Category: Reading

I know you’re thinking, “You’ve only read five stories since your last post?” Not so. I’ve actually read about fifteen additional pieces out of the collection Varieties of Disturbance by Lydia Davis. Anything I’d have to say about some of those pieces would be longer than the pieces themselves. I don’t think an off-the-cuff review is possible, except with terms like “Damn!” and “Oh, snap!”

These on the other hand…

Jeffrey Thomas, “Immolation” – From The New Weird antho. Very nice crime tale. Lots of phrases I liked, like references to “…some world not yet raped, merely groped.” Another excellent example of world-building, too. 5 out of 5.

Angela Carter, “The Snow Child” – From her collection The Bloody Chamber. I’m not sure how much the praise of her work affected my reading. In any case, I did love this short piece, with the way it slowly disturbs you like a creeping vine that you don’t realize has wrapped itself around your leg until it’s too late. 5 out of 5.

Karen Joy Fowler, “Shimabara” – From her collection Black Glass. You’ll think this story is about one thing and Fowler will turn it around on you. Only to then turn it back around, and unsettle you. Brilliantly done! 5 out of 5!

Jay Lake, “The Lizard of Ooze” – (pdf) Also from The New Weird. Intricate, straightforward plotting and execution. Definitely a lesson in worldbuilding. I didn’t feel too invested in this world, though, or its characters. 3 out of 5.

Karen Joy Fowler, “The Elizabeth Complex” – Also from Black Glass. I really get what she was trying to do here. The story’s clearly about multiple Elizabeths in order to make a universal statement. But Elizabeth I figures so prominently that Fowler’s attempts to weave in various anachronisms just doesn’t work as well as in other pieces I’ve read. 3 out of 5.

Didn’t get a lot of reading done this past week (that wasn’t critique-related). It looks like I did, because I went through some flash stories. As usual, I tried to take as much time reviewing them, unpolished and off the cuff…

Thomas Ligotti, “A Soft Voice Whispers Nothing” – From The New Weird, this was a short piece that seemed to go nowhere at first. But the pace picked up, and the message of the piece was finally revealed. It’s not a pleasant one, but that’s actually not why it gets 3 out of 5.

China Miéville, “Jack” – I thought I must’ve read this when I first picked up China’s Looking for Jake and Other Stories. I must not have; I would’ve remembered a story this good. The best part was listening to a narrator that ended up being as interesting as his stories of Jack Half-a-Prayer. 5 out of 5.

Benjamin Rosenbaum, “The Orange” – I might’ve read this before, too, as I went through the Flash Fiction Forward antho; I maybe even talked about it. The story doesn’t have that “snap” at the end that you see in a lot of flash fiction. It pulls off something harder, building up a smooth narrative arc from start to finish in such a small space. 5 out of 5.

Jim Crace, “21” – Also from Flash Fiction Forward. A good experimental piece, blurring the lines between showing and telling. The showing was the telling. It leaned a touch too far on the showing side to me, though it made sense later as I read that the piece was an excerpt. 4 out of 5.

Karen Joy Fowler, “Contention” – From her collection Black Glass, the story brought to mind Amy Hempel’s “Celia Is Back.” But where the protagonist’s ultimate desires in that story were up for interpretation, the protagonist in this story wants something more specific. I felt there was a disconnect between how the tale was initially presented and what it was ultimately about, but the writing made that transition almost seamless. 4 out of 5.

Karen Joy Fowler, “The Black Fairy’s Curse” – Also from Black Glass, here’s another reinterpretation of a classif fairy tale. More like an amplification, really. 5 out of 5.

Everything I’ve read this week is from the antho The New Weird (Powell’s | Amazon). A couple of them were novellette-length (gasp!), but they’ll get the same quick, off-the-cuff treatment that any other piece gets.

I have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed a crop of stories this much!

M. John Harrison, “The Luck in the Head” – This is the second Harrison story I’ve read, and unfortunately I think I’ve fallen into the camp of those who really admire his prose but who finish his stories feeling, “WTF?” The novelette length didn’t help, either, but that’s a personal thing with me. 3 out of 5.

Clive Barker, “In the Hills, the Cities” – Oddly enough, this story must’ve been about two or three thousand words longer than Harrison’s story. But it took about 1/5 of the time to read. I did think it was a touch too long, with a little too much time spent on the interactions between the two main characters relative to the payoff at the end. Still, 5 out of 5.

Michael Moorcock, “Crossing Into Cambodia” – This is a nice an homage to Isaac Babel as I’ve ever read. A great blend of literary iconography: a Babel-like protagonist caught up in a Moorcock world. 5 out of 5!

Simon D. Ings, “The Braining of Mother Lamprey” – I have to give this 5 out of 5. I actually thought there were a couple of characters too many and I got mired in some of the details, but I’ll be damned–I never got lost. This is definitely one to re-read, if nothing else, for the tutorial on world-building in a short-story.

Kathe Koja, “The Neglected Garden” – There’s nothing like a fantasy/horror story that could, with a little imagination (and not a very “nice” imagination, at that), take place in your own back yard! 5 out of 5!

This past week, I polished off the rest of The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet in between bouts of the plague. In general, I’d say the last part of the collection just burned! Here’re the off-the-cuff reviews of the fiction…

James Sallis, “Two Stories” – Two nicely written flash pieces, combined. One really worked for me, the other one not so much. 3 out of 5.

Karen Russell, “Help Wanted” – A great series of interrelated vignettes forming a greater whole of story/commentary. 5 out of 5.

Sarah Micklem, “‘Eft’ or ‘Epic'” – Very clever use of a narrative substitute. 4 out of 5.

John Kessel, “The Red Phone” – A textbook example of a good idea, wrapped around with great storytelling. 4 out of 5.

Deborah Roggie, “The Mushroom Duchess” – Started a bit slow for me, and the focus of the story shifted. Once I got over that, it was a really decent tale. 4 out of 5.

Seana Graham, “The Pirate’s True Love” – A quintessential empowerment story! 5 out of 5.

John Brown, “Bright Waters” – A longer piece, but with the most solid storytelling I’ve read in awhile! 5 out of 5.

I gave the stuff I said in this post a few more seconds thought, and decided that without that bit of accountability, I didn’t feel compelled to read as much. So rather than doing a simple list here, and a review elsewhere, I’m going to compromise.

And, here we go–a list of what I read last week, with a quick, unvarnished impression about each piece.

All the readings, except where otherwise indicated, are from The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

David J. Schwartz, “The Ichthyomancer Writes His Friend With an Account of the Yeti’s Birthday Party” – Cool title. Nice mix of the mythical, the magical, and the real. 4 out of 5.

Veronica Schanoes, “Serpents” – This is the second story I’ve read from the author, the first being “Rats.” “Serpents” isn’t quite as powerful, but just as beautifully written. 4 out of 5.

David Marusek, “Osama Phone Home” – From the December ’07 F&SF. A little something for the mundane sci-fi lovers out there. Some exposition “worthy” of the usual sci-fi, though it probably moved about as quickly as possible. Saw the twist end coming, but from only about a tenth of a mile away. 3.5 out of 5.

Benjamin Rosenbaum & David Ackert, “Stray” – Also from the Dec. ’07 F&SF. A historical fantasy, with time and place deftly defined in a single paragraph–that alone was worth the price of admission! A nice steady pace too, despite a couple of jumps in time. The conceit is sort of close to a story I wrote and have been shopping around, but only if you squint your eyes really hard. 5 out of 5.

Douglas Lain, “Music Lessons” – Brilliant concept and brilliant combination of Mr. Rogers and Whitley Streiber. Too alienating (get it?) to read at the end of a work day, though. 3.5 out of 5.

11/19-11/25

I was lucky to have gotten this much reading in, what with the holiday travel and all.

• Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, “The Young Wife’s Tale”
• J.G. Ballard, “Deep End”
• Ryan Boudinot, “Drugs and Toys”
• Ryan Boudinot, “Contaminant”
• Kelly Link, “Lull”
• J.G. Ballard, “The Overloaded Man”

11/26-12/2

• Ryan Boudinot, the remainder of his collection The Littlest Hitler
• M. Rickert, “Don’t Ask”
• Stuart Dybek, “Farwell”
• S.L. Gilbow, “Who Brought Tulips to the Moon?”
• J.G. Ballard, “Billennium”
• Stuart Dybek, “Chopin in Winter”

I think I made some decent headway with things I’ve purchased over the Thanksgiving holiday, used and new. The stories from Gilbow and Rickert are from the December ’07 issue of F&SF–I’ve accepted the fact that I’ll buy just about anything with M. Rickert’s name on it, including whatever collection “Don’t Ask” might end up in. Sort of like I keep downloading buying all those greatest hits compilations that the band Chicago keeps putting out.

From the week of 11/12/07-11/18/07. Two weeks ago, sure. I’d spent that week reading more prose poetry from Great American Prose Poetry and Simic’s The World Doesn’t End, but I still managed to sneak in…

• Ryan Boudinot, “Absolut Boudinot”
• Ryan Boudinot, “On Sex and Relationships”
• Ryan Boudinot, “Blood Relatives”
• Mary Caponegro, “The Rewards of a Humble Profession”

I’ll put up last week’s tomorrow, or something.

Still with the family for the holiday. Before the trip though, the wife and I swore we wouldn’t go near the Half-Price Books this time around. We just got home about an hour or so ago, and I’m not ashamed to say I’m fucking glad I went, because finding this made the whole 6-hour drive worthwhile…

I was, no joke, going to order this earlier today, hoping it would arrive shortly after we returned home. I had absolutely no logical reason to think I would find this at any bookstore, but here it was! Oh, and I found the last issue of Conjunctions too, along with a couple of other books.

You’re probably thinking to yourself, “What, hasn’t he been reading? All that shit he adds to his goodreads list; what’s he doing, slacking?”

Slacking on blogging, that’s for sure (and engaging in general human contact, household chores, and stuff). Been busy, but to make it up to you like an absentee parent who disappears for weeks at a time, then bombards you with gifts, here are three weeks worth of lists of stuff I’ve read…

10/22-10/28

• Mary Robison, “Seizing Control”
• Veronica Schanoes, “Rats”
  (Comments here)
• Jessica Hagedorn, “Tenement Lover: no palm trees/in new york city”
• Caroline Cheng, “Consolation”

10/29-11/4

• Amy Hempel, “Daylight Come”
• Amy Hempel, “The Harvest”
• Jan Lars Jensen, “Happier Days”
• Jane Avrich, “The Life of Cards”
• Aimee Bender, “Lemonade”

11/5-11/11

• Kate Bernheimer, “Whitework”
• Judy Budnitz, “Abroad”
• Barry Hannah, “A Creature in the Bay of St. Louis”
• Mikal Trimm, “Climbing Redemption Mountain”

…is my copy of Raymond Carver’s Cathedral?

Or, do I even have one? I could’ve sworn I bought it some time ago, but I’ve looked through every place in the apartment that I’ve ever set a book and I can’t find it.

Now, I’m actually starting to doubt if I ever had it. But, I put it on my goodreads list, so what the fuck?

EDIT: Now, where the hell is my copy of Chicago X?? I know I bought this one! See, this isn’t funny anymore.