notch.  There were a few great stories here, but not all of them.  I still enjoyed it enough to include it on this little list, so that should say something, right? Right.

I just sat here and tried to brainstorm a couple more but came up with some stuff that’s good but not great, and I don’t want you to start off on the wrong foot if short stories are something new for you.  Give one of these collections a go and let me know what you think.  Anyone have any amazing recommendations that I’ve missed here?  Let me know!

The Book: A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, by Robert Olen Butler

The Story: After reading a couple of other books recently about the Vietnam War, I thought that this would really be an interesting read.

This is one of those short story collections where the stories are not connected by characters or plotline, but really tie together well.  Nearly every story is about Vietnamese refugees who ended up in America either during or after the war in Vietnam.  Most of them have relocated to cities around New Orleans and are basically trying to get into the groove of American life.

There are stories here from men, women, young, old, the whole gambit.  They are dealing with everything from fitting Vietnamese mythology into their new American lives to being a prostitute (mostly to American vets) in a seedy bar to stalking their wife’s lover.  There really are a lot of different perspectives presented here, but, like I said, they all kind of tie together.

What I Thought: Like I’ve told you guys, I kind of have a soft spot in my heart for short story collections.  If they are done well, I think that they can really be incredible.

This one was done well.

It is a skinny little book- I think it was just at 250 pages or so- with 15 individual stories that really pack a punch.

Most of these stories really got to me.  I loved “Mid-Autumn” where a mother-to-be is speaking to her unborn baby and “Crickets” where a Vietnamese dad is trying to entertain his super-Americanized kids with games they used to play.  ”Mr. Green” and “Relic” really spoke to me too.  Both of these kind of showed the awkward but do-able intertwining of Vietnamese culture and American culture.

The longest story in the book, by far, was called “The American Couple.”  While most of the stories were just 10 or so pages, this one was around 80.  It was probably my least favorite in the collection, but I think that a lot of that has to do with the fact that it really went away from this bond that the other stories had.  Instead of being about Vietnamese refugees, it was about American vets that meet while they are on vacation.  Huh?  I just didn’t think that this one hit any nerves and I just wanted to get it over with so I could get back to the good stories.

This book won the Pulitzer in 1993, so I guess I’m not the only one who liked it.  Being born after the Vietnam war and going through regular old stop-at-the-Civil-War public school history classes, I’ve been fairly unfamiliar with this time period my whole life.   In reading more about it, I’ve just learned so much and am so grateful for books like this.

Conclusion: Read this.  It is really good stuff.  It’s short and won’t take you very much time to get through.  It’s worth it for sure.

The Book: Ford County, by John Grisham

The Story: This is a series of short stories all set in Ford County- a really rural area of Mississippi.

Some of the stories are funny (the first story, “Blood Drive” made me laugh out loud), some are deeply touching (the last story, “Funny Boy” was a tear jerker), and most just talk about some nugget of Southern life.

There isn’t a real tie between the stories, besides the fact that they take place in the same county.  Several of the books have lawyers or criminals as the main character, which is right up John Grisham’s alley.

What I Thought: I picked this one up because I kind of have a thing for short stories.  I like the idea of a compact story that I can read in a short sitting.  I also think that a lot of short stories are kind of crap.  I hate when they just seem like one chapter plucked out of a whole book.  What I’m saying is this: I’ve read a lot of short stories and I can tell good from bad.  These were good.

Most of the stories were around 40 or 50 pages and John Grisham managed to really get some great plot and character development packed into that many pages and it was completely impressive.  I loved the setting.  While it didn’t feel completely “modern,”  it did feel real and I found myself picturing the scenes happening in the late 50’s or early 60’s.  Not sure if this is what he intended at all, but that’s where it took me most of the time.

The other thing that struck me about this collection is that, while there were a couple that stuck with me more than others, there were no duds.  I didn’t skim one page and each story really sat with me.

I don’t know if these are story-lines that  didn’t work out as full novels, but I kept thinking that they would work as something larger.  Don’t know if there are any plans there, but I’d be open to read “expanded” versions of almost all of these.

Conclusion: Don’t write this off just because it is John Grisham.  I know that he’s fairly lame and overdone, but this story collection is a whole different thing.  He did a good thing here and I’d recommend it to anyone.