Reviews

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: And Six More by Roald Dahl

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sz_miry's review against another edition

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hopeful inspiring fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

jmarryott23's review against another edition

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adventurous funny lighthearted medium-paced

4.0

I watched Wes Anderson’s short film adaption before reading the original story. It turns out Wes Anderson stuck ridiculously close to the original text with hardly any diversion in dialogue. The story and humor are perfectly suited for Anderson, whose OCD style of filming, timing, and set designs are a match made in heaven with Dahl. Characters on screen are breaking the fourth wall to recite the dialogue while reenacting it, something I’ve never seen before but seems to work here.

I guess the story itself has a moral of greed and how Henry Sugar was not satisfied with his riches until he did something more productive with it. I can get behind that. I just think if you watch the Anderson adaption you will get the whole package told in a more imaginative way and wouldn’t be missing anything in the story.

quigonchuy's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

Decided to read this after watching the Wes Anderson short films of some of these stories. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there's many more stories here than there are short films. And the stories are great. Short, entertaining, sometimes dark, sometimes funny, but always creative and interesting.

laviaenrose's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny inspiring lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

ems_99's review against another edition

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dark funny hopeful lighthearted sad medium-paced

4.0

I have always enjoyed collections of short stories and Roald Dahl is one of the best. His style of writing is so elegant, witty and quirky. They are so lovely to read aloud (sorry Matt!) and there was not one story that fell too short of the others. All of the stories had an element of unexpected darkness but I especially loved The Swan which highlighted the dark side of human flaws.

grid's review against another edition

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5.0

Roald Dahl writes in such a simple and elegant way that it's a pleasure to read out loud. It's all very forthright and factual sounding. This book includes two non-fiction pieces, or possibly three if you include the one about how he became a writer (in which he says the other two were his only non-fiction pieces).

I read these stories aloud to Colleen.