The History of Sound (by Ben Shattuck)

This was one of those great Tournament of Books surprises! I am not typically a short story fan so I never would have given this a shot otherwise. But this book is an absolute gem. Just a series of perfect short stories that are linked together - the first is connected to the last, and then there are pairings in between, spanning centuries at times, but always located in (what is now known as) New England. 

The Tournament has been hit or miss but with Irena Ray and now History of Sound, my faith is renewed.  (Today's judgment is also delightful; it busted my bracket but I couldn't agree with it more.)  

They've turned the first and final stories into a movie starring Josh O'Connor and Paul Mescal, and I already know I'm unprepared. If you have seen All of Us Strangers you'll have a slight idea what you're in for, and not just because Paul Mescal is in that one too. 

Anyway, that's beside the point. These stories are amazing! And you should read this collection. The end.

Forward: Stories of Tomorrow (edited by Blake Crouch)

I loooooove speculative fiction, and this collection of six stories was free on Amazon Prime.  On the whole this was a great collection but here are mini-reviews of each of the stories:

"Ark" by Veronica Roth 

About a scientist cataloging Earth’s flora in the last days of the apocalypse. Very moving and a great start to the collection. 

"Summer Frost" by Blake Crouch

About a video game developer whose character breaks free from her programming. Maybe my favorite of all of thses! Makes me want to seek out more of his work.

"Emergency Skin" by N. K. Jemisin

An explorer from a civilizaton of elites who has come back to Earth to get genetic materal (and amazing twist as to what the material ends up being). a little heavy handed but really good. 

"You Have Arrived at Your Destination" by Amor Towles 

About a man who considers using a futuristic futility cliinic to plan his child’s future. Great concept, somewhat flawed execution. 

"The Last Conversation" by Paul G. Tremblay 

A man wakes up with no memories and has to slowly realize who he is, with the help of a mysterious doctor. Wonderfully creepy! Really loved it. 

"Randomize" by Andy Weir 

This is about a high tech casino heist and my expectations were high! I loved the premise but the ending was not good and ultimate I think this was my least favorite.

Minnesota Reads

And it's another edition of Books Read in Airplanes and at Airports! This was a brief trip to go birding and have a meeting with a vendor in Minneapolis (complete with a pilgrimage to Birchbark Books to get Ian a signed copy of The Sentence.)  And here is what I read:

The Book of Goose (by Yiyun Li)

This made it to the finals of the Tournament of Books and may or may not have won (no spoilers here) and I decided to read it once I realized it might just go all the way! I'm so glad I did; it's beautiful. There are so many Tournament judges who articulate its beauty better than I can - and some commenters who point out the lesbian erasure in the judgments - but the short version is, it's about a complicated but passionate female friendship (yes, Ferrante has come up in the discussions) and its impact on the life of our author, Agnes. A worthy ToB finalist and/or winner. But not my favorite read of the trip....

The Wrong Kind of Weird (by James Ramos) 

Contemporary YA with a central love triangle that is, for a change, not queer at all. (Background characters bring the queer rep, though, no need to worry.) It's pretty predictable but I did enjoy the clear passion the character (and author) have for anime and anime culture, and I love reading about nerds, particularly nerds of color, and seeing them represented in YA books! Fun read.

A Pocket Full of Rye (by Agatha Christie) 

I don't remember why I picked this one up but it's a Miss Marple and I realized at the end, once again, that I do not care for Miss Marple and her "oh dearie me, I'm just an old lady who loves to knit!" vibe. Give me the Thursday Murder Club anytime.  The mystery was fun though and as always, the solution surprising. Not a must in the Christie ouvre but not bad either. And of course, as with all Agatha Christie, there's some throwaway racism. 

It’s Not Like It’s a Secret (by Misa Sugiura) 

A young adult novel from 2017, and the thing that struck me most is that it already feels very dated in how it talks about sexuality and race. Like, kids in 2020 young adult novels are way more woke than our main character, Sana, and pretty much all her friends.  Of course I went to read the Goodreads reviews and this was called out in some of them back in 2017 so maybe it's not all YA books but this one in particular. (The thing that bugged me the most is that Sana (who is Japanese-American) says horrifically racist stuff to her Mexican-American girlfriend's Mexican-American friends and it's not really addressed? Her girlfriend is like "oh I know you didn't really mean it" and they move on?  Like it's REAL RACIST, Y'ALL.   The Goodreads reviewers are more up in arms that this book involves cheating but that kind of messiness seems authentically teenage to me and I can't be mad at that.

Life Ceremony (by Sakaya Murata) 

A book of short stories by the author of the wonderful Convenience Store Woman and oh my god I loved this book. I'm not usually a short story reader but I love Murata's work and for the Read Harder Challenge, I needed to read "a book of short stories." These are somewhat indescribable, but I will try. For example, the first one is about a world in which turning human bodies into clothes and furniture are a custom. Many of the stories have body horror elements like this (especially the title story) but also leads us to ponder human culture and customs, how they can evolve both away from and towards different practices, and how society is in a way an agreement to be bizarre and horrifying in generally acceptable ways.  I didn't love every story equally but I loved the collection as a whole and will definitely make sure I check out Earthlings next.

Weekend Reads and Deep Thoughts

I think I got all the tags for this diverse assortment of reads, which I finished over the weekend. 

Happily Ever Island (by Crystal Cestari) 

Okay, this would have been an instant-DNF if not for the Disney angle; the writing is very tell, don't show and reads extremely young for a romance between alleged college-age adults. The chemistry of the romance pairings isn't amazing (the two leads could have fallen in love, making for a better developed romance, but instead they each have their own underdeveloped love interest).  The suspension of disbelief required for this magical Disney island is off the charts (none of it makes any sense, this review by Abigail on Goodreads nails it). The book is produced by Disney and is straight-up propaganda. But did I finish the whole thing and enjoy all the Disneyness of it all? I absolutely did. But this is for Disney mega-fans only.

Husband Material (by Alexis Hall) 

The sequel to Boyfriend Material and has the same Bridget Jones type of vibe. It shamelessly borrows the structure of Four Weddings and a Funeral, although the throughline isn't as well-established. But still laugh-out-loud funny and an enjoyable read.  

Sad Cypress (by Agatha Christie) 

A Christie that is very good, not mind-blowing, but extremely solid. The characters are compelling, the solution is satisfying.  The racism, while unfortunately present as it is in most of Christie's books, is at least minimal.  (Can they do a "cut back on the racism" edit of these books already?) Recommended for Christie fans.

70. Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction (editor Joshua Whitehead) 

A Read Harder pick for "an anthology featuring diverse voices."  I bought this from the publisher on paper to support the editor and authors. My favorite parts were actually the editor's note at the beginning and the final two stories! The editor's note from Joshua Whitehead has been in my head since I read it, for two reasons.  

Firstly, he interrogates the typical notion of post-apocalyptic fiction by asserting that for indigenous people, we have already been living in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. And I was like oh my god, of course we have. I realized how deeply my colonialist mindset had been embedded. Of course this is the dystopia. And not just in the "post-Trump-era" way that white people think of it, but in the post-colonial, post-slavery, post-indiginous genocide, post-smallpox and Columbus way. We've been in the dystopia all along. (Whitehead focuses the stories in this anthology on post-apocalyptic hope for native communities, and this is why.)

Secondly, there are a lot of queer stories here, and Whitehead brings up Annie on My Mind as the first queer YA with a happy ending. It was published in 1985, when I was 10 years old. I probably discovered it when I was 13 or so.  And in every other book I read, the protagonists were white and straight and cis.  No wonder I devour queer YA now.  No wonder it took me so long to realize I was bisexual, as I had absolutely no framework to think about it before that. And my child at age 10-13 will be growing up with a world of representation that we didn't have a generation ago. It's really amazing to me.

Anyway, that one paragraph in the introduction made the book worth it, but the stories are also enjoyable all the way through, and I recommend checking it out!

New Suns: Original Speculative Fiction by People of Color (ed. Nisi Shawl)

I love speculative fiction and was really excited about this collection. I wouldn't say it's all speculative fiction, there's a good dose of fantasy in here as well, which is not my favorite, but overall I enjoyed this and am excited to know there is a second volume in the works. This was for the RHC category "an SFF anthology edited by a person of color." I normally don't read short stories and I'm so glad the Read Harder Challenge nudged me towards this anthology.

My absolute favorite story here is "The Robots of Eden" by Anil Menon. Pure speculative fiction (what if you could have an artificial brain installed to help control your emotions) with an unreliable narrator in a near-future dystopia. Basically all my favorite things! Menon published a young adult novel and I look forward to giving it a try. 

I also enjoyed "Come Home to Atropos" by Steven Barnes, "The Fine Print" by Chinelo Onwualu, "unkind of mercy" by Alex Jennings, "Burn the Ships" by Alberto Yáñez, "Give Me Your Black Wings Oh Sister" Silvia Moreno-Garcia, "The Shadow We Cast Through Time" by Indrapramit Das, "Harvest" by Rebecca Roanhorse, and "Kelsey and the Burdened Breath" by Darcie Little Badger. Definitely more hits than misses for me in this collection.

What The Neighbours Did, And Other Stories (by Philippa Pearce)

Read for my resurrected book club with my friends in Chicago, the League of Unreliable Narrators! This is a middle-grade short story collection full of tiny gems of stories that reminded me strongly of the stories we used to read in Junior Great Books -- like "All Summer in a Day" or "The Veldt."

These ambiguous, Joycean little stories are set in a small British village, focus primarily on boys, and are out of print. They should not be -- they are wonderful. And they were tremendously fun to talk about! I highly recommend "Fresh" and "Return to Air" -- if you can find them.

Vacation Reads: Italy Edition

I just got back from two glorious weeks in Italy, and I read lots of books! (I also watched the entire miniseries of Big Little Lies on the flight home. Good, but the book is better.) Here are my brief reviews:

The Woman in Cabin 10 (by Ruth Ware) 

I had heard mixed reviews of this one, but took a chance on it since it was (you guessed it) a library book. I actually really enjoyed it, especially the setting (a mini-cruise ship). A fun page-turner!

Aurora (by Kim Stanley Robinson) 

After Six Wakes, I was looking for good generation ship stories, and I found this one on some recommendation lists. Thought-provoking and rich with detail; the ship itself was one of my favorite characters. I didn't love it, but I liked it.

The Dinner Party and Other Stories (by Joshua Ferris) 

Very male and white and heteronormative, but enjoyable nonetheless. There are some standout stories (like the title story, which was first published in the New Yorker and is findeable online) and some that didn't quite mesh for me thematically (like the one set in a trailer park).  A good read nonetheless.

The Animators (by Kayla Rae Whittaker) 

Really good, assured, impressive debut that I plucked off the Tournament of Books longlist and into my Kindle. It is a skoch MFA-ey. The character of Mel is a bit unrealistic, particularly her dialogue. But compulsively readable.

Sharp Objects (by Gillian Flynn) 

I feel like Flynn is an underrated writer. It's a good suspense thriller, but also has some excellent turns of phrase and some really solid writing. I enjoyed the creepy plot and the unreliable narrator. I did not enjoy the various swipes at fat people throughout.

Holding Up the Universe (by Jennifer Niven)

Speaking of fat people, this was my favorite of all these reads. It's a young adult novel about a boy with prosopagnosia (face-blindness) and a girl who once had to be cut out of her house; she has lost hundreds of pounds but is still obese.  It's painfully relatable and so well-written. This may be one I actually purchase so I can re-read it as much as I want to.

Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies (by Michael Ausiello)

A moving and affectionate memoir of his late husband, written with raw honesty and humor. Includes am enjoyable dash of pop culture (I know Ausiello as a pop culture writer for Entertainment Weekly and online). I had been really looking forward to this one and it didn't disappoint.

13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (by Mona Awad)

This linked set of short stories was on the Tournament of Books longlist, but didn't make the shortlist.  But as a linked collection of short stories, it qualifies as a Read Harder Challenge book. And regardless of what list it's on or not on, I am so glad I read it!

If you've ever been a fat girl, you will relate to these stories so hard.  Unflinchingly honest and unafraid of portraying Lizzie as an object of attraction as well as ridicule, the stories delve into her deep insecurities as well as her deep strengths.  The early stories (before there is a weight loss narrative) resonated the most deeply with me,  but the later stories reminded me wonderfully of Jen Larsen's Stranger Here, equally honest and well-written, and equally resistant to the narrative of fat = bad, skinny = good that Awad is grappling with here.

My only criticism is that the ending seemed abrupt -- the stories do form an overall narrative, and it seemed to end with more of Lizzie's story to be told.  I didn't need 100% pat resolution, but a tiny bit more than what we got would have been satisfying. But that's a quibble. I really enjoyed this.

Olive Kitteridge (by Elizabeth Strout)

I had this book on my shelf for quite some time, having heard good things about it, probably around the time it won the Pulitzer. I finally picked it up as my airplane read on a business trip this week because the Read Harder Challenge has a category for reading a book, then watching the movie -- and the Frances McDormand adaptation is also very highly regarded.

I didn't realize that it was a linked series of short stories, all about the same Maine coastal town and all, to a greater or lesser extent, featuring the prickly and complex protagonist Olive Kitteridge.  I enjoyed the format in this case, although I did get a little frustrated -- as I often do with short stories -- to get invested in a character only to have the vignette end and then never find out what happens next.

Olive herself is an interesting choice as a heroine, since she can be... very difficult. Her lack of loveability, however, doesn't mean she's unloveable. I think you catch glimpses of real kindness and goodness beneath the difficult exterior, and you end up if nothing else really respecting her and being drawn to her. But there's also the implication that she did real damage to her child when he was growing up, which is a bit hard to get past. There's also the fact that I pictured Frances McDormand the entire time I was reading this. I guess that's neither a positive nor a negative, realy.

I'm very curious to see how the miniseries handles the vignette structure -- probably by putting the most emphasis on Olive's story and maybe leaving out some of the "side" plots? I do hope we get the drunk piano player and the story about Harmon and Daisy, though; I think those were my favorites. I will report back after I watch it so I fulfill the terms of the RHC fully.

*

Update, May 23, 2016

The miniseries is, indeed, great! The piano player was a background character, and there were no Daisy and Harmon. But overall it was such a smart adaptation.

Loved the casting, even if they didn't make Olive overweight -- Frances McDormand was almost perfect (overweight she would have been perfect) and Richard Jenkins was completely perfect. The closure for Kevin's story that didn't exist in the book was terrific. The confrontation in the hospital scene and the scene with Olive and Theo, which I believe were not in the original, heightened the drama quite a bit. And Denise totally broke my heart, as she did in the original.

The RHC asks you to decide which is better, I think? They are both great, but I think the miniseries hangs together a little more strongly and has the edge for me.

The Best American Short Stories 2014 (edited by Jennifer Egan)

I am really not a short story reader, historically speaking. I often feel like a short story requires a not-insignificant investment, but then ends just as I'm really getting into it, making the experience of reading it somewhat unsatisfying. For this year, though, I decided I wanted to give the form another try. In particular, I wanted to see what was happening in the world of contemporary short stories.

I'm so glad I did. This collection, edited by Jennifer Egan, was a great reading experience. I read approximately one short story per day, which gave me some time to reflect on what I'd read or, in some cases, re-read it. It's also inaccurate to say that these ended just when they were getting going -- some of them seemed to compress a novel's worth of information into them, and most of them were rounded off satisfyingly.

I'd had a vague notion of the contemporary short story as always being the Joycean short story, which focuses on an almost imperceptible inner shift in one of the characters. ("The Dead," which is of course a wonderful story, being a prime example.) I didn't think of short stories as being particularly heavy on plot -- for some reason I thought plot was out of fashion. But a lot of these stories have plotlines and plenty of action, so what did I know.

To get into specifics, let me talk about some of my favorites. The first knockout for me was Peter Cameron's "After the Flood," about two people taking in a family whose house has flooded, which brings up painful memories. The ending of that one is subtle and perfect (and yes, sort of Joycean). Another one I loved was Joshua Ferris's "The Breeze," about a woman who wants to make the most of a perfect spring day in New York. In her intro, Jennifer Egan describes it as "a series of scenes that don't quite add up -- and often seem to contradict each other -- as in a cubist painting, [evoking] a larger whole without ever quite pinpointing it." It's a wonderful and accurate description.

"Hover" by Nell Freudenberger is a slightly surreal portrait of a divorced preschooler's mom, which has wonderful touches like her son's pet bag of flour. "Evie M." by O.A. Lindsey is one I re-read multiple times -- it's about a servicewoman who's come back from war to work in an office, and it's written in a quite original, haunting style. (The war story that immediately followed it in the collection is good, but suffers by comparison.) "This Is Not a Love Song" by Brendan Mathews felt a bit contrived at the beginning, but the strength of the ending and the slighly unreliable narrator saved it for me. "God" by Benjamin Nugent, about a member of a fraternity who has feelings for one of his frat brothers, is another one where the ending really helps make it.

"Next to Nothing" by Stephen O'Connor and "Long Tom Lookout" by Nicole Cullen are both painful and haunting. I would read an entire novel about the peculiar sisters Ivy and Isabel from "Next to Nothing" -- the author describes the sisters as absolute rationalists "who entirely lack fellow feeling." Reminded me obliquely of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.  And finally, the last story in the collection is Laura van den Berg's "Antarctica." Not only do we share a last name, which makes her automatically awesome, but this story (about a woman whose research scientist brother is killed in an explosion in Antarctica) is wonderfully compelling and original.

There are a bunch of other good ones too -- these aren't even all the good ones! My least favorite is  probably "Medium Tough," which feels super contrived. (Half his body is super pumped up, the other half is weak and malnourished. He's a pediatric brain surgeon with one hand who competes in arm wrestling contests with the other hand. And he has a pregnant married girlfriend who may or may not be carrying his child. None of it felt real to me at all.) "Charity" starts great and has an interesting shift in the middle, but the ending is weak. "The Night of the Satellite" is trying way too hard to have a piece of satellite serve as a relationship metaphor, and the relationship is not that interesting.  "Madame Bovary's Greyhound" is an interesting idea and well done, but somehow didn't grab me -- maybe I need to re-read Madame Bovary to appreciate it more.

Finally, I want to mention "Mastiff" by Joyce Carol Oates, which reminded me strongly of an Oates story I know well, her retelling of Chekhov's "The Lady with the Pet Dog." The similarity is not the dogs, it's the way that both stories are about the inner romantic life of a female character, with a lot of telling-not-showing that really somehow works.

I loved reading each story, taking notes on it, thinking about it, and sometimes going back to it. I think this is a wonderfully curated collection, and I'll almost certainly pick up the 2015 edition of this anthology at the end of the year. This also inspired me to dig up one of my own short stories and outline an ending for it. Maybe I don't dislike short stories after all!

Nocturnes (by Kazuo Ishiguro)

I am not really a short story person, which is something that has pained many people who have tried to get me to read Birds of America or any given America's Best Short Stories collection. I often am left wanting more at the end of a short story, and feel jarred by the shift from story to story. In keeping with the theme of this reading year, I have made peace with this. There are also some explicitly farcical moments in a couple of the stories.

All that said, this short story collection is by Kazuo Ishiguro, so you know I had to get it. Of course then it languished on my bookshelf because.... short stories. I have to say that Ishiguro's style, which always leaves you wanting more, is very suited to the short story style. These stories are thematically linked by music and nightfall, as well as an Ishiguroian sense of regret.

My favorite story was probably the first one, about a musician in Venice who runs into a famous over-the-hill musician and helps him serenade his wife. But I enjoyed them all, and found this collection very easy to read. Knowing Ishiguro, it's also going to have an immense re-readability factor--I find his novels get better the more you read them, and I'm betting his short stories are the same.