Hi.
I just want to get everyone's recommendation for their feel-good recommended story. The last thread I saw was from 2016, so I wonder if 8 years will have a different list of feel-good stories.
feel-good stories: stories that ends in a happy ending, but also peppered with drama to round the character up.
I can go first:
Princess by Wolf
Dance of a lifetime by Don Lockwood
Best story; " I took a memory to Lunch" by Denham Forrest .
Ted Biker has a number of stories with truly delightful stories with great drama and haef endings
I recommend his "Oscar" series in particular and I think "The Bare necessities the best.
The Wanderer (aka Denham Forrest) has mostly feel good reads
"For Old Times Sake' and 'The Twenty-sixth" are two id recommend.
For the Wanderer I've always liked Do Bloody What?
https://storiesonline.net/s/50147/do-bloody-what
I also enjoy re-reading Denham Forest / The Wanderer. I often come back to https://storiesonline.net/s/11932/eighteen-yellow-roses-drama-story
I really like the 'At the Woodchopper's Ball' series by Kajakie.
https://storiesonline.net/a/kajakie-karr
Let me add just about any of the 85 stories on SOL written by Woodmanone. Woody has a gentle touch and has created some engaging tales. https://storiesonline.net/a/woodmanone
Anyone who knows England should be very careful with his "A Road Not Chosen", he knows nothing about the country and the inaccuracies are both glaring and painful.
Seaotter asked about a "feel-good recommended story" and my reply was to that request. The The Road Not Chosen is about a young girl being abandoned by a father to the kindness of strangers in America and finding her way to family and to belonging. More's the pity that minor details lead you to miss the crux of the story.
Anyone who knows England should be very careful with his "A Road Not Chosen", he knows nothing about the country and the inaccuracies are both glaring and painful.
That's not uncommon with American authors. James Patterson gets England horribly wrong too, for example.
AJ
That's not uncommon with American authors. James Patterson gets England horribly wrong too,
I wonder how many English authors get the US horribly wrong?
I wonder how many English authors get the US horribly wrong?
Elsewhere I castigated a professor for claiming there was a 99% likelihood of something happening because the statistic was obviously bogus and unverifiable.
But this is one instance where 99% might be accurate. Unless English authors have visited the locations they mention and absorbed the local cultures, I reckon there's a good chance that 99% will get the US horribly wrong.
AJ
At least they can get locations right if they bother to look at a map, but English authors almost always get the language wrong. I'm sure that American authors do the same with Brit speak.
Well, we got the map wrong here in New England, back in the day.
I mean, Worcester, Massachusetts has Leicester to the west, Shrewsbury to the east, Oxford a couple of towns south, and Boylston a couple of towns north.
That would probably drive someone from the UK bonkers. At least we pronounce them similarly.
I mean, Worcester, Massachusetts has Leicester to the west, Shrewsbury to the east, Oxford a couple of towns south, and Boylston a couple of towns north.
That would probably drive someone from the UK bonkers. At least we pronounce them similarly.
Shroo or shroh?
I'm not aware of the UK having a Boylston.
AJ
We have a Bolton, too. Along Interstate 495 outside of Boston.
Yarmouth, Falmouth, Ipswich, Malden (yes, I know that's not spelled correctly), Salisbury...
And we pronounce Shrewsbury as "Shoesbry" here. We still tend to drop the "R" here, too. (Wustah)
Yeah It took me 15 years to find those "R"s after I moved 60 miles west. Don't ask me what I sound like after visiting my relatives in interior Maine.
limab
It can be a life-long affliction.
People at college didn't believe that I am from Central Mass, because my Northwestern Pennsylvanian mother wouldn't allow my sister and me to talk like that.
I'm not aware of the UK having a Boylston.
It's west of Derby
The name trade isn't only one-way, though I'm only aware of California coming to the UK, though there are at many instances (Wikipedia list, plus an unlisted area between Eston and Eston Nab, named by miners working there after returning from the USA). As a teen I used to walk up California bank to the old mine workings, then on to the nab above. As a child, before moving up to this industrial wasteland, I'd walk through the woods to the village of Penn which I strongly suspect as giving the name to the state (Penn-in-the-woods, Pennsylvania) by way of a surname.
There's also New York, Philadelphia and Maryland in England that were named after the US places.
New York
The one in North Yorksire - probably not; it was named after the New York Mill, named by someone with no apparent connections to the Americas (despite his name being Francis Thorpe - they look like quite different people), and is in YORKshire a day or so's horse-borne travel from York. The one in Linconshire - Tiny place, nearly no information available including nothing I've found on naming or returning prodigals; it's just a bit north of Boston (our original one) but it's unproven and unlikely in my opinion.
ETA: This link comes down on the 'not' side, giving a plausible and likely explanation (named by workers from York).
Philadelphia
Yup, confirmed in a local newspaper article which also notes nearby Quebec
Maryland
The Washington Post article says it probably wasn't; I concur.
There is a place called Dallas in Scotland where they all wear big hats and smoke cigars...... Mind you, due to the Highland clearances, a lot of Scottish place names are in the USA and Canada. Banff in Canada being the shortened version of Banffshire in Scotland, where two of the founding fathers of the Canadian Pacific Railway were born. Bloody Scots...
On the subject of names, I'm in the process of (admittedly) trolling my readers by using Caoimhe, Laoise, Medb, Sadb, Caoilhionn and Siobhan as female character names... Because, well, I'm a twat.
On the subject of names, I'm in the process of (admittedly) trolling my readers by using Caoimhe, Laoise, Medb, Sadb, Caoilhionn and Siobhan as female character names... Because, well, I'm a twat.
I took it further and used Siobhán with the diacritical mark. Siobhán Callaghan is an artist in A-Well-Lived-Life 2.
By this point I would think most Americans know those names. Sometimes it seems half the girls I know have Irish names.
Medb
Not exactly the antagonist, but I used her name (and several other characters out of the ring cycle) on purpose, not as a name but the actual character from Irish history/mythology. I did the same for mentions of Roman figures and several others they met that legend would put their existence around the time the story takes place.
Unless English authors have visited the locations they mention and absorbed the local cultures, I reckon there's a good chance that 99% will get the US horribly wrong.
You can make that more general. Unless authors have visited the locations they mention and absorbed the local cultures, I reckon there's a good chance that 99% will get the story horribly wrong.
I recently read an American author's guestimates of how long it would take to make certain journeys in the UK in areas that I'm familiar with. I didn't notice anyone complaining about how unrealistic they were so I don't think they impaired readers' enjoyment of the story ;-)
AJ