A Review of 'Selected Shorts: Family Matters' by Symphony Space (Audio Book)

"Recorded life at the Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City and at venues across the United States, these audio anthologies feature short stories from the Selected Shorts program that airs nationwide.  More than 300,000 listeners tune in to this offering weekly to hear some of their favorite tales read aloud by an assortment of distinguished actors."

I love this whole digital thing my library is doing.  I can get digital books and audio books instantly and for free with my library card.  It's the best invention ever.

This isn't your average audio book.  i'm not even certain that this was a book to begin with.  But I'm counting this, because several short stories are being told.  This book was told over the radio at one point.

Each of these stories relates to family in some way, shape or form.  I loved the short story format because it gives the brain a bit of a break from processing the same thing for too long.  I think that it helps keep content light as well.  There isn't enough time to really get into a story.  I think the longest story on this audio book was forty-five minutes to an hour.  Because these stories are so light, a vast majority of the stories are quite hilarious!  I tried to listen to some before going to bed each night, but I don't think it really helped me go to sleep because most of the time, I was laughing too hard!

I'm not Catholic, but I think part of what made these stories so funny was the Catholic guilt!  Once of the funniest stories (I'm blanking on the title and I can't go back and listen, because I've already 'returned' the audio book) was about a boy who was quite young and had a horrible aunt (or was it grandmother?) whom at one point he wanted to kill, but she knew he was planning to do this, so when he was old enough to go into the church and make his first confession, she was right there reminding him of all the bad things he'd done up until that point in his life and telling he to remember to tell the priest everything.  The little boy was really confused about how confession was supposed to work!  It also helped that the narrators knew how to read stories well, so they had the right tone when reading through hilarious parts.  I imagined them saying everything with a serious face, which made everything funnier in my head.

There were so many crazy relatives involved in the stories that said the strangest and most unexpected things and put the main characters in the most awkward of positions that I couldn't help but laugh!

Another nice thing about this audio book is that because it is about family, it is pretty

'Selected Shorts: Family Matters' is a series of short stories that, no matter what kind of background you have, will make you laugh and realize that all of our families are just a little crazy somewhere on that family tree.

I give 'Selected Shorts: Family Matters':

Thanks for reading!

--Jude