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Archive for the ‘Short Story’ Category

Liliana Heker–“The Night of the Comet” [Argentina] (translated by Alberto Manguel) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #8] (2001/translation 1997 [that’s what it says])

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Christmas, Comets, Hingston & Olsen, Liliana Heker, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 8, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 8, 2021] “The Night of the Comet”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Somehow it feels cheating that Manguel is the translator of this story (although it does suggest that he really likes the story).

Not much happens on the night of the comet.  There is talk about the comet before its arrival (a man plunged to his death to avoid its arrival).

Everyone talked about it.  Some people said they’d seen it (like a scarf made of light).

The newspapers predicted fabulous things–it would pass so close to earth!  It would be the size of a small melon.  It would cover seventy percent of the visible sky. (more…)

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Amos Tutuola–“The Complete Gentleman” (Nigeria) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #7] (1952)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Amos Tutuola, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Huh?, Magic, Nigeria, Short Story, Supernatural, Superstitions, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 7, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 7, 2021] “The Complete Gentleman”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Manguel has this to say about Amos Tutuola:

He was educated in an English school but never quite abandoned his native Yoruba. Instead, he began to write stories and novels drawn from the collective imagination of his people in an English that is certainly not that of English schoolbooks, but is enriched by strange turns of phrase and an idiosyncratic grammar and spelling that the reader can follow easily.

That’s pretty interesting.

As is this story which is, indeed, pretty unusual.

Each small section has a heading which outlines the action.  First we meet the “complete” gentleman.  He was perfect in every way.  So much so that a woman decided to follow him. (more…)

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Ray Bradbury–“The Fire Balloons” (United States) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #6] (1951)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Mars, Ray Bradbury, Religion, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 6, 2021] “The Fire Balloons”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

I haven’t read very much by Ray Bradbury.  In the past it was because I kind of dismissed him as a genre writer.  But I have read a few things in the last few years that I liked and thought I should give him more of my time.

This story is from The Martian Chronicles, which I have not read.  I actually don’t really know much about the Chronicles at all.

This story is set in 2033.  Two priests are headed to Mars as missionaries.  Father Peregrine and Father Stone spoke about the Martians and the kind of sins they would find among them.  Mars was so different, no doubt sin was like a virtue.  (more…)

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Homer–“Ulysses and the Cyclops” [Greece] (translator Alexander Pope) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #5] (8th century B.C,/translated 1725)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Alexander Pope, Canadian Content, Christmas, Cyclops, Death, Greece, Hingston & Olsen, Homer, Sheep, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Violence on December 5, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 5, 2021] “Ulysses and the Cyclops”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Obviously Homer is a classic–the classic–poet.  But it seemed an odd choice to pick Homer (from B.C. days) when surely there was a more recent Greek writer who deserved some attention.

I’ve read The Odyssey at least three times.  However, I’ve never read it in verse form.   And I found this form to be very challenging.  I was certainly glad I knew the story already. (more…)

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Marcel Aymé–“The State of Grace” [France] (translator Norman Denny) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #4] (1947/translated 1947)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Canadian Content, Christmas, France, Funny (ha ha), Hingston & Olsen, Marcel Aymé, Norman Denny, Prostitution, Religion, Seven deadly sins, Sex, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 4, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 4, 2021] “The State of Grace”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

This story was funny but also had a moral.

Set in 1939, we meet the best Christian in all of Rue Gabrielle and indeed all Montmartre.   Monsieur Duperrier was “a man of such piety, uprightness and charity that God, without awaiting his death… crowned his head with never left it by day or by night.”

He was grateful, of course, but his modesty did not allow him to show it off in public.  However, his wife did have to look at it and she was filled with resentment and exasperation.  She was afraid of what others would think of him if they saw him like that, so she encouraged him to sin a little but to lose the halo. (more…)

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Chris Womersley–“A Lovely and Terrible Thing” (Australia) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #3] (2011)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Australia, Canadian Content, Chris Womersley, Christmas, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Hingston & Olsen, Short Story, Supernatural, Surreal, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 3, 2021] “A Lovely and Terrible Thing”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

You know this story is going to be unusual because the main character works for Ripley’s Believe It or Not (I didn’t know they had that in Australia).

He is off to investigate a claim when his car breaks down in the middle of nowhere.  After a few hours of fruitless struggle, a local man approaches.  They decide that the place the driver is going is too far to walk so the local (named Angola) offers to let him spend the night at his place. (more…)

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Dubravka Ugresic–“Lend Me Your Character” (Crotia) (translator Celia Hawkesworth) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #2] (1983/translated 1992)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Atsushi Nakajima, Canadian Content, Celia Hawkesworth, Christmas, Croatia, Dubravka Ugrešić, Funny (ha ha), Hingston & Olsen, Meta, Paul McCarthy, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on December 2, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 2, 2021] “Lend Me Your Character”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

This story was probably my favorite of the collection.

It was meta- and funny with a feminist slant and a perverse kind of sexuality throughout. (more…)

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Atsushi Nakajima–“The Moon over the Mountain” [Japan] (translator Paul McCarthy) [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar #1] (1942/translated 2011)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Atsushi Nakajima, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Huh?, Japan, Paul McCarthy, Poets, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar, Tigers, Translation on December 1, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: December 1, 2021] “The Moon over the Mountain”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check this link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar. (more…)

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Alberto Manguel–“In Praise of the Short Story” [The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar–introduction] (2021)

Posted in Alberto Manguel, Augusto Monterroso, Canadian Content, Christmas, Hingston & Olsen, Short Story, The Short Story Advent Calendar on November 30, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK:  hiatus

[READ: November 30, 2021] “In Praise of the Short Story”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my seventh time reading the Calendar.  The 2021 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories.

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check the link where editor Alberto Manguel is providing daily commentary on each of the stories he selected for this year’s calendar.

Manguel introduces this set with a love letter to the short story.

For absurd commercial reasons, publishers have decreed that short stories don’t sell…yet more than ever writers continue to write stories and readers continue to read them.

He continues that we are told that bigger is better.  A huge novel much better than a tiny story.  But he offers this quote from William James: : Anybody can have a statue; but a statuette–that indeed is immortality.”

He also explains that for this collection he decided to choose a method as good and arbitrary as any other to select these 25 stories: choose stories from twenty-five different countries “(knowing that many a unicorn and mermaid would be left behind).” (more…)

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Terry Pratchett–The Colour of Magic (1983) [Discworld #1] [Rincewind #1]

Posted in Death, Death, Discworld, Fantasy, Funny (ha ha), Short Story, Terry Pratchett on September 2, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: hiatus

[READ: Summer 2021] The Colour of Magic

Back in the mid 1990s I was working at a bookstore in Boston (Wordsworth, R.I.P.).  They had a great imported books section (from England) and I bought the first four Discworld books in mini editions.  They were adorable and preposterous, with a font size of about 4pt. They were about four inches square.

Imagine reading a book that small.  I would be physically incapable of reading it now.

But I read all four books.

At least I thought I did.  Because when I decided to reread the Discworld series, I distinctly remembered that Rincewind was a bad wizard and that he wore a hat with the word “Wizzard” on it.  He traveled with Twoflower and Twflower had magical luggage.

But when I read this book, he never wore a hat that said “Wizzard” and literally nothing in the story was familiar to me.  So maybe I never read these books?  Granted it was over 25 years ago but still

So it was like reading them for the first time.

This first book is rally four interconnected stories.  But there’s enough repetition of basic information at the start of each story that you know that these were intended to be read separately.

Discworld itself is very well established already, though.

“The Color of Magic”

We start in the city of Ankh-Morpork which is presently on fire.  We meet Rincewind who is instantly revealed as a terrible wizard and a cowardly person (as many wizards prove to be). He has lodged in his brain one of the eight mega powerful spells from the Octavo and as a result can fit no other spells into his head.  No one know what will happen is he says the Spell, but it probably wont be good.

He is with (and sort of protecting) Twoflower, the world’s first tourist.  Twoflower is an insurance clerk from the Agatean Empire.  Hhe tries to sell “in-sewer-ants” to a tavern owner who is used to getting his inn burnt down in brawls.  And yes, Twoflower has luggage made of sapient pearwood.  It will follow its owner anywhere (on little legs that everyone finds very disturbing).  The Luggage is aggressive and always looks angry (as angry as a keyhole can look). It also tends to eat anyone who tries to break in. (more…)

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