***** The Collected Short Stories by Jeffrey Archer. Wow. This may be one of the best books I've read since arriving in Kenya. The collection contains 36 short stories, almost all of which are extraordinary. I liked his style of giving enough detail to make the reader feel like part of the story without straying too far from the narrative. A bit of the British culture was lost on me, especially the Oxford and Cambridge references. Some of the stories had magnificently executed twists at the end while others were simply captivating. Though not my favorite, I would recommend reading Christina Rosenthal for a start, or perhaps One Man's Meat (a long forgotten short story I read in English Lit 7 years ago). I imagine they can be found online.
*** The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester. I guess I enjoyed the narrative of this book, although I wasn't a big fan of how Winchester told the story. Some of the points he made about the history of the dictionary (a main subject of the book is the compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary) were interesting, several of his points seemed to be far too speculative. There certainly was a lot of interesting information in the story, and the characters were highly compelling, but there was something that bothered me throughout that I couldn't put my finger on.
1 comment:
Just a few days ago on the bus, the bus driver was reading the short stories by Jeffrey Archer. I read one of his books - the 11th commandment and it just aight. I'll take your word that his short stories are better.
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