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Archive for the ‘Marriage Trouble’ Category

Hannah Pittard–“Wars and Winters” [The 2024 Short Story Advent Calendar #21] (2009)

Posted in Canadian Content, Christmas, Hannah Pittard, Hingston & Olsen, Marriage Trouble, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: December 21, 2024] “Wars and Winters”

This year my wife ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar–it’s a holiday tradition!  Here’s what H&O says about the calendar this year.

Ten years of stories! Yikes, where does the time go?
When the first Short Story Advent Calendar launched, in 2015, we frankly had no clue we’d still be sitting here today, continuing to offer up batches of tasty stories fresh from the oven. To celebrate this milestone, we’ve packed the 10th SSAC with a mix of new and familiar names—ideal company for those chilly winter nights ahead.

The author of this story was Hannah Pittard.  Each day has an online component with the author with a brief interview.

It’s December 21. Hannah Pittard, author of We Are Too Many, can feel the solstice coming a mile away.

This is the story of a woman who is involved with a married man.  They work at the same university during Fall semesters. She waits for him to return each year.  (She taught full time for a third of his salary). (more…)

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Jacqueline Baker–“Down Burned Road” [The 2024 Short Story Advent Calendar #15] (YEAR)

Posted in Bears, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Jacqueline Baker, Marriage Trouble, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 15, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: December 15, 2024] “Down Burned Road”

This year my wife ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar–it’s a holiday tradition!  Here’s what H&O says about the calendar this year.

Ten years of stories! Yikes, where does the time go?
When the first Short Story Advent Calendar launched, in 2015, we frankly had no clue we’d still be sitting here today, continuing to offer up batches of tasty stories fresh from the oven. To celebrate this milestone, we’ve packed the 10th SSAC with a mix of new and familiar names—ideal company for those chilly winter nights ahead.

The author of this story was Jacqueline Baker.  Each day has an online component with the author with a brief interview.

It’s December 15. Jacqueline Baker, author of The Broken Hours, has officially given up on Google Maps.

I’m not sure what it is about a story that makes me simply not enjoy it.  And I know it’s the case when it takes me a few days to finish even a short story. (more…)

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Adam O’Fallon Price–“The Lottery” [The 2024 Short Story Advent Calendar #14] (2024)

Posted in Adam O'Fallon Price, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Lottery, Marriage Trouble, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: December 14, 2024] “The Lottery”

This year my wife ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar–it’s a holiday tradition!  Here’s what H&O says about the calendar this year.

Ten years of stories! Yikes, where does the time go?
When the first Short Story Advent Calendar launched, in 2015, we frankly had no clue we’d still be sitting here today, continuing to offer up batches of tasty stories fresh from the oven. To celebrate this milestone, we’ve packed the 10th SSAC with a mix of new and familiar names—ideal company for those chilly winter nights ahead.

The author of this story was Adam O’Fallon Price.  Each day has an online component with the author with a brief interview.

It’s December 14. Adam O’Fallon Price, author of The Hotel Neversink, answered the skill-testing question with time to spare.

This was a story that when from big highs to dark lows pretty quickly.  As the story opens a recently married couple (Paul and Laura) has just won the lottery.  And we quickly learn how different the two are by what they decide to do with the winning ticket–not the money, the ticket. (more…)

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Arthur Conan Doyle–“A Case of Identity” [The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes] (1891)

Posted in Adventure, Arthur Conan Doyle, Marriage Trouble, Mystery, Sexism, Sherlock Holmes, Short Story, Yuck! on February 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: February 4, 2024] “A Case of Identity”

Many years ago I was on a bit of a Sherlock Holmes kick.  I read the first two novels and then couldn’t get a copy of this collection, so I guess I forgot about the detective.  Since i have recently listened to a couple of Sherlock Holmesian books I decided to track down the next book to read.

And I was quite surprised to realize that while Arthur Conan Doyle did write a lot of Sherlock stories, most of them were short stories, not novels (See the list below).

So since these were short stories I decided to give a crack at them.

This second story in the book is remarkably… inconsequential?  Holmes has a habit of saying that big mysteries often disguise simple crimes–if it’s a huge deal, then the plotting must be simple.  He also likes that life is far ore bizarre than fiction (amusing in a short story).  But even by those standards, this is a pretty small story.  It also feels not very hard to figure out–I have also realized that much of Holmes’ success comes from not letting on some things that he has figured out (thereby not letting the readers in on it either).

So Mary Sutherland has come to see Holmes about a personal matter.  There is some excellent moments of Holmes reading the woman from outside and telling what her concern is just by the way she is standing.  I also realized that so many of the story really do depend on British mannerisms and behaviors–things that wouldn’t come across as well today.  Like cuffs being mended and ink stains on fingers.

At any rate, Holmes figures she has a story of woe about a romance.  And so she does. (more…)

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Nicole Krauss–“Shelter” (New Yorker, October 3, 2022)

Posted in Hotels, Humiliation, Israel, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Nicole Krauss, Pregnancy, Short Story on January 5, 2024| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: January 4, 2024] “Shelter”

I wasn’t taken with this story.  The middle part of it was really interesting but I felt like the opening and ending were rather flat.

Cohen is in Tel Aviv.  He is a very smart man who helped to build a company that a bigger company liked enough to buy out.  But since then he hasn’t really done anything creative.

In fact most of his life seems to be settling.

In Tel Aviv he sees a young woman who is very pregnant. He wants to talk to her because she reminds him of his wife when she was very pregnant several decades ago.  But he doesn’t talk to her.  And his wife is cheating on him (with a heart doctor). (more…)

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Hilma Wolitzer–“Overtime” [The 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar #12] (1974)

Posted in Canadian Content, Christmas, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Hilma Wolitzer, Hingston & Olsen, Marriage Trouble, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 12, 2023| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:

[READ: December 12, 2023] “Overtime”

This year my wife ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my sixth time reading the Calendar–it’s a holiday tradition!  Here’s what H&O says about the calendar this year.

The 2023 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individual short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.  Now in its ninth year, the SSAC is back to once again bring readers a deluxe, peppermint-fresh collection of 25 short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.

The author of this story was Hilma Wolitzer.  Each day has an online component with the author with a brief interview.

It’s December 12. Hilma Wolitzer, author of Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket, suffers neither fool nor broken hanger.

Here’s a fun bit from the Q&A

When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?

HW: I wrote it 50 years ago! My only other work way back then was housework, and as with writing I was always trying to make order out of chaos. Revising a story is something like cleaning out a closet: excessive words and broken hangers all have to go.

This was one of those delightfully weird stories that has a weird premise and follows it through to a very satisfying ending.

It opens

Howard’s first wife wouldn’t let him go….  I wondered why he was attracted to her in the first place.  It could only have been her pathos.  Reenie is little and thin.

Howard and Reenie had only been married for seven months, and yet Reenie constantly called them for help and advice.  And financial support.  (more…)

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Dan Frey–The Future is Yours (2021) [audiobook 2021]

Posted in Aneesh Chaganty, Beer, Cary Hite, Catherine Ho, Dan Frey, Dion Graham, End of the World, Joshua Kane, Kyla Garcia, Marriage Trouble, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Natasha Soujek, Quantum, Ron Shapiro, Technology, Thérèse Plummer, The Future, Vikas Adam on July 31, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: July 2023] The Future is Yours

I didn’t know much about this book, but the blurb sounded good.

And wow, was it a a well-told future/time-travel story.  I also really enjoyed that whole cast that was employed for the book.  Usually a single narrator is fine, but there were so many different voices in this story that having multiple narrators was great.

I had known Cary Hite from a Mike Chen novel so his familiar voice was great.  He reads the part of Ben Boyce a young entrepreneur who has great ideas for how to get startups to work.  He is best friends with Adhi Chaudry (read by Vikas Adam).

Adhi is a once-in-a-generation genius.  He writes a thesis that postulates creating a kind of time travel machine using quantum computers.  Fortunately, there’s not a lot of hard science here, so you don’t really have to know what they’re talking about (I also have no idea if what they postulate is feasible in reality).  The thesis is so theoretical that Stanford doesn’t want him to defend it because they think it’s more philosophical than computer science based.

Adhi struggles with things a lot (he is bipolar) but Ben is always there for him.  Ben believes in him 100%.  So when Adhi gets a job at Google (and hates it) and Ben has tried a few startups (that have failed), Ben asks Adhi about that thesis.  And what they might be able to do with it. (more…)

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Peter Swanson–All the Beautiful Lies (2018) [audiobook 2018]

Posted in Drinking, Feminism, Guns, Maine, Marriage Trouble, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Peter Swanson, Sarah Mollo-Christensen, Sex, Sexism, Unlikable main character, Violence, Yuck! on June 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: June 2023] All the Beautiful Lies

I loved Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders.  I hated the characters in The Kind Worth Killing (but I loved the twists).  So I had this third book as a kind of final litmus test for if I would listen to anymore books by him.

And the answer is no.

Once again, Swanson’s twist and surprises (and the ending) are really good.  But if possible, he made main characters who are even more horrible and unlikable.  How was that possible?

There’s a few spoilers in this review, although none that reveal the twists or who the murderer(s) is/are.

I’m just going to get this over with, so yes, there’s a spoiler here.  One of the main characters is a pedophile.

It’s bad enough when, at some point in the middle of the book, we learn that he is happily going to essentially make a new life with the daughter of his second wife (step-daughter, so not incest, but Jesus Fucking Christ).  And then we find out that this guy was introduced to sex when he was a teenager by a bored housewife.  So he is basically “paying it forward.”

How did Swanson even write these words?   How did his moral compass allow these words to pass his fingers onto the page?

I mean, the blurb on Goodreads starts with this:

Harry Ackerson has always considered his stepmother Alice to be sexy and beautiful, in an “otherworldly” way. She has always been kind and attentive, if a little aloof in the last few years.

I mean, who reads that blurb and wants to read more (I go into my books totally blind, so I had no idea this was coming). (more…)

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Peter Swanson–The Kind Worth Killing (2015) [audiobook 2012]

Posted in Airplanes, Drinking, Feminism, Guns, Johnny Heller, Karen White, Kathleen Early, Keith Szarabajka, Maine, Marriage Trouble, Murder, Mysteries, Mystery, Peter Swanson, Sex, Sexism, Unlikable main character, Violence on June 16, 2023| Leave a Comment »

[LISTENED TO: June 2023] The Kind Worth Killing

I had enjoyed Peter Swanson’s Eight Perfect Murders so much that I wanted to get more audio books by him.  I had heard that he was creating a sequel to one of his popular books, but I didn’t know which one.  It turns out it was this one.

So this seemed like a good one to start with.

As it opened, I absolutely hated it.  It may have been Johnny Heller’s voice, which I did not like.  Although it also sounded familiar and I wondered if I knew him from reading a children’s book and I didn’t like him in an adult role.

Why did I hate it?  Because within the first few minutes, his character, Ted Severson says something to the effect of, “My wife cheated on me.  So I have to kill her.”  I mean, who the hell thinks like that?  And who bases an entire book on that?  That is psychopathic.

Interestingly, I have read many complaints about Swanson’s bland characters, and while I’m not sure they are bland, exactly, they are certainly deadpan or flat or disinterested.  At least that’s how the narrators read them.

So when Karen White took over as narrator for Lily Kintner’s parts, I enjoyed the book more.  Lily was a flat character, but I found her dispassionate voice to be kind of interesting.  (more…)

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Brian Asman–Man, Fuck This House (2021)

Posted in Brian Asman, Horror, Huh?, Humiliation, Marriage Trouble, Short Books, Supernatural, Surreal on March 21, 2022| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: March 2022] Man, Fuck This House

Okay, so this book has the best title.

I didn’t expect a lot from it, but I thought I’d give it a read. not really knowing exactly what to expect with a title like that.

So the novel is a horror story.  And it isn’t all that funny (it’s not supposed to be).  The simple summation is that a house becomes possessive of the person who is taking care of it.  The house wants to make that person happy and is content to get rid of everyone else.

So a family has moved to this house on a cul de sac in New Mexico.

There are two children.  And older daughter and a younger son.  I was a little bummed at the outset to learn that the son consumed his twin in the womb, because it seemed so ripe for cliche, but Asman did some interesting things with that idea.  The daughter is an aloof teenager.

The husband is kind of a goof and not really all that present.

Really, the story is about the wife and mom, Sabrina. (more…)

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