Jonathan Winters (1925–2013)

Winters’ Tales: Stories and Observations for the Unusual (1987) by Jonathan Winters. This book is more than 45 years old so do not expect to see it in your local book store. It is a collection of the famed comedian’s writings on a variety of different topics, broken into five different sections. Those sections are: Unusual Stories, Animal Tales, Children’s Voices, Of Men And War and Observations. Each section averages about nine stories loosely based on the section title. A few of the show more stories are slightly humorous, some deeply ironic, a few interesting to some degree, a couple may be very self-reflective, but there is nothing here that is absolutely stellar.
If you come looking for Winters’ trademark broad, weird humor, look other places. These stories feel more like personal notes to oneself than an actual attempt at a cohesive book. Taken as a whole, they sadly do not add up to a very entertaining book. Individually you may find some of them striking, while almost all can be noted for their skewed perspective on life.
I wanted to like this book more than I did. If you want to know about the comedian, look to his vast list of performances or the record albums he produced. Don’t judge the performer by the writer.
I give it three stars just for the look into the non-performance portion of Jonathan Winters’ brain. show less

Rough - more like Drabbles than like little gems. Some were awfully dark, others were awfully sappy. But a few were worth the minute to read. If you like flash fiction, you might want to see if this is in your library. I got mine as a donation to my OBCZ.

Winter's Tale by Jonathan Winters
Collection of winter stories that are quite unusual.
Short stories about winter months and related from the comic who made Mork and Mindy.
Liked the dance one and the pheasant hunting with his grandfather the best.
Military ones were quite somber and sad.
I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
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This audio adaptation of A Christmas Carol was done for NPR, I believe. (The cover blurb said that this version is a special performance edition created by Dickens himself.) It's well done, and I enjoyed listening to it. I admit I got distracted, though, whenever I noticed that the story line skipped over something.