Books like The Kissing Game: Stories of Defiance and Flash Fictions

I decided to read The Kissing Game, by Aidan Chambers because the synopsis and cover looked and sounded really interesting. I refer long novels rather than short stories, so the way this book was presented grabbed my attention and i felt i would enjoy this book. This book is for the short stories catagory on the bingo board. I find short stories quite frustrating, because as you read them, you find out a lot about a character, and build a connection with them. But then the story ends rather abruptly. and you are left wanting more from the story, but the story will neer be continued. in my opinion, i find this very frustrating. The stroies though, even though were short, still were amusing and interesting, with life lessons winded in to them and a resolution was always there. The book the Kissing Game fits into the category of short stories from one anthology. With a selection of different stories in the book, we can see a variety of themes that all relate to each other, and we can see how they each reflect the same message. I found this category interesting as it had lots of exciting adventures. I like short stories because even though they are not narratives, and are finished within 20 pages, you still feel a connection with the characters and feel the need to know more about what happens to them. This was a fun and enjoyable bingo board category to choose from, and is good for a Sunday read.Something i learned from this book is how being yourself, and staying true to who you are is the best thing that you can do. While making friends, going for jobs, meeting new people, or being put in sticky situations, the best thing you can do is be yourself to help you get through it. In one of the short stories, a girl pretended to be someone else for a day, sick of being treated as a nobody. When she got into some trouble in the town, she could not think for herself and no one could help her because of how she was acting and what she had become. If she had stayed her kind, smart self, she could of avoided the incident, and saved a lot of terror for herself. Through this, i can see that being myself in front of other people, will benefit me, and it is the right thing to do.A character or setting that interested me was a boy who, no matter how hard he tried, could not meet his fathers high standards of his son, and he always felt like a disappointment. When an opportunity came for him to prove he was a good son, his father payed no attention and called him a liar. We could read how crushed and heart broken the boy was, but we watched him not give up. he had faith in himself, and that was all that mattered. The situation he was faced with, he completed. His father then realised what a great son he had. Even though we read all of this in 20 pages, we could see just how self belief can change an entire relationship. This was one of my favourite changes visible in this book.