I am not a voracious reader of books unlike some of the members of mouthshut and can barely manage to read a few in a calendar year.
When I was in Ghana on a one-year assignment, I spotted a book in one of our guest houses, which read ''COLLECTED SHORT STORIES of Roald Dahl''. The book lay totally neglected, and nobody seemed to acknowledge its presence. The house was a very big house by Indian standards and we always used to play cricket in its hall. And believe me you could bowl from 23 yards with a decent run up!!
The place I used to work was too far from our house and the drive to it always used to take a minimum of 45 minutes which was quite long because on the return trip in the night, my colleague would invariably end up sleeping most of the times. Initially, I loved to be a spectator and watch all the action around me(Remember Robert Miles' Children song?). As the rule goes that things become monotonous when they become repetitive and slowly, I became bored playing the staring game.
A couple of months passed by and the book lay there lifeless as ever as though time had got stuck up. So, during one of my regular visits to the guesthouse, picked up the book hoping to make my morning trips to the banks a bit more interesting. I discovered that the book had a no of short stories, which would ensure that it would keep me occupied for a couple of months at least. The book was so fat (to my eyes!!)that it took a couple of months for me to muster up some courage and start reading it, and from there on, things did become interesting.
About the Author:
Roald Dahl (1919-1990): Born in Glamorgan of Norwegian parents in 1916, Roald Dahl became a fighter pilot who served in a few countries where he developed a liking for writing short stories. Later, after a successful writing career and his death in 1990, Penguin Books published the ''Collected Short Stories'', which was an Omnibus volume containing stories from his previous books KissKiss, Over To You,Switch Bitch, Someone Like You and Eight Further Tales Of The Unexpected.
What the book offers:
The book has a lot of stories with varied subjects of interest. Your imagination during the reading can go through war time reality , intrigue, spirituality, serendipity, virtual reality etc. and can evoke a range of possible emotions(cannot guarantee but there are 52 stories!!). The author sure has a writing style, which has a lot of fluidity and is light on the readers' minds with humor to take the seriousness of the subject at times. One of the positive traits in Roald Dahl's writing skills is that, he provides twists in the tales, which can take you off guard.
Some of my favorite stories:
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I will just brief about a few of the many stories that I liked in this book.
1) William and Mary:
William was never loving or considerate in the eyes of his wife Mary, who always felt the need to live life her way and had a lot of vexed feelings inside her, caused by her strict husband (resembles our conservative dads!!!) William dies and leaves behind a letter, which reveals that he is part of a weird experiment which, if goes well, will keep his mind(brain) alive (The concept of the experiment was to keep the mind alive when the body gives up just because there was a failure of a heart or kidney or the sort). The very fact that William cannot speak and doesn't have a human form excites his wife Mary to take custody of him and express herself in front of him with all the freedom that lay suppressed within her, when he was alive. It sure is light on the readers' minds.
2) The great Switcheroo:
This is an amorous and risky adventure game played by Victor and Jerry who are obsessed with each other's wives and want to make it to their beds without the wives suspecting. Victor chalks out a plan, which is practiced by the two aspirants to perfection driven by the urge for ecstasy. Do they succeed in satisfying their desires? Find out for yourselves.
3) UNCLE OSWALD:
There are a few stories published by Roald Dahl about the adventures of his uncle Oswald Cornelius, who is held in high esteem by Dahl for his sophisticated life,intelligence, love exploits and his style of enjoying life to the fullest. The stories do have a class of sophistication in them and makes for a good read.
4) The Great Automatic Grammatizator:
Adolph Knipe was a genius who was good at building state of the art computing machines. He is not satisfied with what he is being doing and during one of his hard earned breaks from work at his house; he is struck by an idea. I am just presenting the idea in RoaldDahl's words
Then suddenly, he was struck by a powerful but simple
little truth, and it was this: that English grammar is
governed by rules that are almost mathematical in their strictness! Given the words, and given the sense of what is to be said, then there is only one correct order in which those words can be arranged.No, he thought, that isn't that quite accurate. In many sentences there are several alternative positions for words and phrases, all of which may be grammatically correct. But what the hell.The theory itself is basically true. Therefore, it stands to reason that an engine built along the lines of the electric computer could be adjusted to arrange words(instead of numbers) in their right order according to the rules of grammar. Give it the verbs, the nouns,the adjectives, the pronouns, store them in the memory section of the vocabulary, and arrange for them to be extracted as required. Then feed it with plots and live it to write the sentences.
After this,does the boy succeed in making a machine that he dreams of and does it make a successful business proposition tool? Read and find out.
I think I will stop here and would like to recommend you to pick a copy of the book and enjoy it thoroughly as I did. The book is ideal for people who can spare an hour in the night or for those who have time during their travel to their work places like I did.
Also, there are a few stories of war time heroics and the sort as the Autor himself was a fighter pilot which should satisfy the action hungry readers (Not that there is a lot of action in it but should be acceptable).
thanks for reading!!! and ......
Published by: Penguin publications
Price : 395 Rs
8-11 pounds
No of pages : 768
No of stories: 52
Rating:8/10
I had used the mouthpad for this title and had got a reply from the site stating that it has been included with the requested title.I could not find the name and hence have included here as I have not heard from them.So, kindly bear!!
buy
Muni
