Saturday, March 15, 2014

BOOK: Tenth of December by George Saunders

Tenth of December by George Saunders, (audiobook)
5 h, 40 min

A collection of short stories, read by the author.  Listening to Saunders read his stories was like listening to a singer-songwriter sing their own songs - he owned them. Each story had plenty of humour - I found myself laughing in the car at some of the outrageous lines. More black humour than ha-ha, as these stories plumbed the dark side of life, and people. Many seemed to involve inner dialogues with the characters as they came to a decision. Seeing inside people's brains can be a scary place to go. Also scary to go? The detention center some prisoners can choose to go to in exchange for being guinea pigs for pharmaceutical companies researching into human emotion, etc, etc.

I am a fan of short stories, and these are the type I do like. Sometimes a surprising ending, characters that you can remember. Each story was so complete, I often got confused, wondering where the characters from the last chapter went? (Some of that is due to my less than stellar listening skills, which is a post for another day - why then do I listen to audiobooks?)

Here's a link to a graduation address Saunders gave to Syracuse graduates at convocation 2013. Very inspiring.