Tag Archives: collection

Monsters: A Book Review

I don’t normally review books in soft-copy. It’s difficult to read from a computer screen for that amount of time, and I find it easier to relate to a book’s solid permanence; if I can pick it up to hold and read, maybe you can [and should] too. That aside, I agreed to review something a friend had written, so here it is in all its candidness.

Monsters: a collection of short stories is exactly that, seven tales penned by  Caleb Bollenbacher, a 2011 graduate from Baylor University. Only available on Amazon for the Kindle, an excerpt of the book’s description is as follows:

Nobody yearns to be a monster. But sometimes it works out that way.
Sometimes you merely find yourself looking into the face of one.
Sometimes that face is your own. Continue reading

The Cloaca: A Book Review

The sophomore collection of short stories from Halifax-based author Andrew Hood, The Cloaca is 138 pages of people who don’t know what they’re doing.

Described on the back cover as “your high school gym coach, drunk and dishing dirt on all the other teachers on the crosstown bus,” the stories in this book capture your attention like a man on a bicycle wiping out in the rain, or a bunch of Italians yelling at each other on the sidewalk [both of which I saw two days ago]. Continue reading