Delightful to read at first but became a little thin, in parts, as I got further into it. Some of the stories were pot-boilers, some very good, all clearly, if not always beautifully, written. Some are also cliched as hell (at least at towards the farther end of the 20th century), but some others I think I'll still be reading with enjoyment as far ahead as I can imagine. Maugham was never taken seriously as a writer by the lit-snobs and critics of his day, and I don't suppose he's taken seriously now by academics, but he outlasted many of the critical darlings of his day and will no doubt outlast many of the academic darlings of ours, and I don't think anyone who loves English literature, and particularly the short story, should ignore his work. Evelyn Waugh greatly admired his craftmanship, for example, which is a strong recommendation, and in fact Waugh was a kind of mirror image of Maugham. Maugham wrote some perfect short stories and some very clumsy novels; Waugh wrote some perfect novels and some very clumsy short stories.