W. Somerset Maugham

COLLECTED SHORT STORIES VOLUME 1 by W. Somerset Maugham

It has thirty stories. The first story is RAIN and the last one is THE YELLOW STREAK. I cannot remember when I started reading the first story. Around midnight, about nine hours ago, I finished reading the last story of the book and found that the number of the last page was 536.

I noticed that Maugham used some expressions often that I had not been familiar with until I started reading his novels last year. For example, he often used "presently" to convey the meaning of "after a while"; "a trifle", "a little".

“Perfection is a trifle dull. It is not the least of life's ironies that this, which we all aim at, is better not quite achieved. ”
― W. Somerset Maugham

Happily enough, I have read through only the first volume and am now reading the first story of the second volume. The title of the story is THE VESSEL OF WRATH.