CC Spin #28 complete

 The Classics Club spin #28 was number 12, which on my list was The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories. "Modern" as in after WWII. Lots of great authors here. Really good writing. One thing I've learned about "modern British writers" is that most British husbands commit adultery. Often. Martin Amis, you dirty, dirty author. #ccspin #ccwhatimreading

Doris Lessing's "To Room Nineteen" was awesome. Now that I'm looking at the book again, most of the adultery began in the late 1960s. In fact, interestingly, most of the stories after the late 1960s (published date) were in first-person. (Amis's naughty "Let me Count the Times" the one standout third-person in the last third of the book.) Nowadays, one cannot find a contemporary author not writing in first-person. Ugh. Is it easier? 

Fun stories involved Brits coming to America and their reactions. Malcolm Bradbury's "Composition" and Ian MacEwan's "Psychopolis" great examples. And of course sons hating their fathers: Beryl Bainbridge's "Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie." "My Wife is a White Russian" is a great play on the meaning of white Russian, and also reminds me of many movies where an older (possibly rich) man marries a hottie. (Hell, we saw that so much in Russia: ugly and fat man in white t-shirt and jeans with a knock-out model on his arm.) Quite often a Russian (or Slavic) woman was attached to the older man in the story. (See M. Night Shyamalan's Old, although in that case she's not Slavic.) Happens enough to be stereotypical.