Reviews tagging 'War'

Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks

3 reviews

jonwood's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional funny lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This is a nice palate cleanser. This is a comforting and cozy read, that still tackles important issues in a few stories, such as the aftermath of war, immigration, and people's impressions, biases towards other before getting to know them. He has a fun sense of humor in many of the stories without being too in your face. No new ground was broken, but sometimes you just want to read something perfectly acceptable, and for a first collection by someone who's trade is not writing this is really good (Hanks has written screen plays before, and I've enjoyed the movies/shows he's wrote.) I wasn't keen on one of the stories being written as a screenplay instead of a short story, but besides that no major issues with the book. Looking forward to reading his novel.

---

Content Warnings

Minor: Cursing, War, and Sexual content

asahome's review against another edition

3.0

TL;DR: Well written slice of life blurbs with historical, modern, and even futuristic settings. Would recommend for short story fans. 

I found it difficult to decide where the content warnings should be because I usually decide based on how much page time an item gets. As these are all short stories, this measure didn't help. I decided to break it up based on how many stories dealt with the issue.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Grief and Sexual content

Minor: Infidelity, Confinement, Alcohol, Violence, War, Xenophobia, and Homophobia

Homophobia:

set in the historical context of the 1950s it mentions men who don't have passions towards women and how they behave with their partners to hide their relationships

Grief:

there are couple stories with different stages of grief, a veteran who has came home from the war and can't settle, a young man discovering something about his father that hurts their relationship

War and Violence:

one story discusses a war veteran's home life afterwards and he has a flashback to when he was active military

Confinement and Xenophobia:

this story was about someone being snuck into the US, we don't look at it from the person in confinement's perspective, but we do watch them crawl in and out of their hiding place, I didn't put this under trafficking because that feels like something with malicious intent towards the person where the story spoke of friends

ellyreadstoo's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring relaxing medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Very blown away by Tom Hanks as a writer. Would read more by him for sure. 

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: War