What Are You Reading?
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I want to hear your thoughts on this later. I think it's something I'd like to read.
I'll download it soon . . . I came across this review on Amazon. I don't really care for reviews and avoid them, but this one held my attention. I found it enjoyable and not snooty.
By Brendan Moody Vine Voice on April 24, 2015
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product
It would be trite, but maybe not inaccurate, to suggest that the scope of Shirley Jackson's posthumous short fiction career is an irony worth of the author herself. Only one collection, The Lottery, with its famous title story and 24 others, appeared during her lifetime. Shortly after her death her husband put together a second collection, featuring fourteen uncollected or unpublished stories, an unfinished novel, and miscellaneous other works. In the 1990s two of her children assembled another, with 54 stories. And now, some 50 years after Jackson's premature death, here is Let Me Tell You, which features not only 30 more stories but also 26 essays, and even a few cartoons. Cynics might imagine that by now Jackson's heirs are scraping the bottom of the barrel, but the wonderful thing is that they aren't. The best of the stories here are comparable with her finest previously-published work, and there's virtually nothing that feels like it didn't deserve to be brought into the public eye. For devotees of Jackson, this is a must-read, and even those unfamiliar with her work will be able to discover what the fuss is all about.
Jackson's dual writerly identity-- horrific or unsettling fiction on one hand and comic sketches about family life on the other, Robert Aickman vs. Erma Bombeck-- may seem peculiar, but they're linked by a keen sense of the absurdities of human behavior and the fragility of our notions of order. She might make an angry dinner table conversation a subject of fun or a stomach-twisting exercise in social unease, but the emotional dynamics at its heart are the same in both cases. The concept of one of the finest stories here, "Mrs. Spencer and the Oberons," could easily have been used for a humor piece about the comeuppance of an overly fastidious housewife, but instead her emotional life is treated seriously, and the idea becomes the basis for one of those eerie, harrowing Jackson tales in which ordinary events take on an air of supernatural menace.
That story and several others have been published in recent years in major contemporary short fiction outlets. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the most substantial of the new stories. Some of the others are only a page or two long, and while a few are just right at that length, like the short, sharp satire of "Company for Dinner" and "Remembrance of Things Past," others are well-crafted scenes in search of a larger context. Only the title story is explicitly marked as unfinished, but one can't help but wonder if Jackson was really done with some of the others. In any case, her command of her voice is consistently obvious, and the vignettes provide a nice contrast to the weightier full stories. Pieces like "Family Treasures," about a young woman's unlikely path to self-esteem, and "The Man in the Woods," another example of Jackson's mastery of the rising atmosphere of dread, are equal to anything she published while alive. Even the works segregated in a section headed "Early Stories" are rewarding, and show her dealing more than in later work with the social consequences of World War II, though the signature style is less developed.
The stories are about two-thirds of the collection, with the essays and those mysterious "other writings" making up the balance. They're divided into three sections: "Essays and Reviews," "Humor and Family," and "About the Craft of Writing." A pedant would point out that several items in the first section are in fact humorous essays about family life and might have fit better in the second, but quibbles aside, one is most struck by how well-observed the more serious essays are. They're brief, but within a few pages Jackson makes astute comments on topics as diverse as clowns, Dr. Seuss, and Samuel Richardson, and her explication of her own work reveals a writer very conscious of how she achieves her effects. I wish more such work had been included, if it exists. The domestic humor is, of course, perfectly executed, and, for those of us who like that sort of thing, laugh-out-loud funny.
The range of writings included here may be a matter of necessity-- probably at this point there wasn't enough quality unpublished work of any one type to make up a full book-- but its effect is to give readers a fuller awareness of Jackson's personality. More than an eccentric horror writer or a harried housewife-humorist, she was a complex and fascinating woman, and this collection does more than any one previous gathering of her writings to capture that. No matter why Shirley Jackson interests you, Let Me Tell You is essential reading. And if she doesn't interest you yet, it's a good way to change that.
Format: Hardcover Vine Customer Review of Free Product
It would be trite, but maybe not inaccurate, to suggest that the scope of Shirley Jackson's posthumous short fiction career is an irony worth of the author herself. Only one collection, The Lottery, with its famous title story and 24 others, appeared during her lifetime. Shortly after her death her husband put together a second collection, featuring fourteen uncollected or unpublished stories, an unfinished novel, and miscellaneous other works. In the 1990s two of her children assembled another, with 54 stories. And now, some 50 years after Jackson's premature death, here is Let Me Tell You, which features not only 30 more stories but also 26 essays, and even a few cartoons. Cynics might imagine that by now Jackson's heirs are scraping the bottom of the barrel, but the wonderful thing is that they aren't. The best of the stories here are comparable with her finest previously-published work, and there's virtually nothing that feels like it didn't deserve to be brought into the public eye. For devotees of Jackson, this is a must-read, and even those unfamiliar with her work will be able to discover what the fuss is all about.
Jackson's dual writerly identity-- horrific or unsettling fiction on one hand and comic sketches about family life on the other, Robert Aickman vs. Erma Bombeck-- may seem peculiar, but they're linked by a keen sense of the absurdities of human behavior and the fragility of our notions of order. She might make an angry dinner table conversation a subject of fun or a stomach-twisting exercise in social unease, but the emotional dynamics at its heart are the same in both cases. The concept of one of the finest stories here, "Mrs. Spencer and the Oberons," could easily have been used for a humor piece about the comeuppance of an overly fastidious housewife, but instead her emotional life is treated seriously, and the idea becomes the basis for one of those eerie, harrowing Jackson tales in which ordinary events take on an air of supernatural menace.
That story and several others have been published in recent years in major contemporary short fiction outlets. Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the most substantial of the new stories. Some of the others are only a page or two long, and while a few are just right at that length, like the short, sharp satire of "Company for Dinner" and "Remembrance of Things Past," others are well-crafted scenes in search of a larger context. Only the title story is explicitly marked as unfinished, but one can't help but wonder if Jackson was really done with some of the others. In any case, her command of her voice is consistently obvious, and the vignettes provide a nice contrast to the weightier full stories. Pieces like "Family Treasures," about a young woman's unlikely path to self-esteem, and "The Man in the Woods," another example of Jackson's mastery of the rising atmosphere of dread, are equal to anything she published while alive. Even the works segregated in a section headed "Early Stories" are rewarding, and show her dealing more than in later work with the social consequences of World War II, though the signature style is less developed.
The stories are about two-thirds of the collection, with the essays and those mysterious "other writings" making up the balance. They're divided into three sections: "Essays and Reviews," "Humor and Family," and "About the Craft of Writing." A pedant would point out that several items in the first section are in fact humorous essays about family life and might have fit better in the second, but quibbles aside, one is most struck by how well-observed the more serious essays are. They're brief, but within a few pages Jackson makes astute comments on topics as diverse as clowns, Dr. Seuss, and Samuel Richardson, and her explication of her own work reveals a writer very conscious of how she achieves her effects. I wish more such work had been included, if it exists. The domestic humor is, of course, perfectly executed, and, for those of us who like that sort of thing, laugh-out-loud funny.
The range of writings included here may be a matter of necessity-- probably at this point there wasn't enough quality unpublished work of any one type to make up a full book-- but its effect is to give readers a fuller awareness of Jackson's personality. More than an eccentric horror writer or a harried housewife-humorist, she was a complex and fascinating woman, and this collection does more than any one previous gathering of her writings to capture that. No matter why Shirley Jackson interests you, Let Me Tell You is essential reading. And if she doesn't interest you yet, it's a good way to change that.
Agree completely. She's definitely underrated by the general populace. Aside from her horror stories, Life Among the Savages is one of my favorites--very funny!
The Appeal by John Grisham, I am reading. I am doing a Grisham marathon. My family gave me a bunch of them when I went visiting up to the Fort.
Om reading the talisman then blackhouse. So fa so good
I've come some way. Read Green Thoughts by John Collier about a rare orchid that have a rather unexpected appetite.
Now i'm on to The Ghost of Alexander Perks by Robert Dean Frisbie. The plant thing was good but this, a ghostship story was not anything special. Now i've started The House by Andre Maurois, a french author.
But i'm not sure how to get hold of it... It was 80 years ago it was published after all. I was just lucky that my father left me so many books. I choose some of his many anthologies of shortstories from different times to keep, about 20 of them, and they are about crime, SF, Weird tales, Horror, Ghost stories and "ordinary" stories. This is one of them i havent found the time to read before but it has started promising.
Moon Knight: The Bottom by bestselling author Charlie Huston and artist David Finch.
"Ego" by Darwyn Cooke. Excellent Batman story about split personality / schizophrenia.
Finally finished The Border by Robert McCammon last night. It was good, but not a great one. Maybe it's because 'life' kept getting in the way of my reading it? I just didn't connect with any character or even the storyline.....
I'm reading a book called "Finders Keepers", but not by SK. This was a free ebook by an author named Sean _____ (forget the last name). It's not bad, but it's not a story that I think about when I'm not reading it.
I am truly enjoying The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins . . .I'm trying to figure out what's going on but I can't. It's driving me crazy and I love it!
My goodness . . .I want to help Rachel so badly.
My goodness . . .I want to help Rachel so badly.
Just finished the Blackwater series; so, so sorry to come to the end of this wonderful story filled with such fascinating characters. Last paragraph in About Michael McDowell: And no less an authority than Stephen King once proclaimed McDowell "the finest writer of paperback originals in America."
Has anyone here read his other books? Are they as good?
Has anyone here read his other books? Are they as good?
My feelings exactly. I thought the author did a great job of portraying her character. Beautifully layered and real.
Not terribly fond of The Woman Who Would Be King, to be honest. I would rather read a book with things we know about Egypt (from documents, tablets, hieroglyphs, archeology) than this mushy, modern day take on Hatshepsut's emotional state. It's so, so false--not every woman, everywhere, any time shares the same emotional reactions to life events as a modern Western woman. The author should have just written a novel and then listed in an afterword her sources, as most historical novelists do. I might finish it, because the parts wherein the author deals with the realities and history of the time and place are interesting, but the next time I read, "...she must have felt..." I'll grumble. A lot.
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