To answer the immediate question, Thomas is John's son. To answer a question no one has asked, I actually like the son's writing better than the father's, sacrilege tho I know this is. Altho I enjoy the elder Steinbeck's writing (Of Mice and Men is my favorite), there always seemed to be something forced and artificial about it -- perhaps this ( Read more... )

In a fit of nostalgia, I read three collections of Ray Bradbury's short stories: The October Country, The Illustrated Man and Classic Stories 1 (selected from Golden Apples of the Sun and R is for Rocket ( Read more... )

A collection of short stories by an author I’ve never heard of before, and I can’t say now that I’m surprised. I don’t mean that to be dismissive, because she is a good writer and tells a story well - even a fantastical story, which is rather harder to pull off than an ordinary day one - but having read and enjoyed the stories in this book I have ( Read more... )

This is the first collection of short stories by Russell and, according to a few book reviews I read, far superior to her second collection, Vampires in the Lemon Grove.  I have to disagree, I enjoyed Vampires much more than Raised by Wolves.  Most of the stories here struck me as vapid and unengaging.  Of course, Raised by Wolves is mostly stories ( Read more... )

I'd never heard of Maile Meloy before picking up her short story collection, Both Ways is the Only Way I Want It, and I bought the book based on the title alone.  I mean, seriously, how can I resist that title?  Unfortunately the title was one of the best things about this collection for me.  For the most part I found the stories plodding and ( Read more... )

As I wrote just a few days ago, I did enjoy these stories despite this not being my favorite time period for the genre -- first published as a collection in 1940, the stories were written in the 20s and 30s.  The stories are divided into 3 groups: Lord Peter Wimsey stories, Montague Egg stories and Other stories.  Lord Peter is too well known to ( Read more... )

About 30 years ago, I thought I first made Jack Ritchie's acquaintance thru his Cardula Detective Agency series in the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.  It's exactly as the name suggests -- Count Dracula done as a private investigator.  This may well be among the first of the vampire PI stories, and its certainly one of the best done and funniest ( Read more... )

Finished these both today and I'm glad they're finally over.  Carlos Fuentes may have been a genius, but there are plenty of literary geniuses I can't stand reading.

It didn't look like I was going to find anything interesting in Death's Excellent Vacation, but I did finally stumble over two stories I enjoyed:  Meanwhile, Far Across the Caspian ( Read more... )

One good thing about missing work that I can't afford to miss -- at least I get plenty of reading time between sleeping.

Topped off Poisoned Pens, and a mean little bit of fun it was:

( Read more... )

Published in 1990, this short story collection contains one story set in the future . . . of 14 May 2010.  In this future, tourism on the moon is a reality (our imaginations are always so much better than reality) and the moon has just experienced its first murder.  Pascoe, now a high level flunky in a united European government, has been pulled in ( Read more... )