| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Tales of Soldiers and Civilians: And Other Stories (Penguin Classics) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Authors
Discover books, learn about writers, and more.
Product Description
Product Description
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
The recent movie _The Blair Witch Project_ has brought scary stories back into vogue. After reading this book, I realized you can make a direct connection from this film to Ambrose Bierce. The connection would pass through Stephen King and H.P.Lovecraft along the way. I've seen things in both of these writers that could have been lifted directly out of one of Bierce's stories. In Bierce's story, "The Damned Thing", with its talk about colors that can and can't be seen, I could have sworn I was reading Lovecraft. Bierce is a master at quick twists and shocking violence, and delivers scares fast and furious. I got chills with several of these short stories, which certainly makes for good horror reading.
The book gives the reader a sample of Bierce's short stories. Most of the stories are tied around American Civil War themes, which is no surprise as Bierce served in the Union army during that conflict. His experiences gave him the necessary frame of reference to write these dark stories. And when I say dark, I mean DARK! Some of these tales will make your jaw drop. The violence in them is extremely unsettling. Chickamauga and Oil of Dog are sickening, describing blown open heads and dead babies in graphic detail.
Did I mention Bierce's prose? Some of the best you'll read. His prose is so amazing that I found myself rereading some of his passages just so I could make sure I was getting the full meaning. It is that rich and textured. It's also extremely funny in places. In the introduction it is written that Bierce lived in England for several years and was embraced by the English, who are masters not only of the language, but also insults. I'm not surprised when I look at how he writes. He can pen an insult that would bring tears of joy to an Englishman's eyes.
Finally, Bierce's stories show incredible depth for the short story format. He ridicules false courage, irony, lawyers, and even unions in the story, "The Revolt of the Gods". I highly recommend that anyone not familiar with Ambrose Bierce give this book a read. It reads fast and you'll laugh and be shocked within the space of one page. Good stuff.
Ghostly occurances, strange machines, unexplained episodes, monsters... Bierce seems to have lived in a strange world of shadows all his own. It is somehow fitting that Bierce simply disappeared in the early 20th Century.
Great book. Definitely a classic.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
- Books > Fiction > Anthologies
- Books > Fiction > Classics
- Books > Fiction > Contemporary Fiction
- Books > Fiction > Historical
- Books > Fiction > Literary Fiction
- Books > Fiction > Short Stories
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
