This is just a round-up post of my thoughts after week three of the Fragile things read. As with any short story collection some of the stories worked for me, and other didn’t. I tend to like the more traditional stories, where we have somewhat of a resolution or development. The more open-ended and experimental, […]
Spoilers The narrator starts this story by telling us that we can call him a bastard if we like, well I do like. And I don’t mean bastard in the parentage sense, I mean it in the horrible evil person sense. He is an amoral murderer. He calls himself loyal. But loyalty to an evil […]
Spoilers below Hell is other people, so the saying goes. But in this story hell is pain and the life you’ve lived. Other people is another short short story. Just a couple of pages, so I won’t be writing much about it. It is one that you should read, but I doubt it’d be one […]
Spoilers ahead! What makes you want to abandon your life? To chuck it all and just leave? In Bitter grounds we are never told exactly why the narrator leaves his home, but it certainly has something to do with a woman. Whatever his reason our protagonist just up sticks and drives off. Living in his […]
Beware of spoilers. Discussion welcome. Okay, this is one of those posts where I may type and type and yet say nothing, because I’m really unsure of what I want to say. I guess I don’t like it all that much. I can sort of appreciate the feeling behind the poem, the desire to escape. […]
Watch out for spoilers below. This is more of a discussion about rather than a review of sort of post. Yet another story within a story. Of course, that is a very traditional format for ghost stories, Turn of the Screw for example. I suppose it comes from the fact that that is what people […]
As usual with these group reads a spoiler warning is in full effect. They are discussion posts rather than reviews. Things that are “story-shaped” are explainable. Explicable even. But real life is not always so. Things happen at random and the everything has consequences that may not be visible right now, but some day, to […]
I’m, as usual, playing catch up. Never got around to posting on the stories I read for week 2, so hopefully I’ll get through them all this time around. As usual with these group reads a spoiler warning is in full effect. They are discussion posts rather than reviews. This is another meta-fiction. A story […]
I’m, as usual, playing catch. Never got around to posting on the stories I read for week 2, so hopefully I’ll get through them all this time around. As usual with these group reads a spoiler warning is in full effect. They are discussion posts rather than reviews. This is an adaptation of the Bluebeard […]
This is a story in a story, in a book of stories. Welcome to meta-ness :)
The story opens with the 12 months meeting up. And October is this meeting’s chair, hence the title. The months talk a little among themselves, and then begin what seems to be their tradition of telling each other stories. Only they’ve already heard what September begins to tell them, and then it is June’s turn. But then comes the main story, October’s one. A story about a boy, the youngest, the Runt, in the family, and his older brothers who bully him. So he decides to run away, maybe as far as the sea. But along the way he rests near an abandoned house, and that night he meets another boy. A boy called Dearly, a boy who can’t read his other name any more.
Read more about October in the chair (Fragile things group read, week 1) …
Third post on the group read of Fragile Things. I started with the introduction, where some people like to start, then the first story, A study in emerald which was very enjoyable. And now on to week 1, part 3. The first poem, entitled The fairy Reel which you can read online at http://www.endicott-studio.com/cofhs/chFaeryReel.html I’m […]
Carl is hosting another group read. This time of Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things. A collection of 32 stories, so that is 4 stories over 8 weeks. Not too intense. But it is always a bit of a challenge to stop reading after only 4 stories :) and I’ve decided to post on each individual story as I go along. First up was the introduction, now we are on to the first story proper: A study in emerald.
This is a group read discussion so there will be spoilers for the stories.
Read more about A study in emerald (Fragile things group read – week 1) …