October 2011

LOOK!  I reviewed every book I read this month.  I deserve a cookie.

1. Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott (50%)
2. The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow (35%)
3. City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris
4. The Dark Mirror by Juliet Marillier (30%)
5. The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai
6. Ombria in Shadow by Patricia A. McKillip
7. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
8. The View from the Seventh Layer by Kevin Brockmeier
9. The Company by K. J. Parker
10. The Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier
11. Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks
12. Little Red Riding Hood and Other French Fairy Tales translated by Jack Zipes

I abandoned 3 books.

I read 3 short story collections.

I read 10 books from my TBR list.

I read 10 fantasy or science fiction books.

I reread 1 book.

My favorite book was The Borrower.

My least favorite book was Flatland.

23. The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy

TBR #23.  The Del Rey Book of Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Ellen Datlow.

This is a very odd anthology–without a particular theme to help the stories relate to each other.  While I recognized several of the contributors, their biographies always introduced their stories as unlike their usual style or subject.  I’m afraid the er, uniqueness of the stories caused the anthology not to cohere, for lack of a better word.

I intended to read the sixteen stories one at a time between novels, but after reading the first alternate history story about elephants and Native Americans, I read on to see whether its strangeness would set the tone for the whole collection.  It did.  I read about an adrenaline-junkie volcanologist and then about a bizarrely imagined future Kentucky, all the while wondering where the science fiction or the fantasy was.  So I skipped ahead to a retelling of Hansel and Gretel–which unexpectedly featured gay sex and cannibalism–and then to a story about a graduate student who reads a narrative by the subject of her dissertation about a graduate student who has a romantic liaison with the subject of her dissertation, and who then lives out the fiction.  Or something like that.

Yeah, so after five stories I stopped reading.  This one’s going back to the used book store for sure.