Not everyone likes to go shopping on their lunch hour or spend the time working out at the local gym. For some the time is best spent in the park under a shady tree with their favorite lunchtime short stories. It can be easier to stuff these into a purse or tote than a full length novel. You can only read a chapter or two of a novel anyway. People who love to read often scour bookstores for old classics written by favorite authors.
Margaret Atwood's characters are always memorable, and Verna is no exception. In "Stone Mattress", she notices a man from her past at a pre-cruise reception. He was a one time suitor who got her pregnant and humiliated and abandoned her. Verna decides he deserves to die, like her other husbands did, at her own hand. She uses a billion year old fossil to accomplish it.
Love him or hate him, Ernest Hemingway was a brilliant prose writer. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a good short story whether you like the author or not. In it Harry, a jaded writer, along with his wife, Helen, have fled Paris for Africa. Dying from gangrene, Harry reminisces about his loves lost and opportunities squandered.
"Three Questions" is Leo Tolstoy's parable of a king in search of answers to the most important questions in life. He seeks out a hermit and winds up nursing a would be assassin. In the end, the king finds the answers he was looking for had been with him all along.
Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, became a household name with the publication of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". This is a cautionary story about Jim Smiley, a man ready to place a bet on anything, even how high a frog can jump. Jim met his match in a stranger who saw him coming, cheated him out of his money and took off.
"The Diamond As Big As the Ritz" is F. Scott Fitzgerald's tale about John Unger who meets Percy Washington at an exclusive prep school. Percy boasts his is the richest family in the world because they are sitting on top of a diamond as big as the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Those familiar with Fitzgerald will recognize the theme of a youthful man destroyed by a woman's wealth.
James Joyce was an Irishman who wrote about Ireland and the dynamics of Irish family life. "Eveline" is a fine example of that. Eveline finds herself having to choose between a brutish father and the life she knows and a lover who wants her to run away with him to another country. Her final decision is sad, but realistic.
Book lovers find it easy to get lost in the stories they read. These may be novels of a thousand pages or short stories of a thousand words. As long as a story is well told, it doesn't really matter.
Margaret Atwood's characters are always memorable, and Verna is no exception. In "Stone Mattress", she notices a man from her past at a pre-cruise reception. He was a one time suitor who got her pregnant and humiliated and abandoned her. Verna decides he deserves to die, like her other husbands did, at her own hand. She uses a billion year old fossil to accomplish it.
Love him or hate him, Ernest Hemingway was a brilliant prose writer. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is a good short story whether you like the author or not. In it Harry, a jaded writer, along with his wife, Helen, have fled Paris for Africa. Dying from gangrene, Harry reminisces about his loves lost and opportunities squandered.
"Three Questions" is Leo Tolstoy's parable of a king in search of answers to the most important questions in life. He seeks out a hermit and winds up nursing a would be assassin. In the end, the king finds the answers he was looking for had been with him all along.
Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, became a household name with the publication of "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". This is a cautionary story about Jim Smiley, a man ready to place a bet on anything, even how high a frog can jump. Jim met his match in a stranger who saw him coming, cheated him out of his money and took off.
"The Diamond As Big As the Ritz" is F. Scott Fitzgerald's tale about John Unger who meets Percy Washington at an exclusive prep school. Percy boasts his is the richest family in the world because they are sitting on top of a diamond as big as the Ritz Carlton Hotel. Those familiar with Fitzgerald will recognize the theme of a youthful man destroyed by a woman's wealth.
James Joyce was an Irishman who wrote about Ireland and the dynamics of Irish family life. "Eveline" is a fine example of that. Eveline finds herself having to choose between a brutish father and the life she knows and a lover who wants her to run away with him to another country. Her final decision is sad, but realistic.
Book lovers find it easy to get lost in the stories they read. These may be novels of a thousand pages or short stories of a thousand words. As long as a story is well told, it doesn't really matter.
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