Stories by O. Henry (Walmart) by O. Henry

Stories by O. Henry (Walmart) Reviews

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  Archit

  
  
  One Sentence : O. Henry plays in the football league of his own.
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  Andrei Tamaş

  Nefiind un scriitor de profesie (a fost medic, funcționar la bancă și pușcăriaș, fiind acuzat de fraudă fiscală) și neavând studii în litere, O. Henry reușește totuși să surprindă prin proza sa scurtă....
  Întotdeauna mi-au plăcut scrierile care reuşesc să surprindă fără a apela la niciun dram de supranatural. Perplexitatea pe care o lasă în inima cititorului după parcurgerea celor câteva pagini ale fiecărei opere este profundă, impresionând mai degrabă prin neașteptatul final decât prin substanța scrierii în sine...
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  Manuel Alfonseca

  A selection of the best stories by O.Henry, taken from nine of his collections of short stories. I exclude those in "Cabbages & Kings", which is actually a novel, as its stories carry on. The eight stories I most liked are the following:
  
  From "The four million": "The gift of the Magi," "The cop & the anthem" and "Mammon & the archer."
  
  From "The trimmed lamp": "The last leaf."
  
  From "Heart of the West": "A chaparral prince."
  
  From "Roads of Destiny": "Friends in San Rosario."
  
  From "Wirliwigs": "The ransom of Red Chief" and "Georgia's ruling."
  
  In addition to those eight, I also liked (somewhat less) another 29 stories.
  
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  V W Fulton

  I imagine that I, like many others, was only familiar with O. Henry penning the Christmas classic, "The Gift of the Magi". But, beyond Magi, my knowledge of O. Henry, and his writing, was non-existent. There are many good, thorough, reviews of the O. Henry short stories collected in this site, so, I don't really think much more is needed for you to understand the form that O. Henry follows in his short story writing. Morally guided, humorous, surprise endings, etc. There are a few "sidebar" things that I'd like to mention though, which don't seem to be highlighted as much by other reviewers, that may or may-not help you in deciding to pick up this read. One, is the broad use of words you might not be familiar with. O. Henry, I imagine, was a lover of the word, and may have never met a word he didn't like. That's not a bad thing, but, be prepared to look up a few in each story to find (or reacquaint yourself with) their meaning. I like to discover words that have been left behind, so to say, but, I know that's not everyone's dealio. Then, O. Henry likes to turn a phrase. He likes to make words "bend" to his meaning, or, which is to say, he uses terms and phrases that were unique to him and his writing style. I quite like this, but since his stories are more than one hundred years apart from our present, sometimes I really struggled to really figure out what O. Henry was trying to convey. Struggled, but when I did get them, I couldn't help but smile at their cleverness. And lastly, I think many of the stories touch upon the lives of the very wealthy, and along with those folks, the down-and-out of the times in which O. Henry lived. I think his stories (at least the stories here) viewed as whole, give us insight into the humanity and concern for the human condition that must have lived inside the soul of O. Henry. Yeah, that's all.
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  Natalie

  PREPARE YOURSELF FOR...
  DEBBIE DOWNER TIME!
  
  The foreword and the afterword cannot help but mention how underappreciated O. Henry is/was. I was convinced these smug critics were completely wrong because I read The Gift of the Magi in high school and never forgot it. I was anticipating a whole book full of The Gift of the Magis. Be careful what you wish for.
  
  Like The Gift of the Magi, almost all of these stories are slightly sweet and slightly silly with a slight "punch" or twist at the end. It's a cute formula for one or two or even five stories. I had a hard time appreciating it for over twenty of them. The punches became a little predictable. The short tales leading up to the punches became a little ho-hum. If O. Henry were the author of my (very lengthy) reading journey, would I have been the punchline?
  
  I'm giving this 3 Stars for having a few gems despite my collective disappointment.
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  Charles

  Many of these are quite slight but many are excellent. It also forshadows the modern interest in microfictions.
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  Stefan Stoyanov

  The best autor of short stories!
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  A Turtles Nest Book Reviews

  At first I didn't believe I would be able to get in to the way these short stories are written, but by the end I have to add O'Henry in with Louie Lamore in my Short Story Favorites.
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  Cheryl

  Don't read these all in one go!
  But do read them, and reread at least a few. I've always loved the ideas, not just Magi, or Ransom of Red Chief, or the Cop and the Anthem... but this time around I was able to pay more attention to the style, the vocabulary, the craftsmanship. And the ideas within the main ideas. For example, The Furnished Room is more than a horror story; it's also a commentary on the segment of society that used boarding houses, both the women who would let the rooms and the men who would tenant them.
  
  From 'The Trimmed Lamp'
  
  "We often hear 'shop-girls' spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as 'marriage-girls.'"
  
  (A near perfect commentary on the issue of political correctness, if you ask me.)
  
  From 'Compliments of the Season'
  
  "There are no more Christmas stories to write....
  "As for the children, no one understands them except old maids, hunchbacks, and shepherd dogs."
  
  Ok, to modern sensibilities that's a bit off. But read it from the pov of your great-grandfather....
  
  
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  Wesam Karam

  Great book
  I have good experience with this short stories
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  Jenny Suh

  If you have spent the last few days on your keester, staring at drug names, drug therapy, pharmacology, physiology, and statistics, and you need reassurance that life is not all about living in obscurity in the midst of academia, go and read some O'Henry stories. But only after you have gone out with friends, TALKED to people, and have utterly overwhelmed yourself with extrovertism.
  
  O'Henry sees the silver lining in life. At least his stories seem to portray him that way. He forces you to look at the every day irony of life in its most tragic or trivial of circumstances, and you find yourself helplessly laughing to yourself because the wry humor is undeniable and at the same time, so pitiful. We as humans are reduced to nothing but mere ants, inevitably left at the hands of a...(for me)... God who just seems to know how much we can take, and decides to push open the envelope that much further.
  
  Take, for example, “The Gift of the Magi.” Nearly every sentence is ironic, witty, or even bordering on sarcastic at certain points. In this particular short story, we imagine O’Henry as a grandfatherly sort with a twinkle in his eye, telling us “Now Reader, observe here….” and so on and so forth as he pulls away from the third person to the second person to address us personally at random moments . We are engaged and the couple is endearing to us in their naivete and sweetness towards each other. Much like the characters in his other story “The Last Leaf,” the young couple in this story are good and have such pure intentions, and at the same time, they are a bit melodramatic, and that’s what makes everything that much funnier.
  
  O’Henry sometimes makes me step out of myself and the situation I’m in, assess my “melo-dramaticity” (is that a word?) and try to judge whether there is some third person reader above me reading the pages of my life and laughing at me all along the way for my obsessive ways and neuroticism. It’s always a good thing when I can decide in the end that I am one of O’Henry’s oblivious characters, tossed around in this crazy life.
  
  
  
  
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  Bollinger

  Having enjoyed "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Ransom of Red Chief," I thought I knew what I would find in this small collection of O. Henry stories, but how wrong I was! His gift for humor is enormous. He can poke fun at city dwellers, cowpokes, con men, and even crazy cat ladies like me. Change, "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog" to "Memoirs of a Black Cat" and you'll have an exact representation of what it's like to live in my house. He lampooned me like Mad Magazine never could, and I loved every word of it!
  But for laugh-out-loud humor, you can't beat, "Shearing the Wolf." Take my advice and don't read it in a crowded cafeteria. Or at least, not while eating soup. Messy.
  
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  David Koblos

  Oh, the beauty of short stories! I loved them, each in their own way. After finnishing one, I couldn't help looking back and repeating in my mind its progression, its twist, and its curious outcome. Little jewels of literature, from a time when things were made to last.
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  Crystal

  I skipped a few in this edition, but it was a quick, satisfying read. "Schools and Schools" is wonderful.
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  Paula

  When I was in high school I read The Complete Works of O.Henry, a two-volume set containing hundreds of stories. I think it was that experience that cemented my love of the short story form. William Sydney Porter (O. Henry) died when he was 47, so he was a prolific writer. His stories take place in the American West, New York City, and the South, all places where he spent some portion of his life.
  This collection isn't titled "The Best of O'Henry", and it shouldn't be. Although "Gift of the Magi" is included, "The Ransom of Red Chief" is not, nor are others of his stories that I would probably like better than some that are included here. I did like "Memoirs of a Yellow Dog", which is narrated by a pampered dog named "Lovey" who would much rather be a rough-and-tumble dog of the street; eventually he gets his wish.
  The language and vocabulary in these stories are rich, and I was captivated by more than one pithy turn of phrase. I discovered O. Henry well before I discovered P. G. Wodehouse, but there is a rhythm in the writing, and a playful way with language and character description that they both seem to share. In O. Henry's work the pleasure of the language is offset at times by the pop culture references of the early 1900's, a few of of which I understood slightly, but most of which went went right by me with no discernible impact. They were probably really funny at the time of writing. All in all, though, I'd rather read a collection of O. Henry's short stories than Mark Twain's.
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  Zach Franz

  This time the "gave-up-on" label isn't so negative. I'd just gotten as much as I could/needed from the book. Part of the reason is for a lack of one continuing narrative--short stories are interesting, but as the characters and settings changed I found myself less and less motivated to dive back in. That said, O. Henry excels at capturing regional attitudes with a lexicon as vast as the heartland of which he often writes. Clever endings are his hallmark--see his most famous story, "The Gift of the Magi"--but most amounted to merely an intriguing spin or viewpoint, and less a full-blown twist. My advice: read, more than anything, for the rich characters and writing. Much may depend on how much you like short stories.
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  Jayal

  Another accidental meeting. The name O. Henry leapt out at me from a shelf, and of course having first met him in the O/L English anthology book, it held fond memories. On a side note, that book already introduced me to Gerald Durrell, so our education system isn’t completely bonkers i suppose?
  
  So the short stories. They were a delight on the whole, but some of the phrases and references made went straight over my head, which were apparently a century too old to resonate with me the millenial. Would definitely recommend nevertheless, for the sheer variety and fun of the stories, and the brilliant prose and witticisms.
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  Sabina Colleran

  I appreciate these stories especially because of the forward and afterward. But some of them I really didn't get because they didn't age well. They are set very much in the author's time and you lose it unless you know niche political connections. Plus he uses so many random words that you've never heard of. But overall charming nonetheless.
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  John

  I love this guy and his relationship with language.
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  Mariacristina

  Ho letto solo "Una storia di Natale incompiuta" e l'ho adorata. Terribile che sia - per l'appunto - incompleta!!!
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  Allison Fetch

  I originally purchased this book back in high school and it sat unread since then. I got about halfway through it a few years ago and finally finished it this week. I'm not a huge fan of short stories, but I think I should make an exception for O. Henry. While I generally didn't care for his stories set in the West, and much preferred those set in NYC, I thoroughly enjoyed most of these tales. The only one which I had already read was "Gift of the Magi", but I found others that I truly enjoyed. What I enjoy most are the surprising twists that come at the end of each tale. I sometimes could anticipate that twist but often could not. My only complaint was the complex language used, which was generally unnecessary and only served to slow my reading.
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  Donnarama

  Jason read this and enjoyed many of the stories. Some stories were difficult to get through because the vocabulary was advanced (for an almost 12 year old voracious reader) and the content a bit complex. Other stories, however, were really compelling -- like The Green Door, which was -- by far -- his favorite. That story Jason would recommend to all readers.
  
  He read the anthology from my junior high school years. I LOVED O'Henry, for the record, and would have given it a 4 or 5 star rating.