Book Review: Simon Snootle and Other Small Stories by Lorin Morgan-Richards

One of the real problems of toiling in obscurity is that it’s so easy to get lost in all these tunnels. You might put together some papercraft, take some pictures of dead bugs, write things about monsters, and you still wouldn’t really know how things are going. Sometimes people write me letters or emails. I was contacted by the author of this book to do a review. You can check out Lorin Morgan-Richards website here. The book is called Simon Snootle and Other Small Stories and is an illustrated book of odd nonsense stories. The book has seven stories and each book is bound by hand by the author. The stories are:

• Simon Snootle was such a Gracious Host
• Mr. Slowbug and Ms. Shellquick
• Peter Puddlestick and the Precious Plot
• The Life of Otto Loud
• The Callous Shrub
• The Earwig and Mrs. Snipit
• The Boy Who Loved Beef Sandwiches

The book is a very quick read. The stories are about odd people who do odd things, or in one case, an odd plant that does odd things. For example, there’s a story about a boy who liked to feed an earwig and then gets lost on a bus. In the story about the plant, a shrub takes pleasure in stealing people’s hats and scarves.

The good: If you’re a fan of nonsense stories such as Alice in Wonderland or some of the other more obscure nonsense practitioners from the past (James Thurber comes to mind), you might enjoy these odd stories. The stories are very imaginative and, as I keep saying, odd. Also, fans of the self-published “zine” genre will probably be interested. The books are hand-bound and so they are pieces of art in and of themselves. The not-so-good: There are numerous grammatical and spelling errors. I think one of the problems with nonsense stories is that it’s very hard for an author to keep his audience engaged.

Creepy Factor: 1 out of 5
Suspense Factor: 0 out of 5
Weird Erotic Tension Factor: 0 out of 5
Funny and/or Strange Factor: 4 out of 5

Final result: I’m a big fan of cartoonists and people who publish zines. One of the nice things about zines is that they are very personal and have this great primitive edge to them. One of the problems with zines is that very often the authors never really have other people help them, and thus there are things like spelling and grammatical errors. I checked out other reviews of this book online and found that it was very well received. I myself, on the other hand, ended up wishing for more outrageous tragedy and monsters.

Simon Snootle and Other Small Stories by Lorin Morgan-Richards – A Raven Above Press – 2009
Simon Snootle and Other Small Stories on Amazon

Many thanks to Lorin Morgan-Richards for sending me this book to review. (See my disclosure policy.) Thanks for reading another one of my book reviews. See you next time!