Excerpts - Hard to access as the context of what's written isn't available.

Hardyston Point - It was decent, not the kind of story I generally seek to read but I can understand it's appeal.

Home - This was quite good. My grandfather had Alzheimer's and it brought up a lot of repressed emotions about that. Silver medal for sure.

what my neighbour thinks of me, I'm sure - Pretty masturbatory but similar to what Unchained Ballad said, I can respect it's honesty. I enjoy reading works of catharsis sometimes but I felt that this was mostly for shock value.

The Landscape of Thought - All I could think was "pretentious." Bits of it were good, but I couldn't connect with it at all and, honestly, ended up scanning over bits.

The Lonely Dreamer - It wasn't bad by any means, but it also lacked in originality.

Neighbours - I like writing that feels observational, as this one did. It didn't seem to have much of a hook pulling me along, I kept reading because it was interesting, but I didn't get that "I need to keep reading to find out what happens" feeling. That said, I'd give it the bronze.

Handsomely Trimmed - This won my vote. The dialogue was clever and I thought the concept was hilarious. Well written and a fun read, of all the entries this is the one I read more than once.

Take my reviews as you will, my opinions should by no means be valued. :laughing:

it's just random stuff i inserted into my novel in progress - it doesn't even make sense in the context of the novel - i just got the idea from "Stand on Zanzibar"

Right, time to get around to the rest of the stories. Sorry about the delay.

The Landscape of Thought has a few good moments in what concerns imagery and interesting reflexions, though I felt it was needlessly wordy and that a few expressions seemed a bit commonplace now and then.
I didn't like the ending at all, unfortunately. I'm sure you could do better.

The Lonely Dreamer is difficult for me to comment on because I generally have a hard time with truly enjoying poetry in general. That being said, I think the rhyming doesn't sound very natural in this piece - but then again, I seldom do.

Neighbours was a great read. I enjoyed the writing quite a bit and the touches of dark humour. I think you portrayed the desensitization to violence and the coarseness rather well. The only flaw I see in it is that it seems to have ended rather abruptly, I'd like to see it go on a bit longer and have a proper ending.

To finish up my commentary...

"The Landscape of Thought"—I thought was well-written and a great idea, but it could benefit from some re-working. The reality of the situation isn't that surprising as a big reveal at the end and I think the story might be more interesting if we know what's going on right from the beginning (to possibly give a better sense of what's at stake), with some interesting twists and turns along the way. I'm guessing this is by Frownland.

"The Lonely Dreamer"—I'm not much of a fan of poetry so probably not the best person to comment, but I think this could have benefitted from either a stricter adherence to serious poetic structure or from something that moved beyond a simple rhyme scheme. It had some nice descriptive moments though. I'm guessing iluvwubs for this.

Bump.

So were my last two guesses correct?

Guesses are correct :)

Home

interesting way of presenting somebody suffering from Alzheimer's from the 1st person perspective, pretty well-written and succint and to the point, although i wished it was longer

Neighbours

pretty much voyeuristic, i didn't like much how the way it seems to try too hard to be making the observer sympathetic to the reader, when all it does is just exude some form of self-pity

what my neighbour thinks of me, I'm sure

i can't get past the first few paragraphs - this is just too much verbiage and pornograffiti - worst of the bunch

The Lonely Dreamer

this is passable as song lyrics, as poetry? try harder - as one who have actually studied poetry, i would say the structure would have been lots better if it were blank verse and not divided into quartets

The Landscape of Thought

this is my pick - i pretty much enjoy verbose and pseudo-existentialist themes

Handsomely Trimmed

pretty witty and erm, "British" I suppose, but i didn't find it that funny

Hardyston Point

reads like a screenplay to a conventional contemporary horror movie but i don't think the twist was executed well at all, and you're left with "this is it?"

I will read, post, and vote today.

Promise.

Just re-read my story. Jesus Christ I need to proof read before I hand **** in. A lot of typos and at the end I called it Hardyston Beach. I had been debating whether to set it on a mountain or a beach. For shame on me.

Yay, I think this means I scored 100% on the guessing!