COULD NOT PUT DOWN!!!! SO enjoyable and funny and witty. Tom Hanks has a future in storytelling

"Beautiful Faking" used to describe a movie set!.

"Their skins show all the different colors of human nature" describing a crowd ( )

...and he writes too! Not every story is stunning, but most are very enjoyable. I appreciated the arc he constructed throughout the book by inserting stories of a group of friends, in the beginning, middle and end of the volume. The photos made me want to try typing again! ( )

A connection of human short stories, all with exceptional authorial voice - I could hear Hanks reading them out to me. While not every story was satisfying, they felt real, and it's obvious that Hanks wanted to portray this. ( )

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Uncommon Type: Some Stories by Tom Hanks is a collection of short stories written by the famous actor. Known for his love of typewriters, most stories have some sort of reference to these machines.

As I keep saying when I read short stories collections, the rating is meaningless think each one is its own entity. Strangely, the fact that Mr. Hanks is a well-known persona works well for this book, as I kept reading the stories in his voice.

The stories run the gamut from the immigrant experience to science fiction, and those take place in today’s world. Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks is a well-written book. As someone who is so old he still thinks of Mr. Hanks as a comedian, I was delighted to find out he is also a gifted writer.

The vast majority of the stories were fun and interesting. A few of them followed the same group of friends, others were simply stand-alone. It was nice to see the author’s known love for old typewriters make it into the stories.

Some of the stories clicked with me immediately, and others I was just reading to finish. There were heavy doses of nostalgia here and there, but overall, it was laid on too thick to stop the story in its tracks.

Tom Hanks is a competent writer, and I’m looking forward to reading his new novel. A Junket in the City of Lights, a story about a lucky actor finding out what international junkets are all about was a fascinating inside look at a world many of us will never know.
And no, it’s not as fun as it seems. ( )

Digital audiobook narrated by the author.

The stories in this collection are connected in that each story features a typewriter in some way. Sometimes the reference to the typewriter is so minor you might miss it if you blink. Other times the typewriter is central to the plot. There are a few characters who appear in more than one story, but those stories don’t necessarily form any sort of cohesive arc, although the basic personality and interests of each character are consistent throughout.

The stories are varied, from tender romance, to science fiction, to contemporary drama. Some are contemporary, some historical, some set in the future. They vary, too, in the emotions they evoke: tenderness, humor, awe, compassion. Among the plots are a funny romcom between best friends, a young actor who gets caught up on the hoopla of the film he’s helping to promote, a man who time travels back to the New York World’s Fare in 1964, and just can’t imagine leaving the charming woman he meets there, a veteran warms to the present with his family on Christmas Eve while memories of war haunt him, four friends travel to the moon in a spaceship they built in their backyard.

Clearly, Hanks is a gifted writer, and I look forward to reading more of his works. I’m a great fan of short stories and I loved this collection, but I’d love to see what he does with a full novel.

Hanks narrates the audiobook himself. I cannot think that anyone would do it better. The last story is a sort of movie script, and he gets help from a cast of friends, including Peter Scolari and Cecily Strong. ( )