A Face In The Crowd

Here is a 43 page Stephen King story about … baseball, sort of. He likes baseball. Baseball is a great subject. King, though, turns it in to something else. This is not really a horror story. It is more psychological than horror. I did not buy into the psychological part because the character was more boring than unlikable. At least he did not turn it into a novel.

As always, this is a short review for a short book. For more, check out Amazon.

I rate my books as either YES (I will read again) or NO (I will not read again). This gets a rating of NO.

 

Churchill In The Trenches

This 94 page short story was tough to read. I really do not think the author liked his subject. There is quite a bit about his rise through the ranks, but none of it was presented in such a way as to make Churchill interesting.

As always, this is a short review for a short book. For more, check out Amazon.

I rate my books as either YES (I will read again) or NO (I will not read again). This gets a rating of NO.

 

A Little Dab’ll Do Ya

Note: Most of my posts will be about short books (under 100 pages), but I “consume” more podcasts than books nowadays. The podcasts also tend to be short so that I can start and finish on my drive to and from work.

I like this one because it ties in some semi-recent history (less than 100 years ago) with pop culture. Total listening time is ten minutes. It takes almost four minutes to get to the story if you want to fast forward. I really had no idea where this one was going. Let me know what you think and if you figured it out before the 8:49 mark.

Jamey Jones and the Sons of Noah

This 72 pager by Jeremy Stevens is aimed at middle school ages up through adult. I think it is probably most interesting to the lower part of that range. At least at first. The story is told from the point of view of a 7th grader. Once adults became important to the plot, then it started to grab me. The “mystery” ended up being compelling and there were enough loose ends to expect follow up stories. Which is good because I would like to see where the various plot lines end up.

The first chapter is something of an introduction that adds more mystery to the story, but is not obviously part of the plot. At least not yet.

While the story has to fall under the genre of sci-fi, there are no monsters or technology that seems like magic. It has more in common with a western.

Definitely good for younger readers that like a little sci-fi, but not too much!