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Ratings & Reviews

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  By cyourkievitz

  Jun 24, 2009
  "Hilarious & Entertaining" I loved it! Highly recommended for anyone with a sense of humor! With endings and plot twists that will keep you guessing...O'Henry would have been proud!
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  By Dan Marvin

  May 1, 2009
  "Knee-Slapping Page Turner!" You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll do other things similar to laughing and crying, all while in the privacy of your privvy. I found myself chuckling out loud when I wrote these stories, so you know they must be good. It's all here, Westerns, Sci-Fi, Mystery, Fantasy, all squeezed down into compact micro-novels that take between 3 and 17 minutes to read. Gobble up two or three on your next visit to the reading room.
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  By Shannon Yarbrough

  Feb 10, 2009
  "Dan's Briefs for the Reading Room" Bathroom duty has been the subject of many books, mostly targeted toward children. Some of my favorites are The Gas We Pass and Everyone Poops. But just search the word “poop” at Amazon and you’ll find books for adults as well. Dan Marvin’s book, Briefs for the Reading Room, is one such book, but don’t worry. It’s not about what’s in the bowl, but instead is a book designed to give you something to read while waiting for the end result. In Dan’s introduction, he jokes that we probably spend about 14 years of our life in the bathroom. I tried Googling that theory to see how close to the truth he might be. The first answer I found to my question of how long do we actually spend on the toilet was “Depends if the book I’m reading is a good one.” I couldn’t have said it better myself. And at long last, an author has created a book of “micro-novels” specifically designed to make better use of the time we spend on the throne or “in the library.”... More > As Dan puts it, “I jump right to the good part, wrap it up in a hurry, and let you get on with your life.” Each story is indeed only 1 or 2 pages long, so you can get through several in…ahem…one sitting. There’s no character development, no plot set up, no pages and pages of setting, description, or flashbacks to mull over or flip through. If you like flash fiction, it doesn’t get any flashier than this! There are over 100 tiny tales to get you through some “difficult times.” Dan’s subject matter ranges from fantasy, to courtroom drama, to mystery, to children’s themes, to just good ole thought provoking fiction. After about the first 20 stories, I found myself going back and rereading them to figure out if I had missed anything. I wanted more. Indeed, in less than a page I was completely engrossed in the character and wanted more from them. But again and again, I was expecting too much. Be warned! Many of the stories will “just be getting good” when they suddenly come to an end, leaving you to wonder what the heck happened. But that’s the beauty of a book like this; the author wants you to think about each story long after you finished it. One of my favorites is called “A Victim of Circumstance” in which a quirky Private Eye receives a note from his secretary that something is about to fall on him. He’s such a good Private Eye that he ponders the note a little too much. I studied the message Lila had given me. It was printed on a “Here’s your Message” Post It note, the kind that one comes off the top and it sticks to stuff but not too tight because you will want to throw it out eventually. You know the type. It looked familiar, much like the paper Lila usually uses to give me messages. That was it! It was a message from Lila, the kind I usually got! Now we were getting somewhere. That’s where you are arriving at a place different from where you were earlier. Just when the reader (and the detective) should be more concerned about what is about to fall on him, the story comes to a dot dot dot ending right when the detective finally looks up. He never knew what hit him, and neither do we! But that’s the beauty of writing like this. We aren’t supposed to know. For those of you who may be blushing from all of this bathroom humor, don’t worry. You can read this book anywhere. Dan even gives you a list of places to try it out…the car wash, the soccer game while your kid is on the bench, the dog park, even the operating table two minutes before your anesthesia kicks in! I give it 5 star flushes! Read the full review at The Lulu Book Review.< Less
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