Tom Hanks

Some Stories

Uncommon Type

Tom Hanks is as charming on the page as he is on screen. While essentially a bunch of stories about not very much, he brings warmth and life to all of them. As an collection of short stories, some are more forgettable than others. 

Hardy Marwaha 

Ed Kay

I love Tom Hanks. He's an incredible actor, and seems like a thoroughly wonderful human in real life. Affable, genial, decent. I kind of wish he could be my uncle.

Then it turns out he collects typewriters - and has perhaps used them to knock out a collection of stories, featuring typewriters. As a lover of words and books, and admirer of typewritten text, this is seeming to be all too much. How the stars are aligning! What magnificent tales might Uncle Tom whisper into my eager ears?

Well, unfortunately, it seems Tom is just *too nice*. His stories are all of the apple pie, white picket fence, "aw shucks", "American dream" variety that is sickly sweet and devoid of any flavour.

His characters literally say things like "jeez" and "yowza", wish happy birthday by saying "hoopy boofy" or zanily swear by saying "Jiminy expletive!". Every single one of them. This isn't how normal people talk - unless it's your parents (or your favourite uncle?!) trying to mimic the current slang to show just how cool and happening they are.

These bland and untroubled characters live in saccharine worlds where no problems exist, other than simple ones they make up for themselves, or are easily fixed by some sub-Dickensian coincidence before anything gets too real.

And as if the twee characters and trite storylines weren't bad enough but the writing is just so... bland. There's not a sniff of an interesting metaphor, or poetic observation. The only characteristic of the writing is the same kooky, gee whiz Walton-esque sing-song nonsense that the characters seem to embody.

I'm so disappointed. The lovable squeeziness and gentle lovability that make Hanks so charming and wonderful in real life just don't cut it when written down in story form. Clearly the complexity and nuance that he can embody so well comes from those who write the parts he plays.

The Sunday Times reviewer seems to have nailed this issue, in a damned-with-faint-praise sentence that the publishers have included on the cover seemingly without irony: "The great strengths of this collection are decency and sentimentality."

Unfortunately, these wonderful characteristics don't make for interesting or entertaining reading.

A TIMESBOOK OF THE YEAR 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 hectic, funny sexual affair between two best friends. A World War II veteran dealing with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A woman adjusting to life in a new neighborhood after her divorce. Four friends going to the moon and back in a rocket ship constructed in the backyard. A teenage surfer stumbling into his father's secret life. These are just some of the people and situations that Tom Hanks explores in his first work of fiction, a collection of stories that dissects, with great affection, humour and insight, the human condition and all its foibles. The stories are linked by one thing- in each of them, a typewriter plays a part, sometimes minor, sometimes central. To many, typewriters represent a level of craftsmanship, beauty and individuality that is harder and harder to find in the modern world. In his stories, Mr Hanks gracefully reaches that typewriter-worthy level. Known for his honesty and sensitivity as an actor, Mr Hanks brings both those characteristics to his writing. Alternatingly whimsical, moving and occasionally melancholy, Uncommon Typeis a book that will delight as well as surprise his millions of fans. It also establishes him as a welcome and wonderful new voice in contemporary fiction, a voice that perceptively delves beneath the surface of friendships, families, love and normal, everyday behaviour.

Cristian Garcia

Atta boy! what a great set of stories. Some of them got me melancholic and others were absolutely funny (specially the ones with MDash, Steve Wong and Anna).
Completely recommended. Hanx is a natural born storyteller.

Lynette Pedersen

This collection was pretty okay. It doesn't surprise me one bit that Tom Hanks would be a decent writer. It isn't blow-you-out-of-the-water amazing, but it was worth the time. My favorite story was the one with a sci-fi flavor and the World's Fair, and the ending was surprising in contrast to all the rest. The one about Kenny and his birthday was too long and too benign, but the one with the old couple and their hotel gave me some serious warm fuzzies. I enjoyed revisiting with MDash, Steve Wong, and the narrator who I think said his name once but I can't remember it, though if I had to read "atta baby" one more time I may have tried to track down this Anna just to punch her in the mouth. I am glad Hanks really did let Steve Wong be perfect at the end. I am all for gloomy, messy endings, but sometimes you just got to let the Asian kid who works at Home Depot keep rolling strikes.

Hussein Mahran

3 stars just because I like Tom Hanks and I enjoyed his narration, nothing super here, a few stories that a couple of which are really nice, but don't expect deep intellectual ideas.

Michael Pejin

I really wanted to love this, as in movies, I'm a huge fan of Tom Hanks. It's clear he has ability when it comes to the written word. His characters were believeable, and felt like they came from somewhere. Unfortunately though, there wasn't a lot to them. They all had the same speech patterns in the end, and were mostly bland and uninteresting. Hopefully he keeps at it though, and grows his craft like we know he can. If he can bring his writing up to where his acting is. We are in for a treat.

Papéis Diferentes - Algumas histórias

Magda Pais

Tom Hanks será, para mim, sempre o Walter. A cada filme que vejo dele - e apesar de ter deixado as comédias há séculos - eu encontro um sorriso, um olhar, uma expressão que me lembra a primeira personagem do primeiro filme que vi dele. Curiosamente em Papéis Diferentes aconteceu-me exactamente o mesmo, Walter andava por ali, a rondar cada uma das histórias.

Como qualquer livro de contos, há alguns que nos atraem mais, que nos apetecem, enquanto outros nos são mais indiferentes. Outros que achamos que mereciam mais umas páginas (ou mesmo um livro inteiro) e outros que demoram a acabar. Mas todos com o sentido de humor, o carinho, a ternura e a credibilidade que, vá-se lá saber porquê, Tom Hanks me inspira. Ou será Walter?

Nestes Papéis Diferentes Tom Hanks mostra que a sua genialidade não se fica pela representação. Desconfio que ainda vamos ouvir (ou mais, exactamente, ler) sobre esta nova faceta deste versátil actor (e autor). E venha eles (os livros dele) que eu pelo menos cá estarei.

courtney garrison

First Impressions of this one, I love that tom hanks himself narrates the audiobook, but this is way out of my comfort zone. He doesn’t follow traditional writing styles, he’s more of just a storyteller throughout this and I can appreciate that.

Okay, now that I’m finished with this book overall it doesn’t do it for me. The writing and overall book just are meh. The book has no form or organization or plot to it, its just full of random stories. I think for me if it would have had a theme to it at least I would have enjoyed it better.

There were a few stories that stick with me, especially the military one because my grandfather and great grandfather were military. My husband also has military in his family.

Overall there were good and bad ones here, it just didn’t meet the expectations I had for it. There are also a few things I could live the rest of my life and not hear out of tom hanks mouth ever again. Listening to the audiobook and hearing him say certain parts of this were cringy…I mean it is tom hanks.

2.7 stars for me

echo

a collection of short stories is usually not what i gravitate towards. it took me longer to read it because after each story i felt i needed a second before diving into another one. it was written well and i enjoyed the stories and the characters, but it’s not one of my favorites.

Jade Lee

Really enjoyed this and got stuck in quite a few stories!

Robin M Cabana

Tom Hanks collect typewriters and the machines are mentioned in all of these stories, some of which are connected. I liked some of these stories more than others. Most of them were cute, funny or touching. I was also not surprised to find stories about space, war and lots of nostalgia. My favorites were the stories involving a foursome of friends, Christmas Eve 1953, These are the Meditations of my Heart, and Stay With Us. Tom Hanks narrated the audiobook, which he does with his usual brand of charm.

Simran Kalkat

Read this by listening to the audiobook that was narrated by Tom Hanks himself, and really enjoyed the experience! Most of the stories aren’t crazy and fantastic tales but I think that is what makes them such enjoyable reads.

Kimberly

I enjoyed the majority of the stories and the rest I was just not interested in. Nothing I was just obsessed with, however Tom pleasantly surprised me. You go Tom Hanks.

Anika | @chaptersofmay

This book was my first to have short stories, and I like Tom Hanks so I though I'd give it a chance. Overall, the stories are a little dull and I found it a struggle to finish them. Some really grabbed my attention, and I liked the appearance of a typewriter to link them together, but I wasn't that impressed. I had to push myself to finish the book and the tales aren't that memorable.

Hayley 📖🌈💜🌸

I just can't listen to this any longer.

As Roxane Gay wrote in her review "These stories are aggressively competent and aggressively bland." 

I just- don't care about this enough to finish it, I think. :(

Alyssa Jacunski

Although I enjoyed many of the short stories, some were not my type of reading. To me, short stories (often times) are just getting started when they end. But I wouldn't say my time was wasted - just a new experience.

Erin 

First book finished of the new year! So looking forward to reading without any distractions and also without the overbearing feeling that I have homework I should be doing. Overall, I did really like this collection of short stories. I usually shy away from them for several reasons, one being that I dislike it when a story ends abruptly and I find myself attached to the characters and sad I had so little time with them, and two because I also feel disconnected to them in a way like I cannot understand the progression of events. I had this happen a lot in high school when my teachers would choose the most bizarre stories possible in order to achieve their provincial outcomes (shoutout to the Lamb to the Slaughter though, my absolute favorite short story from then).

ANYWAY, I did like this collection, although I suspect a fair amount of that fondness has to do with my love for Tom Hanks and my love for the aesthetic and rhythmic typing capacity of typewriters, something we appear to have in common. Like any collection, some stories I liked more than others. Thus, a breakdown:

Three Exhausting Weeks: 3.5 stars. An okay story, but I didn't really like Anna. I did enjoy it but am glad it's not a full-length novel. 
Christmas Eve 1953: 2.5 stars. The kids and Santa Clause were cute but I am generally not a fan of war stories and flashbacks.
A Junket in the City of Light: 4 stars. My love for Paris aside, I have always thoroughly enjoyed stories about actors and the behind the scenes aspect of their lives.
An Elephant in the Pressroom: No rating because I can't actually remember what this story was like. Oops.
Welcome to Mars: 3.5 stars. What was disappointingly not about space travel turned out to be pretty okay. Definitely has the quality that most short stories do in that it feels unfinished, and not in a satisfying way (like a cliffhanger). 
A Month on Greene Street: 3 stars. I honestly don't understand the point of this story, more so than some of the others. I kept waiting for something significant to happen, and then it ended.
Alan Bean Plus Four: 3 stars. I really liked that this story revisited characters we met earlier (specifically in Three Exhausting Weeks). The plot was a bit weird but I think I enjoyed the space references and elements. I still don't like Anna.
At Loose in the Big Apple: 3 stars. I don't think I like these newspaper column stories.
A Special Weekend: 4.5 stars. Favourite story so far even if I felt like I was scrambling for background details. Would definitely read a full-length version of this.
These Are the Meditations of My Heart: 5 stars. Oops, this is the new favorite. Also when I realised Tom Hanks has had his impact on me and I really want a typewriter so I can write the things I know and make beautiful grocery lists. So where does one get a typewriter exactly?
Back From Back in Time: 3.5 stars. I did actually like this column.
The Past is Important To Us: 5 stars. At first, I didn't understand what was happening in this one at all, because my little brain couldn't comprehend the concept of time travel for whatever reason. However it got better exponentially and is probably the one story I'd like to read again, if this book wasn't due back at the library tomorrow.
Stay With Us: 4 stars. Originally I was not impressed with the script format, but once the plot got going a bit I grew to like it a lot. I do wish these kinds of motels were around more.
Go See Costas: 4 stars. This story wins the award for turning my opinion around the most dramatically. At the beginning, I did not like this story at all. By the end, I really wanted to read more about Assan and living in New York City. 
Your Evangelista, Esperanza: 3 stars. I didn't dislike it I suppose, but wasn't fawning over it.
Steve Wong is Perfect: 4 stars. Once again revisits old characters (the same ones as mentioned above). The three stories always have the same narrator (who I'm picturing as a young Tom Hanks, which may or may not be intentional) but the focus shifts a little to the side characters. Kind of interesting, I would rank this one in the middle between the other two.

Overall, I was pretty impressed with Tom Hanks' writing. This is his first work, and while I know he has worked as a screenwriter before, this is still different territory, but I believe he did well. Still, I didn't rate below 50% for any of the stories, and I can't quite decide if that's because they were all genuinely not terrible or if my brain would consider it a crime to rate anything related to Tom Hanks less than positive.

Zoe Stanford

There are a couple of really lovely little stories in here, but some were more like writing exercises added to pad out the page count.

Amy Buckle

I’ve always loved Tom Hanks as an actor, so when I saw that he had published a collection of short stories, I immediately wanted to read it. I’ve always had a love for short stories after reading Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love and really... read the full review here: https://www.amybucklesbookshelf.co.uk...

Uncommon Type Some Stories

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