I'm not normally one to read the slew of celebrity memoirs, cookbooks etc that come round at this time of years but I was so excited to see that Tom Hanks had written a collection of short stories. I am a huge Hanks fan and this book was exactly as I imagined it to be - similar to a collection of his film characters. Some characters pop up in more than one story but some are stand alone.

I've read reviews that say Hanks is unable to write women. I don't believe this to be the case. The women he writes may not be particularly likeable but then, some of the men are unlikeable too! Hanks manages to illicit feelings about the characters and whether you like them or not you are carried along through to the story's conclusion.

Overall, I think this is a solid collection of quiet short stories which portray people living very real lives with each story told using a different narrative voice and tone. I particularly enjoyed the second story in the collection, which tells the story of an army veteran on the night before Christmas.

I took my time reading this and dipped in to read one story at a time. I would definitely recommend this to those who enjoy short stories and I will certainly be looking out for more books by Tom Hanks!

This is a collection of genuinely heartwarming and pleasant reads.

If you're looking for stories that are fast-paced and exciting then this isn't for you. However I did find the majority of these really enjoyable.

I really liked:
- Three Exhausting Weeks
- Welcome to Mars
- A Month on Greene Street
- These are the Meditations of My Heart
- The Past is Important to Us (my fave)
- Steve Wong is Perfect (my second fave)

I didn't enjoy:
- The Hank Fiset stories - they didn't click with me
- Stay with Us - I lost interest is this pretty quickly

The others were okay.

Overall if you're a fan of Tom Hanks and are intruiged by this collection (my driving factor for reading it) then I do recommend it.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House UK, Cornerstone for a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review.

Tom Hanks has delivered a nostalgic slice of Americana in this varied selection of short stories set in different eras, calling to mind the many disparate roles he has played onscreen – in films such as Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 , Saving Private Ryan, The Circle, etc. His straightforward style captures the plain-speaking, folksy dialogue of the ‘average Joe’ with a unique narrative to relate, and is imbued with Hanks’ own cinematic Everyman persona of old fashioned charm, which somehow avoids cloying sentimentality.

I am reading Uncommon Type by Tom Hanks. This is a beautiful collection of short stories. I love short stories anyway and it’s always fantastic that people are still writing them. I’ve admired Tom Hanks as an actor, my dad is a fan and he introduced me to Mr. Hanks’ earlier films. When I heard in Twitter that he was publishing a book that wasn’t an autobiography I was intrigued. This volume of seventeen short stories are all unconnected but they do share things in common, they look at the humour in life and examine human kinds foibles, they are also linked by typewriters. As a fan of Tom Hanks I know that he likes and collects typewriters so it’s perhaps unsurprising to see that they play a part in these stories, sometimes as a minor detail but other times they are at the tales forefront.


These tales are beautiful, funny and sometimes melancholy but they are sublime joys to read. This is a book I’ll be bying in paperback to give as a gift as these stories, much like the films of Tom Hanks, are meant to be shared and enjoyed.

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