Selected Shorts: Readers & Writers (Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story)

For once, readers outshine writers in this collection. Ray Bradbury's "Exchange," read by Rochelle Oliver, and Audrey Niffenegger's "The Night Bookmobile," read by Christina Pickles, are fantastical homages to the relationship between readers and their librarians. Oliver gives the better performance, especially in her rendition of the precise, caring librarian. Pickles's voice lacks the Chicago flavor so essential to many of Niffenegger's works. The best story, Molly Giles's "The Writers' Model," wryly narrated by Blair Brown, explores the limits of men penning real women's lives. The rest is barely entertaining. Leonard Nimoy is totally out of touch with the British origins of the jungle explorer in Evelyn Waugh's "The Man Who Liked Dickens," though the title character comes across as appropriately crusty and manipulative. Walter R. Brooks's story about a naughty talking and reading horse, Ed, is overly long and puerile, despite Tony Robert's best equine efforts. Fans of this series will be disappointed, and newcomers should start elsewhere.
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