Radar Road: The Best of on Impulse by Nath Jones - Reshelved Books

Hello Dewey Readers! 

The cover is just as gorgeous as the prose inside. 

Another day, another book.  Today, I am reviewing a collection of short stories by Nath Jones called Radar Road: The Best of on Impulse.  Being a poet and writer myself, I love collections of poems and short stories, so I was absolutely ecstatic when Nath Jones send a copy of her latest book to our P.O. Box for us to review.  Her book did not disappoint.  

The short stories in Radar Road all follow the themes of family relationships.  Sometimes when I sit down to read a collection of short stories I find myself lost and easily distracted.  Is it because of the language?  The format?  Or the literary based text?  I'm not sure.  However, with Jones' collection I did not become lost.  On the contrary I was so immersed within this collection that I finished it within a day and a half.  I know, sometimes I even amaze myself with my reading skills. 

The way that Nath Jones writes is simple.  She isn't overly complex with her language, but she has a certain poetic quality to her prose that reminds me of how I like to write.  I think that a lot of the time we see writers who use overly flamboyant language to decorate their ideas, but sometimes when doing so both the ideas and the mind of the reader become lost.  The way that Jones crafts language makes her points both poetic and simply direct.  It also doesn't hurt that her stories are also relatively short.   This not only helps the reader to keep pace within the text, but also shows Jones' ability to craft language effectively and concisely.  

I run a creative writing group at my library, and one of our writers is struggling with writing relatively short and concise short-stories without becoming mundane.  She's consuming herself with worrying about showing vs. telling and struggling to find balance within a small amount of space.  I think that at our next meeting I will give her my copy of Radar Road to read.  

So Dewey Readers, if you are interested in short stories, poetry, and creative writing, definitely pick up a copy of this book!  You can also check out her website here.  I would rate this book 5 out of 5 Coffee Beans ;) 

Until the next review worthy read! 

~Jessica