A Common Reader is . . . . . . written by Tom Cunliffe, of East Sussex, England (to read more about me see my About page). It consists of book reviews and more general articles about reading and currently receives over 10,000 unique visitors each month. So far 290 book reviews have been published.
My currently-reading shelf:
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I was pleased when I read David Means’ Assorted Fire Events to discover a set of short stories which are just that – stories. Many contemporary short-story writers like to write stories which are more “episodes” rather than finished works in themselves . With no scene-setting or character development, they drop you into the middle [...]
When I bought this book, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Stories, I didn’t know that the title story has now been turned into a film starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett. I wondered why Penguin had just published it, and one thing for sure, if it had been a film tie-in book [...]
I read quite a lot of short stories and find they tend to come in two categories. Some are like short novellas, complete stories with a beginning, middle and ending, and well-developed characters. The classical short-story tends to be like this whether written by Chekov, de Maupassant, Tolstoy or countless others. Other writers seems to [...]
It was interesting to read in Human Smoke, the subject of my earlier review, references to Stefan Zweig, and his opposition to the Nazi regime. Zweig became convinced that Nazi domination of Europe was inevitable and would lead to the extinguishing of all he held dear, leading to his death by suicide, together with his [...]
Sometimes you read a book by new author and immediately want to read every other book they wrote. Reading Pawel Huelle’s Castorp (reviewed here) had this effect on me and now I have been able to buy used versions of Moving House and Other Stories and Who Was David Weiser?, soon to be followed by [...]
At first glance Tove Jannson’s Fair Play is simply a collection of stories about two female artists living together in their old age. It is semi-autobiographical, with Tove being the fictional Marie, and her lifelong partner, graphic designer Tuulikka Pietelä, being Johanna. Tove is of course the author and creator of the Moomin series of [...]
Like many people I greatly regret that Stefan Zweig only wrote one full length novel, but his short stories, as here in Fantastic Night and Other Short Stories are so good that it seems churlish to see them as in any way a poor relation to a full length novel.
The title story Fantastic Night [...]
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