Tag: Collection

Hi, all:

I bring you one of the books I’ve discovered and reviewed on Reedsy Discovery.

The Big Apple Bites Back: Short Stories about Life in New York by Arthur Shapiro

New York City is unique, vibrant, exciting and a melting pot of cultures and values. But sometimes, living in the Big Apple can lead to twists, turns, and unexpected outcomes.

The Big Apple Bites Back portrays life in NYC-the people, neighborhoods, the workplace, dashed dreams, and life on the street.

The stories attempt to capture the city’s spirit, with tales about how things occasionally go awry and how even the unexpected can enliven life there. When that happens, New Yorkers try to change the situation, go with the flow, or laugh about it and move on.

At the very least, The Big Apple Bites Back reveals what it’s like to live and work in “The City The Never Sleeps.”

About the author:

Arthur Shapiro is a semi-retired marketing and business consultant passionate about telling stories. He considers himself a storyteller above all else, whether it’s marketing and brand building, blogging, playwriting, filmmaking, or writing books.

The Big Apple Bites Back: Short Stories about Life in New York City is Arthur’s second book. His first is Inside the Bottle: People, Brands, and Stories, an intimate and informative behind-the-scenes window on the global spirits and wine industry.

His work life began in the marketing and polling industry, but most of his career was in the alcohol industry. Most notably, he spent fifteen years with Seagram Spirits and Wine, including ten years as head of marketing for the Americas. After Seagram was sold, he launched a marketing and communications consultancy,initially focusing on major spirits companies as clients. Gradually, he turned his attention to startup ventures, craft distillers, and mergers and acquisitions, which became the focus of his practice.

In 2010, he turned his storytelling efforts toward writing about the industry and launched his popular blog, Booze Business. In 2016, he published Inside the Bottle: People, Brands, and Stories based on his experiences in marketing and brand building in the industry.

Arthur’s journey has taken him to writing and storytelling. He says: “I finally figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up.” The journey began with stage plays and screenplays.

As a filmmaker, he has written and produced a short film called Bereavement, starring Mark Linn-Baker, Michael Mastro, Lizbeth McKay, and Lauren Ashley Carter. The film was selected for five short film festivals.

As a playwright, Arthur has written many short plays. One of which, Stuck, was a winner at the Short Play Festival, Players Theatre in New York. That play was the inspiration for Chapter One of this book. His work-in-progress one-act play, Brooklyn Moonshine War, was stage read at the Manhattan International Film Festival.

Arthur is a member of The Dramatists Guild of America(DGA) the national, professional membership trade association of theatre writers, including playwrights, composers, lyricists, and librettists. He has taken several courses in playwriting at the Dramatis Guild Institute (DGI), which is the educational arm of the guild.

Among his classes at DGI, he had the good fortune of attending several courses run by Gary Garrison, who served as Director of DGA and DGI and is a world-renowned author, playwright, and educator. Mr. Garrison is particularly well known for his short plays and their role in playwriting. Arthur credits him as an outstanding educator and the inspiration for short-form fiction, plays, and stories.

Arthur was an adjunct faculty member at Fordham University Graduate Business School – Marketing Management and Marketing Research. He was Chairman of the Marketing Committee, Distilled Spirits Industry Council of the U.S.

He and his wife, Marlene, have two daughters and three grandchildren. They recently moved to Ranch Mirage, CA, where he writes for the community newsletter.

This book is his attempt to capture the spirit of New York City, with stories about how things occasionally go awry and how even the unexpected can enliven life there. It is also his homage to where he grew up, got educated, became a reasonably successful businessperson, raised a family, and had the time of his life.

Based on the play by that title, Arthur’s third book, Brooklyn Moonshine War, will be coming soon.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1473674.Arthur_Shapiro

My review:

I received a free ARC from Reedsy Discovery and you can find my original review on their site here. Authors and readers might want to check their website, as they offer recommendations, services, blog posts, and other interesting and useful content.

This is a book of stories/vignettes about the city of New York, and, apart from the stories, it includes an introduction, a preface, an author’s note, the usual acknowledgments, and an about the author section. Shapiro explains that after having lived in New York all his life, he recently retired to Palm Springs, California, with his wife. He enjoys life there, but he can’t forget the “Big Apple” (something that readers will discover no real New Yorker would ever say) and has decided to write a few stories (thirteen plus a section of “short takes” at the end) that illustrate what life in New York and being a New Yorker are like.

The stories and vignettes (some follow the classical structure of a short story, while others are like a short scene that might flash in a fully developed narrative) cover a large variety of topics: running late for a job interview; parking, and its rules; filming a movie in the city and the problems it causes; the pushcarts at the old markets; the cut-throat business culture; being a spectator at a sporting event, buying property and its stringent requisites; prison rules and food; going to the psychiatrist; narcissists and toxic people, and even more variety in the “short takes”, which are among my favourites, because they are very brief, quick, and most quite funny, like a good joke. The stories are set in different eras, mostly in the present or the recent past (the pandemic is mentioned often), and the author excels at observing and capturing the rhythms and cadences of speech, the attitude of people, the wit, the sharp sense of humour, and, above all, the sense of place. Readers might not be familiar with New York other than through movies and series, but they will soon get a feel for what life must be like there, a combination of excitement, tension, buzz, daring, and plenty of energy, not all positive. Although the city might not always make you feel welcome, the book will, and there are stories for most tastes.

As expected in all collections of stories, some are stronger than others but even the longer ones don’t drag, and this book would be ideal for people who don’t have a lot of time to read and prefer something that can be picked up and put down without losing the thread and becoming frustrated. And if they are interested in New York, all the better.

Thanks to the author and to Reedsy Discovery for this opportunity, thanks to all of you for reading, and remember to like, share, comment, and keep reading and smiling!