{"id":24383,"date":"2019-03-22T13:32:53","date_gmt":"2019-03-22T18:32:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=24383"},"modified":"2019-03-21T14:46:59","modified_gmt":"2019-03-21T19:46:59","slug":"book-report-stories-of-suspense-1963-1967","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/22\/book-report-stories-of-suspense-1963-1967\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Report: <i>Stories of Suspense<\/i> (1963, 1967)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/bsgfx\/storiesofsuspense.jpg\" width=\"200\" alt=\"Book cover\" align=\"right\" hspace=\"4\">I chose this book because <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/13\/a-book-sale-ive-been-training-my-whole-life-for\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">it was on my floor<\/a>.  It&#8217;s a Scholastic book from 1963, when my mother would have been starting high school.  Not that the books was hers, of course&#8211;I picked it up somewhere later.  But it&#8217;s interesting to think that this book was targeted to kids, well, kids my mother&#8217;s age, in the middle 1960s.<\/p>\n<p>The book contains:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;The Birds&#8221; by Daphne du Maurier.  The concept is the same as the Hitchcock film that came out in the same year&#8211;the birds are murderous&#8211;but the story, set in Britain instead of California, is completely different.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Of Missing Persons&#8221; by Jack Finney, wherein a man is given an opportunity to travel to a far different place.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Midnight Blue&#8221; by John Collier.  A woman dreams that her husband has murdered his partner, and she recounts her dream in uncanny detail.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Flowers for Algernon&#8221; by Daniel Keys, which was made into the 1968 film <em>Charly<\/em> which I tried to <a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2019\/03\/20\/movie-night-at-nogglestead-thwarted\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">watch recently<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Taste&#8221; by Roald Dahl, wherein a host at an elaborate dinner party wagers a gourmand that he cannot guess the vintage of the claret, with the stakes being his daughter.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Two Bottles of Relish&#8221; by Lord Dunsay, wherein a man suspected of killing his wife is watched but they cannot figure out how he would have disposed of the body.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Charles&#8221; by Shirley Jackson, wherein a child&#8217;s tales about the naughtiest boy in the kindergarton makes his parents want to meet Charles&#8217; parents at the school open house.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Contents of the Dead Man&#8217;s Pockets&#8221; by Jack Finney, wherein a man risks his life to retrieve a business paper that has blown onto the apartment building&#8217;s ledge and regrets his decision.<\/li>\n<li>&#8220;The Perfectionist&#8221; by Margaret St. Clair, wherein a man&#8217;s aunt helps him out financially, but her methods for preserving art subjects make him uneasy.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall, I liked the book.  The stories were short and clever and made me want to write short stories like this.  Kind of like the inspiration I felt reading <em><a href=\"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/21\/book-report-the-twilight-zone-encyclopedia-by-steven-jay-rubin-2018\/\" target=\"_new\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Twilight Zone Encyclopedia<\/em><\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, it hasn&#8217;t yet inspired me yet to <em>finish<\/em> a short story like this.  I am too busy reading these books to actually write anything.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I chose this book because it was on my floor. It&#8217;s a Scholastic book from 1963, when my mother would have been starting high school. Not that the books was hers, of course&#8211;I picked it up somewhere later. But it&#8217;s interesting to think that this book was targeted to kids, well, kids my mother&#8217;s age, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report","category-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24384,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24383\/revisions\/24384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}