What’s Your Story? The Postcard Collection (Waterstone’s)

What’s Your Story? is a collection of short stories written on postcards by authors, customers, and booksellers of Waterstone’s. All the profits of this book go to Dyslexia Action and English PEN, which support reading and literature.

The biggest draw to this collection is a two-postcard story by J.K. Rowling, set in the Harry Potter universe. This flash fiction piece tells of James Potter and Sirius Black as teenagers. This piece is good, but nowhere near as life altering as Potter fans had hoped. Still, it’s a great piece for collectors.

Also in the collection are great pieces by Michael Rosen (fatalistic), Lauren Child (loved the illustration), Tom Stoppard (too funny), Axel Schffler (very cute) and many more! Each of these postcards is a little gem! There are two downsides with this collection however. The first is that, while it’s wonderful to see the stories in the author’s own script, some of them have TERRIBLE handwriting! The second issue is the cover/binding of the book. There is no possible way to open the book completely without breaking the binding or creasing the cover up. If you’re a collector of any of these authors, get two copies- one to read and one to save. The only other alternative is to open the book only a quarter of the way and try to read between the pages.

Overall, What’s Your Story? is a great collection of postcard stories from a wonderful group of authors. It’s impressive to see who responded with pieces and what they wrote. Most importantly, the profits all go to two great charities which are making a difference!

While the What's Your Story? collection is a great collection of stories, I doubt many people actually used the stories as postcards. I would imagine most bought their copies for the same reason I did--J.K. Rowling's little HP-Prequel-That-Isn't. While I enjoyed the stories, I have to say, my enjoyment was severely limited by some of the authors' atrocious handwriting (YES, JKR, I am looking at you!). If you're going to write a widely-hyped story, make it legible, won't you? I was highly surprised by some of the other stories. Rowling's was great, but so was say, Lauren Child's. I'm not familiar with any of her other work, but her mini "story" was adorable, and a postcard that one could easily see themselves sending. Most amazing of all, dare I say more amazing than Rowling's Marauderlicious tale, were the Waterstone's employee/customer submitted ones. While the others were good stories, these were the ones that really had me laughing and crying and rolling madly on the floor.

Rating: 4/5 ( )

There are some great stories in here. I love Neil Gaiman's one, and all of the amateur contributions are great. Margaret Atwood's "Long pen" handwriting is, however, utterly illegible. ( )