Review: Two-Fisted Tweets

Two-Fisted Tweets

James Hutchings

Series or Stand Alone: Stand Alone

Release Date: February 2011

Publisher: Smashwords

Pages: 4 (eBook)

Author Blog: http://teleleli.blogspot.com/

My Rating: 3/5

Source: Received for review from author

Synopsis:

[from goodreads.com]

Thirty mostly humorous stories, including science fiction, fantasy, horror and romance. Each story is less than 140 characters long (the length of a Twitter tweet).

Review:

I wasn’t exactly sure what to expect when author James Hutchings asked me to review his latest book. Two-Fisted Tweets is comprised of extremely short (140 characters or less) stories that range in subjects. And even though I use Twitter occasionally I’m not as devoted to the networking site as others are. However, I’ve always had a passion for short quotes and lyrics. I used to spend a lot of my time in high school looking up quotes (famous, anonymous, quickly made up) and lyrics depicting powerful emotions in such a small package. It astounded me how much information and feeling one could get across with a small number of words. James Hutchings has succeeded in many of his “stories” to get across the very same thing that I found in the quotes and lyrics I came to love in high school.

Most of the “stories” made me smile and laugh. Others plucked an emotional nerve which I very much enjoyed. I love reading a passage and getting emotionally involved in it.

A couple of my favorites would be:

"Rotting hands reached from the darkness. At last, someone was attracted to her for her brains."

"They withdrew his invitation to speak at the conference on stalking. But he knew they didn’t mean it."

"She tried to dance like no one was watching, but everyone stared at her. "

Other “stories” were a little too off-the-wall for my tastes. I was left puzzled by them and a tad bit confused. But overall they were very enjoyable. I’m not too familiar with flash fiction and I’ve already come to realize I’m not a short story fan. But these “stories”, which so closely mimic tweets, remind me so much of the quotes I love. I definitely enjoyed reading Two-Fisted Tweets although the time literally flew by when I read them.

Twitter fans will definitely get a kick out of Hutchings’ “stories”. And any quote fan like me will appreciate a lot of the individual “stories” in the book.

P.S. (cover talk)

I admit it doesn’t have anything to do with the stories but it’s still a lot of fun. I like the vintage comic-book style.