The Hour When the Ship Comes in

I read The Hour When the Ship Comes in this week. This story revolved around Yancy, a man who committed a crime. The story portrayed his life from the time the crime was committed onward. The story moved very quickly and focused on one main character. By only having one character, it is easier to get involved with the character. One can grow to become more engaged in the character. Guardian Angel was a long, drawn out story. Rather than one main character, the novel incorporated a vast number of different characters, all with varying degrees of importance. I found this reading to be much more cumbersome than the short story. The Hour When the Ship Comes In had one main plot; whereas, the Guardian Angel had a multitude of different plots. I tended to have some difficulty keeping up with all the different plots, especially at the end when I had to figure out how they all were connected in some strange way. On the other hand, I found myself to be bored with a single plot such as Yancy. The length of each story accurately goes with the depth and multitude of characters and plots.

I felt that Guardian Angel challenged me much more than The Hour When the Ship Comes In. The short story was much more predictable and easier reading than the novel. I tend to gravitate towards the shorter stories, but can be disappointed by the abrupt end when I am enjoying the story. I did not enjoy reading the Guardian Angel. Contrary to the ending in The Hour When the Ship Comes In, I ended the story with several unanswered questions.

Black Betty

I enjoyed reading Black Betty this week by Walter Mosley. It made me realize the tough times that different races and ethnic backgrounds had to go through to survive in our world. The one story that I also read that caught my eye was The Blind Man's Sighted Daughters by Joyce Oates. The reason why this story title caught my eye was because I have two daughters of my own and it made me curious what this was about. There wasn't too many simliar ideas or topics about these stories. The Blind Man's Sighted Daughters wasn't really a mystery, I reallly didnt have any questions during the story. One of the daughters was the care taker of thier dad, took control and was there for him. As the other daughter was trying to find different arrangements like assisted living places for him to live. Hopefully my daughters take care of me and just dont give up on me so easy. Having said that Black Betty was a mystery and had race and ethnic issues in thier story in which thier backgrounds and setttings of the story where very important. Overall I actually enjoyed both of these stories, even though Joyce Oates story really wasnt similar to The Maltease Falcon or Black Betty it was a good story and would reconmend it to someone that has a family or interested in what thier daughters are thinking when your getting down to the end of the line.

At the Top of His Game

I read "At the Top of His Game" by Stephan Rhodes because that caught my eye and made me wonder what his game actually was. Mark Barston was a 36 year old man that worked on Wall Street and did some trades. He was in a rough time in his life by living up to high society expectations, battling through work and trying to manage his marriage. Mark had hard time with office politics but he seamed to use his tactics to overcome situations just in the nick of time. Because his work was so demanding and he had a passion for what he did his marriage was falling every minute. Work was getting in the way, and trying to live and act like someone he is not is very difficult. Th one this I kind of liked about the story was the author left things unresolved and it makes me want to read more. He leaves ideas and situations out there for wondering and me being curious to take over.After reading "The Maltease Falcon", I think that Mark and Sam had same ideas and thoughts about thier work. They wanted to do the best thing for thier work and give it thier best, which makes them both strong with thier jobs. MArk and Sam both liked to take control of situations. In both stories thier co workers played a part, Mark had searches done about his rival and Sams partner was murdered. Having these two stories and comparing them, to me they were pretty similar to one another