Ernest Hemingway "The Nick Adams Stories"

I recently read Ernest Hemingway's "The Nick Adams Stories".  It is a series of short stories about Nick Adams, from boy to man, living in different parts of the worlds.  Some stories are but a few pages long while others like "The Last Good Country" are over 40 pages long. As with most collections of short stories, some are intriguing while others are uninspiring. Some benefits to reading this book, and others of its era, is I constantly learned how the English language was commonly used. In reading older books, you are introduced to words that have little use in today's modern vernacular which can help improve your English.  Even for me, a native English speaker, there where five words on one page I did not know! I could understand them in the context of the sentence, but could not define them. In some stories he goes through painstaking detail about the art of fishing, and other topics, which might bore some readers.  For me these parts, although I understand that Hemingway was trying to build the character, were difficult to read. "The Killers" was the most entertaining read for me.  While you may not like every short story in the book, I think for advanced readers this is an a worthwhile book to build English vocabulary while improving your knowledge of who Hemingway really is.

David.