Wait For Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson - Guest Review

Wait For Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson
Published October 2015 by Penguin Books
Source: our copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary:
Ten years ago, Craig Johnson wrote his first short story, the Hillerman Award–winning “Old Indian Trick.” This was one of the earliest appearances of the sheriff who would go on to star in Johnson’s bestselling, award-winning novels and the hit television series Longmire, now streaming on Netflix. Each Christmas Eve thereafter, fans rejoiced when Johnson sent out a new short story featuring an episode in Walt’s life that doesn’t appear in the novels; over the years, many have asked why they can’t buy the stories in book form.


*Oops - the hubby read this one for review before Christmas but Christmas being Christmas, we both completely forgot to have him write his review. Sorry, Penguin!*

The Big Guy's Thoughts:
I have read a couple of other Longmire books and both were a fun read and having been a fan of the show for the past few years I have become invested in the characters.  The only problem is, having seen the shows first, I couldn't help but compare the people in the book to the people in the show.  It took a bit of reprogramming, but I was able to reconcile the Longmire family.

Being attention deficit this was a good read for me, new story every 20 pages and 'look a squirrel'!  Despite being short stories they had a lot of commonality: the usual setting, characters and diverse personalities of the series.

For Longmire fans, Western fans, mystery fans or anyone that likes a good series of stories, I highly recommend Wait For Signs.  What's not to love about a guy who has a character recommend the assisted living facility as the place to ring in the New Year or uses the phrase "boy howdy?"

Thanks for the review, honey! Now we just need to get caught up on the newest season of Longmire on Netflix! Thank goodness Johnson has given the show's writers plenty to work with for a good long while - we'd had to get stuck with another show where the show had outpaced the author's ability to write source material (I'm looking at you, George R. R. Martin!).

Separate Kingdoms by Valierie Laken

Separate Kingdoms by Valerie Laken
224 pages
Published February 2011 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: the publisher and TLC Book Tours

The loss of a young boy's vision at birth, the loss of a woman's limb in a car accident, the loss of a father. In this collection of short stories, Valerie Laken explores loss on many levels, both physical and emotional, short-term and permanent. The stories are set in both the United States and Russia, populated with characters who are emotionally scarred but ultimately hopeful.

As with any collection of short stories, there were some stories here that I enjoyed more than others. There were even a couple where I was not sure what, exactly, Laken was trying to say. But I enjoyed her writing in all of the stories; they are unique, emotionally touching and thought provoking. Laken also does not sacrifice on description to fit the story into short form, as in this passage from "Spectators:"

"...he had always appreciated the tidy green isolation of golf courses, the way people's voices dropped naturally to church tones, as if there were something in their midst to worship. He liked the cocktails and groundskeepers and the old-fashioned shoes, and the way serious adults could abandon the jagged concerns of their lives to focus for a few quiet hours on the flight of a small dimpled ball."

My favorite story was "Family Planning," the story of a gay couple who has traveled to Russia to adopt a child. But when they arrive and are given their choice of two children, instead of only the little boy they were expecting to met, the women realize that their hopes for the future are very different.

When I was approached about reviewing this book, I read only as far as the description of the title story. In fact, I didn't even read far enough to realize that this was a collection of short stories. I'm not sure that would have made a difference in whether or not I read this; I generally prefer to be able to read collections of short stores over a long periods. Fortunately, I didn't pass on this one.

Thanks to TLC for including me on this tour!

Short Stories by Edith Wharton: The Dilettante, The Fulness of Life and The Quicksand

Before I go any further, I need to ask you something.  Does Edith Wharton look a little bit like Almira Gulch, Dorothy's neighbor who tried to take Toto away, in this picture?  I keep looking at this expecting Ms. Wharton to turn into a wicked witch at any moment. But I seriously digress.

Since I changed positions at work, it's hard for me to find big enough chunks of time to listen to novels while I'm working.  Thanks to Librivox for having several short story collections available, including some from Edith Wharton.  Have I mentioned before how much I love her writing?  When Wharton paints a picture of a scene down to the tiniest detail, I find it everything about it fascinating where in other authors I would find this trait quite tedious. Ms. Wharton's short stories were no exception.

I listened to three stories: "The Dilettante," "The Fulness of Life," and "The Quicksand." As with most of her works, Wharton has populated these stories with upper classes characters, exposing their faults.

Young Trusdale, in "The Dilettante," is what might be called, in today's parlance, a "playa."  He takes great pleasure in enjoying the company of ladies but only on his own terms.  This seems to have been working quite well for him and in Mrs Vervain he seems to have a companion who will play along with him.  Miss Gaynor is his latest conquest. But before he can even realize just how fond he has become of her, she discovers him for what he is, leaving both Trusdale and Mrs. Vervain troubled by what they have become.

In "The Quicksand" we meet Mrs. Quentin, a rich woman who wants perfection in all things and believes that her son, Alan, is perfect.  Further, she believes that she is intuitive where Alan is concerned and is surprised when he tells her that a young woman has turned down his marriage proposal because he runs a newspaper.  He, in turn, is upset with the young woman. Hope Feeno, because she thinks too much.  Because Alan asks her to, Mrs. Quentin visits Hope, although she really has no desire to change Hope's mind.  Some time later, Mrs. Quentin comes across Hope, who confesses that she believes she made a mistake in refusing Alan.  But Mrs. Quentin, who has had the time to reflect on her own marriage and the way her husband's money sucked her into staying with him despite her misgivings about the newspaper, finds that she is glad that Hope refused Alan.  Upon talking to Hope, Mrs. Quentin had discovered that what she found in Hope made her want Hope for a daughter-in-law while at the same time making her sure that Hope was best off away from the very son that Mrs. Quentin adored.

"The Fulness of Life" is the bittersweet story of a woman who has died and discovers that in the afterlife she will finally be able to find the fulness of life she never found while she was alive.  When the Spirit of Life shows her that her soul mate has been waiting for her, a mate who in every way reflects her every passion, the woman discovers that she cannot bear that thought that her husband, who believes that he had found his soul mate in her, will spend all eternity waiting for her.  Beyond the end of life itself, it seems that she is destined to the be devoted wife.

Listening to these short stories was like taking a sip of water that only makes you realize that you are incredibly thirsty.  I foresee The House of Mirth in my near future!

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
As recorded on Librivox, 28 mins long

Our narrator is a woman who has recently moved to a summer rental in hopes of "curing" her of a malady her husband, a physician, is not convinced she has as there are no physical manifestations.  His prescribed for her "nervous depression" is to cease all physical exertions, including writing.  Once they arrive at the house she is almost entirely limited to time spent in what she determines must have been a nursery.  She is convinced that she might do better if she were allowed to work and have more freedom.  Instead she does manage to keep a journal, chronicling her thoughts which more and more begin to be about the yellow wallpaper in the room which she initially finds "revolting."  Eventually she becomes convinced that there is a woman caught behind the "bar" of the wallpaper and that she must set the woman free by tearing off the wallpaper.

I was first introduced to this story by Care of Care's Online Book Club (her review here).  She was clever enough to get me very intrigued but didn't tell me enough to have any idea what the story was about. So - wow!  Apparently when Care was substitute teaching they talked about this story and some of the kids said it was boring.  Boring?  First of all, how can you get bored by something that is only 80 pages (or 28 minutes) long?  Maybe it just went by them so quickly that they weren't picking up on what was happening and so thought that nothing much had happened.

What did happen to our increasingly unreliable narrator?  She mentions a baby a couple of times; perhaps she was suffering from post-partum depression or psychosis, something that people of the time (this was written in 1892) would not have been familiar with.  Or perhaps the entire story is a feminist statement about a woman's need to escape from the bars of her life.  I'm still not entirely sure what happened in the story but I do know that it was fun to be able to get on to Twitter after I listened to it and talk to Goodreads friends about their thoughts.

This is just the kind of short story to make me understand why some people love them so much.  This story was included in a volume of short stories on Librivox.  I'm eager to try some of the others now.  What short stories might you recommend?

Friday Finds - More Fairy Tales!

If you thought the last fairy tale book I found on a Friday had a strange name, you'll have to agree that this one tops it. From Russia, Ludmilla Petrushevskya brings us "There Once Lived A Woman Who Tried To Kill Her Neighbor's Baby: Scary Fairy Tales."  This is actually the second book of Russian fairy tales I have added to my wish list in the past week.

On a much lighter note, my next addition to the fairy tale wish list is "A Tale Dark & Grimm" by Adam Gidwitz.  Gidwitz has taken Hansel and Gretl out of their own story and into eight other fairy tale for young readers.

Ron Rash's "Serena" was one of my favorite books last year so I'm excited to see that his latest, "Burning Bright" is now out.  This I don't get though--why does it have exactly the same name as one of Tracy Chevalier's books?  Her book was only published two years ago so it shouldn't have been too hard to find out that there was already a book with this title.  Gonna read it anyway, though.

Thanks to Miz B of Should Be Reading for hosting Friday Finds!  What new books did you find this week?

Everything Austen Challenge #7 - Intimations of Austen: Stories Inspired by the Works of Jane Austen by Jane Greensmith

Intimations of Austen: Stories Inspired by the Works of Jane Austen by Jane Greensmith
116 pages
Published August 2008 by Lulu.com
Source: Author

This is a collection of nine short stories based on the works of Jane Austen. Greensmith gives some of the stories backstories, some sequels, and others what-ifs. In one story, Greensmith finds out how Fanny Price overcame her jealousy and self-doubt that was threatening her marriage to Edmund Bertram. In another, we learn of a love that Jane Bennet had before Charles Bingley. And in the last, and longest, story, Greensmith poses this what-if: what if Darcy, in order to get Wickham to agree to marry Lydia, had to agree never to marry Elizabeth?

I read this as part of Dewey's read-a-thon. I figured I'd need something nice and short sometime around hour 18 and I was right. I was dragging so badly by that point that this ended up being the slowest I have ever read 116 pages. And it was no fault of the book. Well, maybe it was a little bit the fault of the book. Because I really liked these stories and I just couldn't make myself race through them. The book opens with a story written from Mrs. Bennet's perspective about her relationship with Mr. Bennet. Greensmith did a marvelous job of making me see what might have made Mrs. Bennet the person she was in Pride & Prejudice. Greensmith also mixed in a bit of the otherworld--in one story wraiths are central and in another handwriting appears in different colors to Mr. Darcy.

Ms. Greensmith does not attempt to write in a way to mimic Austen. She has her own style and, as these are short stories, things move along at a much quicker pace than Austen used while remaining true to Austen's characters.

I have a hard time with short story collections. I find that I'm generally better off if I don't try to power my way through the entire collection at once. I wish that I would have done that with this book. I enjoyed it a great deal, but I think I would have been better able to savor each story if I had taken my time with this collection. I do recommend it lovers of Austen, particularly if you also enjoy the spin-offs and sequels.

Quick Reviews

"The English Patient" by Michael Ondaatje

Booker-prize winner story of the intersection of the lives of four damaged people in an Italian villa at the end of World War II. If you've seen the movie, it follows the book closely. Which is to say that this is hard book to keep track of as Ondaatje goes back and forth in time with each of the characters, Hana (a nurse), Caravaggio (a thief), Kip (an Indian sapper), and the hideously burned, unnamed English patient. This book is simply beautiful and poetic.



"Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders" by Neil Gaiman

This group of short stories alternatively intrigued, bored and confused me. I quite enjoyed some of the stories and thought I might want to read more Gaiman. Then the next story would leave wondering "what the heck?"

I know a lot of you out there are big Gaiman fans. Please tell me why I would want to risk spending the time reading an entire novel. Because I saw enough to convince me that Gaiman can write a good story; just not enough to convince me that all of them are.


"Madame Bovary" by Gustave Flaubert

The synopsis of this book on BN.com calls this book "a brilliant portrayal of infidelity." Uh?

A motherless, dreamy young woman marries a country doctor but soon becomes disillusioned with her life and yearns for passion in her life. Soon she begins having affairs and running up massive bills. See, I think I was supposed to feel sorry for Emma Bovary. But I didn't. I thought she was whiny, and needy and selfish. Which made me not really care whether or not the book was well written.

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
352 pages
Published April 2008 by Knopf Publishing Group

This collection of eight stories by Pulitzer Prize-winning Lahiri focuses on relationships--husband and wife, lovers, fathers and sons, sisters and brothers. All of the stories revolve around second-generation Indian immigrants, primarily middle-class Bengalis. That culture is very evident throughout the stories and clearly shapes the relationships between the characters.

Kristen wrote, in a review on bookclubclassics.com: What Lahiri does so well is embrace the common, universal challenges of mortality — of family — of relationships. Her focus on Indian-Americans only serves to provide a concrete anchor or context for those burdens and celebrations we all share.

Lahiri knows how to write a short story--she is able to give the reader plenty of detail without weighing down the movement of the story. Tension is built in the spaces, not in the action. Lahiri doesn't get bogged down in backstory or, for the most part, any contrived situations. A sense of loss permeates the collection and the characters often seem to be stuck even as they struggle to find their place between their heritage and a new culture. Some of the stories are heartbreakingly sad, some leave the reader with hope. All are beautifully written.