Book #4 of 2024: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse edited by John Joseph Adams This 2008 anthology collects 22 short stories about life after various apocalyptic scenarios, all but one of which had been previously published elsewhere (although Stephen King’s plague journal “The End of the Whole Mess” was the only entry I’d read before). …
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Book #264 of 2021: Last Drink Bird Head edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer In this 2009 charity anthology to benefit the ProLiteracy organization, eighty writers answer the prompt, “Who or what is Last Drink Bird Head?” It’s flash fiction, meaning the authors are encouraged to respond off the top of their heads, unplanned …
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Book #177 of 2019: The Sorcerer’s House by Gene Wolfe There’s some neat slipstream weirdness to this fantasy novel, and its epistolary format hints at interesting nuances of narrator reliability, but I just couldn’t get past the obnoxious treatment of all the female characters. Every woman in this story is either a perky flibbertigibbet, a …
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