3 out of 4 stars
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A Bundle of Colorful Yarns: An Eclectic Short Story Collection by Louis Winslow includes a story about a vampire, a story about a sasquatch, one about an evil monkey, an ironic situation with a lottery ticket, ghost stories, true stories of the author’s experiences in Mexico and the United States, and many more. It truly is an eclectic mix. This book is good for those that enjoy reading in short spurts.
Most of the stories were set in the outdoors, which was refreshing. I love the cover, because it really fits the majority of the short stories in the book, and it really made me want to read it. I wish that a couple of the stories were longer, as they would have been more interesting if they were more developed.
I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. I found four grammar mistakes in my 252 page version. Some of the short stories were interesting and fun to read, but I did not like all of them. This is the positive of having so many different kinds in one book. Some of them were also better written than others, in my opinion. In reflecting on how I feel about the author’s writing style, I think that the reason that I cannot give a higher rating is because he sometimes tells instead of showing. This probably is not helped by the fact that many of the stories rely heavily on dialogue. However, I thought that most of the dialogue was very believable.
What I didn’t expect was that I liked the nonfiction stories best, and I do not tend to enjoy nonfiction as much. I felt like he wrote best when describing events in his own life. He managed to make stories about his dogs and their hunting trips interesting. Some of the fiction stories seemed a little flat to me, although the author does have a good imagination. Other fiction stories however were intriguing and had interesting twists. I also like the wide range of subjects the fiction short stories covered.
This book has some violence, disturbing, and sexual content, so I would not recommend it to young readers. I think that my favorite stories were when ghosts visited the main character. They were both cleverly written and creepy. The endings were unpredictable, and I feel that this was when the author’s real talent shown through. Interestingly, I think that the author's true talent is in nonfiction and supernatural fiction, which are obviously complete opposites. That is what makes A Bundle of Colorful Yarns so amazing to read; it is so rare for an author to succeed in such varied genres.
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A Bundle of Colorful Yarns
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