Short stories for a short memory....

A Reader's Respite has probably mentioned our increasing enjoyment of the short story format. We're pretty convinced that this is directly related to our decreasing attention span these days.

When the opportunity arose for us to take a gander at local author Midge Raymond's collection of short stories entitled Forgetting English, we jumped on it. After all, anyone who resides in Seattle with a big fat orange cat (oh, and her husband, but it was the cat that made us smile) and writes stories is a woman after our own heart.

Each of Raymond's eight stories involve a North American woman searching for a part of herself in a foreign land. Character-centric in the extreme, the various locales (Africa, Antarctica, Tonga, etc) serve as a catalyst for these women in their time of uncertainty. The writing is beautiful.

The short story format fascinates A Reader's Respite because of it's tendency to invite serious thought. Unlike a full-length novel which draws us inside of another world and makes us a part of that world, the short story is a small bite of another life that provokes lingering thought long after the last page is turned.

In other words, a good short story gives us something to chew on for a while.

Besides brownies.



In our case, that's a good thing.






A Reader's Respite's compliance with new FDC Regulation:

This wonderful short story collection was sent to us by a publicist, free of charge. That's right...not a penny came out of our own pocket. Gratis or not, this book was subject to the same snarkiness that all books we read are subjected to. If you don't believe us, flip through some past reviews.






Sound like something you'd be interested in? If so, just leave us a comment saying so and on December 15th, we'll draw one random winner to receive this little collection of stories. Just be sure to check back here to see if you won, please, since A Reader's Respite just doesn't have the time to track you down this holiday season!