The Short Story Review (No. IV) Introduction

Hello Gentle Reader

Working nights certainly does make it a bit more difficult to blog, and make sure that everything goes according to schedule, while fitting in with the current schedule that one works. Working nights makes it a bit difficult because you work however long, you go home, you’re tired and sore and stiff, and you just crawl into bed and fall asleep for however long until you wake up. My time varies to be honest. However I am still making the effort to read, and review. Let’s face some facts for sure Gentle Reader, you were here first, so was the blog, so were the books. It is only justifiable that I do make the attempt to keep up with the blog, to keep up with the reading and the reviewing, while working nights.

Just the other day while I was walking home, I have to cross a busy street, and the button on the signal for walkers to cross wasn’t working, but I went when the cars going in the direction that I was going in. Of course, half way across the road, the light turns yellow, and only a few seconds would it turn red, so I ran across the street. Thinking to myself, just how much my feet hurt, but wasn’t particularly looking forward to getting run over. So running across the street was how it goes usually you could say. Though I can only think of how many people sat in their cars laughing at me as I ran across the street. Though I’d rather have them laughing at me as I ran across the street, rather than them getting impatient and deciding to teach me a lesson and run me over with their car. After that, walking down the walking path the birds were chirping. In a garbage disposal bin where a restaurant appears to dispose of their garbage (or perhaps the entire strip mall) there were two crows sitting on a cardboard box, beating the box with their beaks. The thump, thump of the drumming of their beaks on the cardboard, was an interesting sound, with the mixture of the chirping calls of the red winged black bird. One can only wonder if this is the sounds of the nature and urban life joined together. The pesky feeling and the calls of the crows and the red winged black birds. The less the harmonious squawk of the ducks; or those honking calls of the geese (which have all but left though). Still it is interesting to see urban life and nature trying to live peacefully with the each other.

The last Short Story Review (which was No. III) did not have an introduction, based on the short time period that I had reviewed all short stories. Pressed for time and not sure what to say No. III was not able to have an introduction. However The Short Story Review (No. IV) will have an introduction as you can see, by reading this.

The last short story review, was partly a fifty/fifty feeling to it. I know personally from reading some of the stories, that there were hits and misses, particularly from Will Self and Patricia Highsmith. For some reason or another I think these two authors are good, I just had trouble getting into their last stories. Will Self for sure, takes an idea and runs with it far and wide, twisting and exaggerating the said idea, until it is something completely different yet original from the first concept of the idea. Patricia Highsmith’s stories are dark little jewels. An irrational world. A world full of no meaning whatsoever. Nothing can be explained. Murder is just a reaction, and everything that follows after that, is just the chain reaction to the explosion of the murder.

Let’s hope the selected short stories are chosen are much better than the stories that were selected last time. It does appear that Saki and Yasunari Kawabata (the Nobel Laureate of Literature in nineteen-sixty eight) Amy Hempel, and Alice Munro are unable to disappoint me, but then again nothing is ever truly certain. So far they have yet to disappoint me.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*

M. Mary