If you thought The Beautiful Bureaucrat was a strange book, Helen Phillips’ new book of short stories is even stranger, but it’s a really fun, and memorable read. These are short stories, almost vignettes in some places, experimental in others. It’s always hard to review a book of short stories, but in this book you … Continue reading
This book was one of my favorite reads this year. It’s a difficult subject to read about. But it’s very worth the effort. Redeployment was written by Phil Klay and won the National Book Award for fiction last year. It’s a collection of short stories written from the perspective of men serving in the U.S. … Continue reading
It’s always exciting to get a new Margaret Atwood, and this one didn’t disappoint, although it’s very different from her recent MaddAddam trilogy. Stone Mattress is a book of nine short stories. Atwood says they are really “tales” and are meant to “evoke the world of the folk tale, the wonder tale, and the long-ago … Continue reading
Olive Kitteridge won the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction, and the basis for a recent miniseries starring Frances McDormand. It’s a book that falls somewhere between a novel and short stories, a trend I’m seeing a lot of lately. The stories take place in the small town of Crosby, Maine, and Olive is the … Continue reading
Patricia Briggs is my favorite “series” writer. I try to read everything she writes, and that’s unusual for me. I mostly read a few books from a series and then move on to another one, and I ignore all the extra short stories and novellas that seem more for marketing purposes than to further the … Continue reading
Last year I read Rebecca Burns’ collection of short stories, Catching the Barramundi, and I was so wowed by it I was happy to receive her latest work for review. The Settling Earth is a collection of short stories all set in the same time and place, a small settler’s community in New Zealand in … Continue reading
I had a hard time getting into this book at first, but once I did I absolutely loved it. Astray is a collection of short stories that are all based in historical fact. Donoghue says in the afterword that she collects interesting facts and anecdotes when she’s doing historical research, so she turned these into … Continue reading
This book has received a lot of critical acclaim in 2013, and it was as good as I expected it to be – although I have to say it was a book I appreciated but wasn’t riveted to. Still… I can best describe Vampires as “literary horror”. These are short stories in the vein of … Continue reading
I don’t read a lot of short stories, but I knew I’d love this book. Hawaii is one of my favorite places, but I’m always reminded how much I DON’T know about it. It’s one of those places where, even if you moved there, you wouldn’t be an insider. It’s divided racially and between tourists … Continue reading
I don’t read short stories very often, but this book caught my attention with its unusual title – I ate a lot of Barramundi in Australia. And reading the title story in this collection definitely made me want to read more. These stories are loosely connected by a theme of loss – sometimes loneliness, sometimes … Continue reading
I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley. It’s a science fiction anthology that includes stories from Paolo Bacigalupi and Ursula LeGuin. While I don’t read a lot of anthologies, it’s also nice to think you might find some new authors to read. The theme of this anthology is diversity. Its editor, Tobias … Continue reading
Paulo Bacigalupi is the author of the award-winning science fiction novel, The Windup Girl, and a young adult novel called Ship Breaker. I loved Ship Breaker; but I’ve tried to read The Windup Girl and found it difficult to get into. Bacigalupi introduces a very detailed alternative world that’s can be compared to the noir-dystopian-Asian-influenced … Continue reading
