Review of Tales of the Seventies
Posted: 29 Aug 2021, 01:53
[Following is a volunteer review of "Tales of the Seventies" by David Done.]
Tales of the Seventies is a collection of short stories and one short novel that takes place around the ’70s in the famous city of San Francisco, California. The Author David Done wrote these stories and the novel between the years 1970 and 1975, he never finished or continued writing these for years, until he found the drafts recently when he had to move to a new home and decided to edit them to create what today is Tales of the Seventies. I can say it was a good decision.
There is absolutely no relation between one story and another, which creates great diversity. In the book, there are 7 short stories, with the names of “Point to Point After”, “Blind San Franciscans”, “The cat burglars”, “Mack the knife”, “The three-card shuffle”, “The San Francisco Adventure” and “The short unhappy life of Terrence McAkers”, mentioned in order. These are followed by a novella called “Yesteryears Snows”, that according to what is promised it might be able to transport its readers back to San Francisco in the 70´s. Is this the perfect book to take a journey in time and time travel with the help of it? Find out reading the stories.
What I liked about this is that most of the characters in the story were presented correctly and had their background showed to fully understand their decisions and stories of life. When I started reading the first story “Point to Point After” I was surprised, a little confused with the sudden change between past and present but I understood this change pretty quickly. It was original and unique, with quite a great plot twist that gave me a high expectation for the next stories and even more for the novella. The narration was exceptionally well done and easy to read in most parts. I adored the originality of the whole collection and how even if I´ve never been to San Francisco, I felt like I know it by heart now. Some of the stories dealt with topics I have never seen or read before and had quite a unique development of story like in “The Cat Burglars” and “The three-card shufflers”.
But, as much as I liked how original and unique all the stories were, I need to mention that I did not like some of them and some I did not even understand, besides that, the many bad words and profane language was not something I appreciated, but it did not affect my reading much to grade it lower because of that. The development of some stories turned a little bit confusing and unfinished, like in the “Blind San Franciscans”, but still, this was one of the stories I liked more. Some of the stories were great, some others did not do much to keep the high level and made it go down to average for me. I loved the first story but I disliked the last couple of stories.
This book with short and not too deep of a character development was not my cup of tea, but I can say I liked the book in general. I liked some of the stories, some I heavily disliked and the novella was not something I would consider amazing, but still very entertaining. As a whole, I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. I took one star from the rating because I certainly did not enjoy every little story, but enjoyed pretty much most of it.
Despite my opinion, I would actually recommend the book. I want to recommend it to those who are in search for an easy, not too complicated and fast read, a book you can read in a short period of time or just read one story at a time. I want to direct it more to those who don’t mind adult and bad language, as it does have sexual content and does not keep a professional language within some its stories.
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Tales of the Seventies
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Tales of the Seventies is a collection of short stories and one short novel that takes place around the ’70s in the famous city of San Francisco, California. The Author David Done wrote these stories and the novel between the years 1970 and 1975, he never finished or continued writing these for years, until he found the drafts recently when he had to move to a new home and decided to edit them to create what today is Tales of the Seventies. I can say it was a good decision.
There is absolutely no relation between one story and another, which creates great diversity. In the book, there are 7 short stories, with the names of “Point to Point After”, “Blind San Franciscans”, “The cat burglars”, “Mack the knife”, “The three-card shuffle”, “The San Francisco Adventure” and “The short unhappy life of Terrence McAkers”, mentioned in order. These are followed by a novella called “Yesteryears Snows”, that according to what is promised it might be able to transport its readers back to San Francisco in the 70´s. Is this the perfect book to take a journey in time and time travel with the help of it? Find out reading the stories.
What I liked about this is that most of the characters in the story were presented correctly and had their background showed to fully understand their decisions and stories of life. When I started reading the first story “Point to Point After” I was surprised, a little confused with the sudden change between past and present but I understood this change pretty quickly. It was original and unique, with quite a great plot twist that gave me a high expectation for the next stories and even more for the novella. The narration was exceptionally well done and easy to read in most parts. I adored the originality of the whole collection and how even if I´ve never been to San Francisco, I felt like I know it by heart now. Some of the stories dealt with topics I have never seen or read before and had quite a unique development of story like in “The Cat Burglars” and “The three-card shufflers”.
But, as much as I liked how original and unique all the stories were, I need to mention that I did not like some of them and some I did not even understand, besides that, the many bad words and profane language was not something I appreciated, but it did not affect my reading much to grade it lower because of that. The development of some stories turned a little bit confusing and unfinished, like in the “Blind San Franciscans”, but still, this was one of the stories I liked more. Some of the stories were great, some others did not do much to keep the high level and made it go down to average for me. I loved the first story but I disliked the last couple of stories.
This book with short and not too deep of a character development was not my cup of tea, but I can say I liked the book in general. I liked some of the stories, some I heavily disliked and the novella was not something I would consider amazing, but still very entertaining. As a whole, I rate this book 3 out of 4 stars. I took one star from the rating because I certainly did not enjoy every little story, but enjoyed pretty much most of it.
Despite my opinion, I would actually recommend the book. I want to recommend it to those who are in search for an easy, not too complicated and fast read, a book you can read in a short period of time or just read one story at a time. I want to direct it more to those who don’t mind adult and bad language, as it does have sexual content and does not keep a professional language within some its stories.
******
Tales of the Seventies
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon