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Mike Russell

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Nothing Is Strange Kindle Edition

by Mike Russell (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

137

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20 mind-expanding short stories.
Inspiring, liberating, otherworldly, magical, surreal, bizarre, funny, disturbing, unique... all of these words have been used to describe the stories of Mike Russell so put on your top hat, open your third eye and enjoy: Nothing Is Strange

Print length

148 pages
Language

English
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publication date

February 6, 2015
File size

673 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Nothing Is Strange is a solid collection of surreal and absurd stories. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants something unusual to read." -Cultured Vultures Magazine
"Russell's stories are humorous, engaging and poetically direct." -Beautiful Bizarre Magazine
"Nothing Is Strange is a unique collection of short stories that takes readers to bizarre places and lets them experience dreamlike situations that I have yet to read in other books." -Readers' Favorite
"Out there in a good way... Like walking through a gallery of surrealist paintings... Beyond cool, well beyond ordinary, and just so what I needed right now." -Oddly Weird Fiction Reviews
"Funny, quirky, bizarre and thought-provoking." -The Contemporary Small Press

About the Author

Mike Russell was born in 1973. He grew up in the small village of Pulborough in the south of England. As a child, he enjoyed daydreaming, art and writing strange stories. As an adult, he enjoys daydreaming, art and writing strange stories.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00TBAY51K
Publisher ‏ : ‎ StrangeBooks; 1st edition (February 6, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ February 6, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 673 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 148 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1502901080

Best Sellers Rank: #391,545 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #1,027 in Metaphysical Fantasy eBooks
- #2,007 in Contemporary Short Stories
- #5,911 in Single Authors Short Stories

Customer Reviews:
137

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Mike Russell

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Mike Russell was born in 1973. As a child, he enjoyed daydreaming, art and writing strange stories. As an adult, he enjoys daydreaming, art and writing strange stories. Mike Russell was awarded a Bachelor of Arts from Falmouth University and a Master of Arts from the University of Central England. Mike Russell’s books have been described as Strange Fiction, Magical Realism, Surrealism, Weird Fiction, Weird Lit, Absurdist Fiction, Metaphysical Fiction, Fantasy Fiction… but he just likes to call them Strange Books.

Customer reviews

3.9 out of 5

137 global ratings

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William F Aicher

Life Is Strange

Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2018

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Don't believe the title. In this book, EVERYTHING is strange. And it's absolutely marvelous. A collection of very short stories by Mike Russell, Everything Is Strange comes across as a kind of mix of Black Mirror and The Twilight Zone, but still something else altogether.

In my experience, writing a weird story isn't all that difficult. Just throw a bunch of things that don't make sense together and create a narrative. But what IS difficult, and what Russell does with aplomb, is to create strange stories where nothing really quite makes sense ... and turn those stories into narratives that hold a much deeper meaning than simply what happens on the page.

These are surrealistic think-pieces. And they'll take you to wholly new places, where the absurd is the ordinary, and self-discovery is just one oddity away.

I'm not going to synopsize any of these, as they're all so short that to do so would be to spoil them. But what I can say is this: This book is absolutely worth picking up. As each story stands on its own, it's a great collection to pick up for a bit of in-between reading - though I often found myself sitting down and cranking through several stories at a single read.

Contrary to the title, in Russell's world everything is strange. But it's also extremely realistic, when you really dig into the heart of the matters being discussed. A wonderful exploration of our reality through dream and metaphor, I can't recommend this collection enough.

Addendum: I should note that the writing here isn't flamboyant or overly prosaic. But instead the stories are written rather simply, which in my opinion adds to the impact of the stories. The matter-of-fact style keeps things from becoming fantastical, and all the more relatable in their telling.

9 people found this helpful

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katja v

Or maybe one could say these stories were like zen koans a bit

Reviewed in the United States on November 19, 2015

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The first book I read on my Kindle. Very pleasant. This book is fascinating. Strange short stories, which I realized at some point reminded me of Indian puranas, those lovely stories of Ganesha and co. Myths, which reveal a bigger truth. I don't know if that was the goal of the author, but it is a hard one - to write contemporary myths. Or maybe one could say these stories were like zen koans a bit, to bring one to a realization. Or if you don't want to dig so deep, call them surrealist to please the western mind, as à la Borges.

I found they were not strange just for strangeness's sake, and they are often funny. Some times maybe too much was tried to create a metaphor, when the reader's subconsciousness could have finished the job. The efficiency of short phrases and chapters was mostly good although at times I wished the story to go on. I would love the illustrate this kind of literature!

3 people found this helpful

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Sorelle Fluke

Eh.

Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2019

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Was very excited to read some short bizarre stories likened to The Twilight Zone, my favorite show. I was a bit disappointed if I'm honest. They were very short and I read them all in 2 evening sessions. They had some quirks but were not as thought provoking or captivating as I had hoped.

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Ashley S. Hart

Everything and nothing is strange here!

Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2015

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Full disclosure: I know the author. More disclosure: This book rocks! I compare the writing style to Clive Barker's, in that Mike can write a colorful story with meaning that changes from reader to reader...unless he lets loose the transparent bees :) Read this book especially if you like to travel to other worlds.

2 people found this helpful

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D.R. Bennett

Astonishing world.

Reviewed in the United States on December 23, 2015

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This is a book that I would never pick up to read, but having been exposed to it, I must admit that I find it shocking, astounding, and unforgettable. The world and the characters depicted are both real and unreal. I think of Salvador Dali's paintings and the book and movie called The Phantom Tollbooth. Highly visual, this work is stark and thought-provoking. It touches my mind. But it lacks the warm fuzziness that could touch my heart. It is imaginatively crafted but too abstract for my taste to be moving. Hence four rather than five stars.

One person found this helpful

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Mark M.

The Title Lies

Reviewed in the United States on June 16, 2019

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These stories are strange. Told with tremendous amount of humor and subtle wit, this collection of stories is a must-read.

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A. Aquino

A great collection of surrealist stories!

Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2017

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Such a great surreal read. Every story was interesting, I even read some again right after finishing. I bought his next book "strange medicine". I look forward to more books from Mike Russell.

Reviewed in the United States on April 26, 2015

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This book has some good surrealistic stories, in fact most were laden with meaning. The ones that didn't work for me were the first and last stories; the first one was simply bizarre and meaningless. The last story was supposed to tie the collection together, but wasn't needed. The story "The Miracle" was good, but the mother and daughter's names were confusing, being too similar. The story "The End of Sex" was too much like an adolescent sex joke. I would recommend this book, because most of the stories are well written with good ideas, to adults who like weird stories.

3 people found this helpful

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John Francis Cross

Reading Thoughts

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 6, 2015

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The twenty delightful short stories in Nothing is Strange exist to display the fruits of imagination, and those fruits are thoughts. We read thoughts. We smile, we laugh, we say wow, and we enjoy the read.
The language is unobtrusive and has been made smooth by frequent public story telling; the characters are often generic (‘a man’, ‘a woman’), sometimes identified by a simple name (Lesley, Elsie, Tom, ‘I’) and have unmarked or default personalities. The place is ‘a house’, ‘a shop’, or just ‘here’, and society is ‘everyone’, ‘we’. The focus is thus not on style, character or setting, but on the creative thoughts themselves, such as the thought of love as a physical object, (The Warehouse) of a transparent flower growing inside of you, (The Shining Flower) or seeing yourself through a telescope and waving to yourself in another universe that exists within the starry firmament of a scone-baker’s mouth (Cream Tea). Is that strange? Are thoughts real?
Surreal is an over-used word that has come to mean merely not what usually happens, but that definition will do for Nothing is Strange if not what usually happens is like an image by Magritte in which we see, for example, the back of a generic ‘man’ looking at a mirror showing the reflection of the back of the generic man. We see it all clearly and immediately understand, and in the tiniest flow of time after that we don’t understand, but the thought exists and is funny and we say hah! because laughter is the positive reaction to an encounter with an absurdity that doesn’t compute (another reaction is to be disturbed) and such a laugh is the greeting we give to something some call God.
God may perhaps be heard on the ‘most popular recording ever’, which is the sound of baby triplets being silent, the story of the recording being told to us by the man gaoled for having kidnapped the triplets for the sake of their beautiful sound or not sound (Barry and the Triplets).
Barry says from his prison cell that ‘Everything is ascending,’ and in the world of Nothing is Strange the direction of the thoughts we read is positive and uplifting, the movement often facilitating escape from a restrictive society in which ‘We never look up’ (The Living Crown). And on the point of liberation ‘we’ realise that the restrictions were our own ‘mind-forg’d manacles’ (William Blake, London).
We are guided upwards kindly and gently. There are no religious figures or texts referenced here; there are no literary references either. We are on our own. Certainly there are trace elements that give a misty retro-future British tinge to the Nothing is Strange world, but each self-contained story has a lucidity and neutrality that is close to universality.
There is whimsy but also grit, for example the policeman in The Miracle kicks a woman’s corpse and says ‘There goes my early night, bitch.’ This is, of course, before the policeman and all of us in the story have experienced the miracle of a sympathetic human tear.
Perhaps the least successful piece is The End of the Pier because it has more dreamlike mood than clear thought, suggesting rather than delineating the fruit of imagination. Yet that is still an interesting piece (told by a post-life soul) that would hold up well in many other collections.
At their best we have stories of several hundred words that evolve in paradoxically unpredictable and inevitable fashion like the changing shapes of molten wax in the translucent fluid of a lava lamp, and end with a kiss (The Meeting), or the realization that I am not trapped and never have been (Escape from the Butcher’s Shop),
Nothing is Strange is a rare work of imagination in that it does not boast of its bravado in imagining the most extreme or perverse situations, nor does it demonstrate for approval its technical dexterity, nor does is shout me, me, me and my experience, my debauch, my suffering. The focus is on the thoughts. I think you will like reading them.

2 people found this helpful

Jamie McMurray

Thought provoking and ridiculous.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2017

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I thoroughly enjoyed this series of short and utterly bizarre stories. Some of them left me in fits of laughter, others questioning reality. My only criticism is that I finished the book wanting more - more stories, more answers!

One person found this helpful

J. D. Denness

wondeful madness

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 2, 2016

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Well that was some mighty fine false advertising, it says on the cover that "Nothing is Strange" that is complete hooey! Everything in this book is strange, I really need to start reading the back of books before I start them, just to give myself a bit of warning for what I'm getting myself into.

The stories are wonderful, some of the most bizarre things I've ever read, I've no idea what kind of mad man Mike Russell is, but he has to be pretty crazy to come up with these stories. Each story starts off with a brief introduction, each time I had the narrator's voice from the twilight zone reading it in my head, in fact each of these stories would be perfect as episodes. There is a quirky humour throughout that had me chuckling a fair bit. I can't really explain any of the stories as they are too surreal to shorten down into a review, here are some amazing highlights:

A man cries
There is a right hand
There is a beard
Invisible bees
Balls of fire
And scones... yes you heard me, scones!

Everybody give this book a go, you won't regret it.

3 people found this helpful

bhurt

Unusually vivid visual power

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 20, 2015

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The promo-blurb is not wrong - this is an amazing book, literally. It's a maze of ideas, connections and images. Through an economy of simple, unadorned language, numerous new worlds are built with an unusually vivid visual power. It seems to me that the idea of balance is at least one of the central themes, but so many thoughts are prompted simultaneously that (for me at least) it was difficult to get a firm hold on anything at the first reading. This is a good thing! Rather than being served tasty dishes 'in your seat', some movement is required on the part diner / reader and the consumption is all the more satisfying for it I think. After the first reading, I'd describe a feeling that something had happened to me more than I'd say that I'd reached any definitive understanding.
I'm no literary expert, but I'd say this is fairly daring writing. Importantly though, it's not difficult reading. Easy to swallow, but beware of / enjoy some very unusual flavours.

3 people found this helpful

Nik Bestow

Short Short Stories

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 7, 2020

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This book is like going to an exhibition of modern art at a local art college.
Some exhibits make you think and some just result in moving a long with a shrug of the shoulders.
These stories are short - some very short (in comparison to a 100m sprint we're talking the distance a nose tackle travels in a single play)
Some in our bookclub thought being short was a mercy, some thought further development would have been good.
Overall....not the poorest book we've read, but unlikely to get a mention in our pick of the year discussion.

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