Thursday 16 August 2012

Fifty Great Short Stories by Milton Crane (ed)

This month's book was a little different, we chose 12 of the 50 short stories in this compact little book.  Details of the stories we read are in the previous post.  We had quite a good discussion about each story, some were, predictably, better than others but the standard was quite high across the board.  My favourites included:

The Lottery - Shirley Jackson
Hunger Games - esque story of a nation where villagers gather for the annual lottery.  Well written story with a twist at the end.

The Giaconda Smile - Aldous Huxley
How could I fail to love anything written by this man!  Quite a long short story about a man who thinks himself a bit of one with the ladies and plays upon it.  One spinster takes him seriously with disastrous consequences.


How Beautiful with Shoes - Wilbur Daniel Steele
An American farming community is rocked by an escaped convict who kidnaps a beautiful local girl who mistakenly wears new shoes while running for her life - a mistake we've all made :-)

We marked this book a collective 6/10.

Our next book was chosen from:
  • Tideline by Penny Hancock
  • The Thread by Victoria Hislop
  • Fever Tree by Jennifer McVeigh
  • When a Crocodile eats the Sun by Peter Godwin
  • Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
We chose 'Tideline' by Penny Hancock which we will be reading for the October meeting.

Our next meeting will be at The Warwick, 8pm on Wednesday 12th September.  Please bring a review of a book you'd like to read.