A BAG OF STRANGE TALES IT IS...
592267
Hello, this is quite the collection of short stories.  These stories don't necessarily hold to the same theme.  Most of the stories are quite dark and do not have a happy ending.  Thanks.
1255613
This is a collection of eleven stories and three poems populated by characters with wild imaginations.

In The End of the Expert, a man is asked to speak at a conference, but things don't quite go as planned.
Absence of Monster reflects on the changing face of monsters.
Arguments for an empty room is a train of thought on what constitutes the concept of being empty.
In Under ground and over thought, strange things occur above ground while stranger things occur underfoot.
history lessons is a poem about the things we can learn from the past.
In The water rabbits, we meet the inhabitants of a small island community where a writers imagination is sparked after witnessing an unsettling incident with the water rabbits. As it was the last day of autumn here in the Southern Hemisphere as I read this, I found this passage suitably apt: Autumn passes quickly, like it has a pressing appointment elsewhere. It's never really settled, has been looking like it wanted to go from the moment it arrived. So, as soon as the temperature starts to drop, it makes its excuses and is off and out. Did you meet Autumn? No, I didn't, didn't even know it was here.
pep talk is a poem Im not sure I understood. A pep talk given to traveling coffee salesmen?
OPPORTUNITIES explores the process of coming up with the next new fad.
In The new old, we find out what happens when a man decides to say yes to every request.
The Orphan questions the reality of what we see in print.
Pattern recognition is a story that is three pages long but consists of just four sentences, one long, one short, one long, one short. Im not sure if this is the pattern were meant to recognize.
The Bombardier takes a humorous look at the slow cooker.
Tight studies the effects of wearing a high-tensile bodysuit.
The long game is a poem that looks at how the glut of books on the market - due to the self-publishing phenomenon  is leaving authors destitute. (I think.)

The stories and poems are all well-written and eloquent in their use of language. The stories are more about introducing ideas and commentary than providing a narrative. Some are even structured like essays. They are the literary equivalent of a farce, in which high-brow and educated people sublimely discuss the ridiculous. As you can see from my descriptions above, I found it hard to understand some of the pieces and had to read some of them more than once to make any sense of them.

Still, if you're willing to put in the effort, you will reap the rewards.

Favorite pieces: Arguments for an empty room and The Bombardier.

I received this book in return for an honest review.
470737
Most of the stories were weird stories about society's  "misfits".  Not all, but most stories wanted to "shock" the reader---writing was not particularly good--
4800537
I received a free copy of this paperback book from Strange Books in exchange for an honest review.

Nothing is Strange is the first collection of short stories by Mike Russell. I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to read this weird and wonderful collection after having enjoyed his work in Strange Medicine. In this collection, we get to see a wider variety of his style with twenty stories. I liked all of the stories featured here, but my favorites are "The Warehouse", "The Meeting", "Barry and the Triplets", "Extraordinary Elsie", "Mask Man", "Stan and Stan", and "The Living Crown".

These uniquely surreal stories aren't for everyone, but all of them are really well put together. As for all of the stories I mentioned above, I wouldn't say no to hearing a little more from those worlds or having each of them expanded to something a bit longer. If you like Karen Russell's style from Vampires in the Lemon Grove, you may want to give strange, in the best way, tales a look.

Thanks again to Strange Books for this wonderful opportunity!
4750448
Most of the stories aren't that interesting. Or maybe the way they're told isn't that interesting.
607473
This is a collection of short stories. Hollis Seamon has written some seriously unusual, unforgettable, poignant and thought provoking essays about everyday people in unusual circumstances. First there are two young people in their teens dying of cancer then there's the garbage men that find babies in a trash bag and try to save them. There is the cat lady, an agoraphobic, a plagiarist, and also sibling rivalry, possible murder and an incredibly unusual dog. Although the writer has come up with truly unique situations that pique a readers interest, I found myself so depressed reading the stories that I didn't want to continue. That is unusual for me. I like books that make me think, feel and wonder. But Corporeality was just too much packed into each story. If I had been able to know the characters after or lengthen many of the stories out and also have some not so over the top emotions I may have enjoyed it more. Maybe short stories aren't for me.
1965698
On one hand, this collection is fairly thick with splendidly shady stories. Objects in Dreams May Be Closer Than They Appear. The Bleeding Shadow. King Death. Josh. Vampire Lake. The enchantingly bizarre A Journey of Only Two Paces. Near Zennor. And not least the surprising closer A Tangle of Green Men.

I was still thinking about some of those stories days later.

On the other, the valleys between these peaks seem deeper than in the other DF&H collections Ive read. Indeed, some tales struck me as so wide of the best mark -- they just never get underway at all -- that the overall fabric of the collection suffered as a result. To be sure, it's set of great stories ... but not quite a great anthology.
3387760
These 9 short stories belong in different genres, such as folk tales, supernatural, or sci-fi.  Most of them involve weird things or beings: angels, aliens, witchcraft, or mermaids.  Most of them are interesting.  A few I didn't like.  And a few are quite moving, especially the title story.  But as long as a collection of short stories, such as this one, has several good stories in it, I can recommend it even if it has a few stories I don't like.
2863833
This is one of the oddest of the Showcase volumes that DC has yet released.

The overarching theme, as the title indicates, is action and adventure in post-apocalyptia.and how it was depicted in DC Comics over the quarter-century interval from 1960  1983.

The Great Disaster compiles quite a bit of material, some of it from comics that are going to be mysteries to even the most ardent DC fanboys.

A big chunk of this material is the Atomic Knights stories from issues of Strange Adventures from 1960-1964. The Knights are a team of adventurers, clad in  radiation-proof armor, who try to restore safety to a post-apocalyptic world filled with mutants, monsters and villains.

Then there are brief 8-page and 6-page stories, all with the subtitle of The Day After Doomsday, that ran in Weird War Tales and The House of Secrets from 1970  1983. These are primarily cast as horror stories, although, as comics from the Code era, they lack the gruesome black humor of the Fallout video games.

Another chunk of The Great Disaster consists of Hercules Unbound comics from 1975  1977, involving the God from Olympus, who, in the aftermath of atomic war, strives to bring peace and order to a lawless world.

Then there are all sorts of obscure one-shot and limited run titles that Ive never heard of, including a 1975 Jack Kirby effort titled Atlas the Great; a 1976 series of Kamandi: The Last Boy on Earth (that doesnt feature Kamandi); and finally, a strange crossover from a 1983 issue of DC Comics Presents, in which Superman tangles with the Atomic Knights (?!).

If you're willing to make allowances for the contrived nature of assembling all these comics into a thematic compilation, and their rather mild-mannered material  necessitated by the Code  there is certainly some good artwork here and, all things considered, some good storytelling (often done within the confines of a shorter-length, single-issue episode format).

One of my favorite comic artists of the 70s, Alfredo Alcala, is represented, and his meticulous cross-hatching and shading is really apparent in these black-and-white reprints.

As other reviewers have pointed out, other well-known artists represented in The Great Disaster include Frank Miller, Jack Sparling, Howard Chaykin, Murphy Anderson, Paul Kirchner (!), Steve Ditko, and Walt Simonson.

Summing up, if you're a fan of those lesser-known DC characters and titles, or if you are seeking an Old School vibe that pre-dates Fallout 4, then this compilation is worth picking up.
4941342
If you are interested in reading Grimm's collection of fairy tales--this free version will provide you with many of the old classics. However, I must admit, I found that just reading the stories was a strange mix. Some of the stories were quite interesting while others were somewhat boring. I think that the book might have benefited from having a companion or something to help elaborate upon the meaning and background of the stories. Still--you can't beat the kindle price! :)
282610
Once upon a time I went to a local bookstore and the guy behind the counter asked me what kind of books I liked to read.

I said, "Weird ones, mostly."

He got the strangest look on his face.  I'm sure he'd been expecting me to say, Mystery or Horror or some other easily defined genre.  At last he said, "Well we've got some Steven King stuff over there."

I'm not sure why "weird" isn't a genre by now.  If I was running a book store it would have a section labeled "Weird Stuff," You'd go over there and find books like Three Bags Full, House of Leaves, The Beasts of New York, and the Thursday Next Series.  And if you went a further down the row, nestled somewhere between Buddy Holly is Alive and Well on Ganymede and When Graveyards Yawn you'd find a little book by Chuck Wendig called Irregular Creatures.

Reading this book was a strange experience for me.  See, when I was a kid we used to go to the creek and swim. I remember dipping my toe into the freezing water, and then my feet, and then my legs.  Finally, I'd take the plunge and sink my whole body into the water.  After a minute or two I was wondering why I had been so freaked out by a little cold water.

Getting into this book was a lot like getting into that creek.  It took me a while to acclimatize to the style of prose Wendig employs to deliver his stories.  At first it struck me as overly simplistic and far too direct.  But gradually as that first story slowly unfolded I began to understand.  From that point on there was no turning back.  I plowed forward through each increasingly weird tale and loved every minute of it.

There are books that you will read for the sheer beauty of the sentences, the perfect poetry of the prose.  This isn't one of those books.  This book takes every hint of artificial adornment and crushes it beneath its hobnailed boot; it spits upon subtlety, and gleefully defenestrates that worn out old saw that the writer must show and not tell.

If Chuck Wendig wants us to know that he hates Mondays he does not muck about with an entire paragraph describing the process of waking from a fitful dream only to realize that the cat has peed on the floor and the alarm clock reset itself in the night culminating with a final horrified glance at the calendar.

When Chuck Wendig wants us to know that he hates Mondays he writes, "I [bleep]ing hate Mondays," and moves on with the story.

And I for one am fine with that.  In fact that's part of the beauty of this book.  Because what Wendig has to say is far too important to let it be overshadowed by how he says it.  It is clear from the get-go that the stories are the stars of the show in this book and they are amazing.

I will not do you the disservice of summarizing the tales, but I will say they're probably unlike anything you've ever read.  The best of the bunch is a tiny tale called "Beware of Owner."  Reading this story is like having someone slide a rusty machete into your belly and then twist it hard.  And I mean that in a good way.

The other stories are good too, though some better than others.  One in particular, "The Auction" had a fantastically well-developed setting that felt as if it could contain an entire novel's worth of action, but the story itself didn't quite live up to the incredible world that had been created for it.  Also when reading "Lethe and Mnemosyne" I got slightly confused.  Even after looking up the mythological characters of the title I still didn't get what any of it had to do with a giant killer chicken.  If any of you know I would love to be enlightened.

But anything critical I can say would be insignificant compared to the wonder and the awe contained in this oddly charming menagerie of monstrosities.  Irregular Creatures is a fantastic book, fully worth the pittance of a price its author is asking.  So slap your three dollars down on the digital barrelhead and prepare to be amazed.

Irregular Creatures will take you on a journey you will never forget.
2637406
A dear friend of mine gave me this book and its sequel as a Christmas gift.  I have to say, the tales are often very, very funny.  Some of the stories are just bizarre beyond imagining, and the depth to which people can stoop is sometimes surreal.
There are, however, two complaints I have with the book.  First, there is too much padding.  The intros that philosophically discuss "hard cases," instances in which it is debarted whether someone is a candidate for a Darwin Award, such as celibate priests, aren't terribly interesting.  And they are disingenuous, since clearly no one wants to debate the finer points, but just get on to the stories.  Also, the book is padded by the Urban Legends, which are just a waste of space.  We are interested only in the "real" stories, not the legendary ones.
My second and more substantive complaint is that the entire concept of the books borders on callousness.  Good lord, these people died!  These aren't actually jokes, but tragedies.  I would hate to know that my own death managed to serve as entertainment for others.  So, while I found many of the stories funny, a voice kept whispering in my ear that perhaps I oughtn't.
2789670
Being a long-time resident of Portland, Oregon, I know that there are plenty of quirky locations in the city.  Fugitives And Refugees by Chuck Palahniuk reminded me of that...

This is one of those strange little books that will probably only appeal to those who live (or have lived) in the city.  It's sort of a travel guide, personal diary, and social commentary of Palahnuik wrapped into a single small volume.  Each chapter that deals with locations or places to see is followed by a "postcard" from the past that relates a personal experience.  These are really bizarre stories, and you'll either really like them or wonder why they are even in the book.  The chapters on locations list such things as restaurants to see, the most haunted locations in Portland, and museums that are worth visiting.  Many of these sites are *not* five star locations you'll see in any other travel guide, like Wacky Willy's Surplus.  But it will send you down the path to the off-beat side of Portland.

The part I found most interesting is the chapter on the Shanghai Tunnels.  Portland was a notorious port in earlier days, and most of the bars and hotels at that time were connected to an underground tunnel system.  These tunnels were used to "shanghai", or abduct, people and smuggle them onto ships for forced labor.  There were also opium dens and other uses for these underground passages.  Over time they deteriorated, but there are now guided tours and efforts to restore them as part of Portland's past.

Is the book good?  It's got moments...  For me, it was more hit and miss, however...
478520
The stories included in this collection are somewhere between Anais Nin and Ray Bradbury and the result is a strange, fascinating book that will appeal to readers in the horror, sci-fi and urban fantasy genres.
167434
This is the best Lovecraftian Mythos collection I've found yet (having read more than a few), because it draws heavily from Lovecraft's contemporaries for a very Weird Tales mix.  It is filled with 1000 (!!!) pages of works, including many by Lovecraft's friends and contemporaries, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E Howard.

There's a sprinkling of modern fare in there too:  "The Doom That Came To Innsmouth" particularly stands out as a twisted little tale of the survivors of the government raid on the eponymous town.  But where most Mythos anthologies seem to be strictly Lovecraft or contemporary authors, this takes a different tack, and one appreciates that.
3269638
It is a selection of SF stories.  A couple are very long winded but overall interesting material.  I wouldn't class a couple as actual SF.  More just strange.
353418
A very uneven collection of stories where some truly horrific classics are nearly overshadowed by the unfortunate inclusion of more contemporary 'literary' shorts. Definitely not a book to be read cover-to-cover, but the classics are well-worth the price.