On the greater scale of things it’s no big deal but I thought I’d let you all know that the sign-ups for my 100 Shots of Short Reading Challenge has reached the magical number of 20, following the sign-up to the challenge last night, of Lena, from the ‘lost, not found’ blog. Yay thanks Lena!!!
I’ve [...]
Title: Sleep by Haruki Marukami
Date Read: 11 November 2008
Available Online?: YES
Briefly: A Japanese wife, in a loving but routine filled marriage, has a problem with insomnia which evolves into a condition where she feels she needs no sleep at all, and apparently suffers no ill-effects from not doing so. Her dentist husband and her son [...]
Title: A Mother by James Joyce
Date Read: 08 November 2008
Available Online?: YES
Briefly: Mrs. Kearney’s daughter Kathleen has been contracted to perform at a series of concerts given by the Eire Abu Society. Mrs. Kearney emerges as being very protective of her daughter and with the concerts not going quite to plan (one of them is [...]
Sadly it’s only a short meaningless Sunday Salon post from me today (do I ever offer anything else :o)) as I’m suffering the fallout of participating in my first 24 Hour Read-a-Thon.
I managed to read three titles in the 24-hour period, way less than a lot of the participants, but it’s three more titles [...]
Title: The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber by Ernest Hemingway
Date Read: 17 October 2008
Available Online?: YES
Briefly: Francis Macomber, on an African hunting trip with his wife, attempts to make amends for his cowardice in front of a lion, to win back the favour of his wife, and Wilson - the hired hunter that [...]
Title: O Fat White Woman by William Trevor
Date Read: 16 October 2008
Available Online?: NO
Briefly: As the wife to a successful headmaster/owner of a boarding-school it would seem as though Mrs. Digby-Hunter has the perfect life, and aside from an imposed life of celibacy, she has. However, as the story unwinds, things are not quite as [...]
Title: The Accident by Mavis Gallant
Date Read: 12 October 2008
Available Online?: NO
Briefly: A story about a young Canadian couple who stop briefly in a small French village with disastrous consequences.
Afterthoughts: This is quite a good story. It does seem overly figurative in its presentation, which probably means I’m missing out on loads of allegorical or [...]
Has it really been a week since the last Sunday Salon already? I remember sitting here roughly this same time last weekend wondering what to write about, and here I am a one-week veteran of the Sunday Salon and……err……I’m still wondering what to write about. Well that’s not exactly true. There is one thing I [...]
Title: The Key by Eudora Welty
Date Read: 10 October 2008
Available Online?: NO
Briefly: A strange tale about a married couple with disabilities, sitting in a waiting-room waiting for their train.
Afterthoughts: It wasn’t that this was a particularly bad story it was just a little too figurative and abstract for my liking.
Notable Quote: “Every now and then, [...]
Title: The Lady or the Tiger by Frank Stockton
Date Read: 09 October 2008
Available Online?: YES
Briefly: A barbaric king uses a system of two doors in his arena to determine the verdict against criminals. Behind one door is a tiger and behind the other is a beautiful bride. With no indication of what lies behind either [...]
