A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. A gentle Eastern European immigrant arrives in New York City after his family and his life have been torn apart by his country’s civil war. A man who loves to bowl rolls a perfect game–and then another and then another and then many more in a row until he … a row until he winds up ESPN’s newest celebrity, and he must decide if the combination of perfection and celebrity has ruined the thing he loves. An eccentric billionaire and his faithful executive assistant venture into America looking for acquisitions and discover a down and out motel, romance, and a bit of real life. These are just some of the tales Tom Hanks tells in this first collection of his short stories. They are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have!
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Wait — Tom Hanks can write, too? Funny, moving, deftly surprising stories? That’s just swell. Maybe there’s no crying in baseball, pal, but it’s perfectly acceptable in the book business. That’s how we drown envy.
The central quality to Tom’s writing is a kind of poignant playfulness. It’s exactly what you hope from him, except you wish he were sitting in your home, reading it aloud to you, one story at a time.
Reading Tom Hanks’s Uncommon Type is like finding out that Alice Munro is also the greatest actress of our time.
If you didn’t know and you probably didn’t, actor/director/producer Tom Hanks collects typewriters of all sorts. So it’s no surprise that he decided to write a collection of seventeen short stories inspired by the sound of those lovely little keys. Uncommon Type takes the reader on a ride through the hodgepodge of life. There’s sometimes rhyme and reason to the tales and sometimes not at all. Sometimes there are characters that show up time and again, yet mostly not. But always there’s the inspiration of the typewriter to tie it all together.
This is the only audio book I’ve ever actually enjoyed. One hour is usually my limit and then the cadence is too slow or the narrator too dull and the entire story ends up as background noise to whatever else I happen to be doing. But I figured if anyone could make an audio book entertaining it would be Tom Hanks. Thankfully I was not mistaken. He brought this book to life. In truth, some of the stories would have been frightfully dull if I had read them on paper, but in Tom Hanks’s voice they were like pure hilarious gold. So go listen to this, enjoy, and then marathon You’ve Got Mail, Castaway, and Forest Gump.
This review was first posted on kelseygietl.com.
I enjoyed all the stories, and liked the way they were linked to the title by having a typewriter as a key to the story. I understand Tom Hanks has a collection of old typewriters, which shows up in the stories’ details.
Many talented Mr Hanks..Really good writer. A refreshing read!
What can I say — it’s Tom Hanks!
Some of the stories were more captivating than others.
It’s been a long time since I read “short stories”. Back when my children were very small and I didn’t have the time to get involved in a good novel, I read books of short stories a lot. Since I’ve been reading nothing but good, long novels for over 30 years now it was a little hard to get used to the short-story concept again. They sometimes left me wanting more. I was glad to see that some of the characters – Steve Wong, MDash and Anna – in more than one story. However, for the most part, I really enjoyed the stories and the writing.
he stories were just OK
A work of brilliance, coming nearly a full century after Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio showed us a parade of grotesques in a small Midwest town. These stories, all linked in some way by the use of a typewriter — you know, those ancient (invented in 1867) machines that we used as a means of putting words directly onto paper? Always use two sheets, to protect the platen. Remember the ding! sound that signaled you to move that lever on the right to advance to the next line and push the platen mechanism to the beginning of that line. Recall the sense of being connected to one’s words rather than to a screen, a printer, or the Internet. Physical presence. Gods, how I miss it.
Even some of Hanks’ characters admit to the ease and convenience of these newfangled electronic things that exist at work, at home, in our courier bags, in our pockets. What each of these stories tells us, however, is that there is still a sense of wonder in being somehow connected, physically, to what we’re doing. Would I, I wonder, create better stories if I followed my mentor’s example? I’m typing this on what would have been Ray Bradbury’s 99th birthday. You can find so many photos of him with that big old IBM Selectric from which flew stories of fabulous worlds, terrifying happenings, and wondrous discoveries. Hanks, too, has created worlds, some wondrous, some within the minds of his characters; he spins heart and soul into situations, times, possibilities, and dreams, all with that same sense of wonder and what-if that marks the true storyteller.
You’ll find impossible relationships here. In one, a man discovers why his best female friend would not make a good girlfriend; in another, a time traveler falls in love with a woman many decades in the past and would do anything to stay with her for just one more hour. You’ll find wonderful fantasies of four friends who figure out how to launch themselves into space and slingshot around the moon, told in wholly accurate detail, evoking a spirit that makes you want to divert the budget for the Pentagon into NASA instead. One poor sap, an actor thrust into the limelight of a big-budget film, gets to find out what it’s like to have to answer the same tired question from every bunch of reporters he is forced to meet on the promotional trail… and it’s about his high-profile, big-busted co-star. (I can relate to that one; as as voice actor at anime cons, I had to treat every instance of “How did you get into voice work?” as if I’d never heard it from the other 40 or so cons I’d already attended. And by Wolf, I did it, with a smiling face, and I never begrudged them even once.)
These stories never founder, never hesitate, never go where they aren’t supposed to. They are fresh, tight, heartfelt, impassioned reads that can make you late for appointments and keep you up reading until very late. Try, Constant Reader, to slow down a bit, take smaller bites, truly enjoy each tale for itself. I can at least reassure you that, even if you gobble down the whole book at once, the richness of flavor and texture will linger on your literary palate for a long time after. Enjoy them as you will, but please do enjoy them. Exquisite!
One more thing at which Tom Hanks excels. I got this intending to have something to just dip in to when unable to sleep, but ended up reading it through. Fun stories tied together through interesting characters, and fun typewriter facts.
Mr. Hanks turns out to be as authentically genuine a Writer with as capital a W as ever touched a typewriter key. The stories in UNCOMMON TYPE range from the hilarious to the deeply touching. They move in period, location and manner, but all demonstrate a joy in writing, a pleasure in communicating an intensely American sense of atmosphere, friendship, life and family that is every bit as smart, engaging and humane as the man himself. All with that extra quality of keenly observant and sympathetic intelligence that has always set Tom Hanks apart. I blink, bubble and boggle in amazed admiration.
Uncommon Type is funny, wise, gloriously inventive and humane. Tom Hanks sees inside people – a wary divorcee, a billionaire trading desire for disaster, a boy witnessing his father’s infidelity, a motley crew shooting for the moon — with such acute empathy and good humour we’d follow him anywhere. The cumulative effect is of a world I didn’t want to leave.
It turns out that Tom Hanks is also a wise and hilarious writer with an endlessly surprising mind. Damn it.
I really wanted to like this book, but, alas, it is slow and pedestrian
I thoroughly enjoyed this book of short stories. I wish Tom Hanks would continue his writing. The episodes were unusual and, while light, held my interest, drew me in to care about the characters and their lives. I did not want the book to end. Thank you, Mr. Hanks!
Many of us think we know actors as they evolve thru their chareer changes and many personas but I ,for one, failed to see his skill as a story writer. To his book will give you a different respect for Me Hanks. Loved the short stories !! Hope he will continue to write more.
You already love Tom Hanks for his acting and his presence on screen, but that is completely beside the point. This collection of stories is playful and original. Some characters are recurring, which adds dimension to the collection. There is satire, love, homage. Plenty to appreciate here, even if the writer were unknown to your living room.
What an excellent collection of short stories all revolving around the forgotten realm of the typewriter. It was funny, witty and I enjoyed every story immensely.