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Showing posts from July, 2013

Recent Reading Roundup 34

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I'm not sure why, but the floodgates appear to have opened. After more than a year of struggling with my reading, I've found myself doing nothing but. I'm not that interested in examining the situation for fear of scaring my resuscitated bibliophilia away, but I will note that this year's Tournament of Books seems to have done well by me--I've read four of the participating novels (three of which are covered here), and though I have reservations about all of them, it's certainly an eclectic and interesting selection. Onward to the reviews. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - On the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne's wife Amy disappears in what appears to be a home invasion.  Nick's chronicle of the days following Amy's disappearance, in which a media circus develops around the case, alternates with Amy's diary entries describing the history of her and Nick's relationship.  As both narratives progress, it becomes clear th

Review: Big Mama Stories by Eleanor Arnason

My review of Eleanor Arnason's new collection Big Mama Stories appears today at Strange Horizons .  I've been a fan of Arnason's short fiction for more than a decade, since reading "Knapsack Poems"--still, to my mind, one of the finest short stories in the field--so a chance to review more of her stories seemed too good to pass up.  In Big Mama Stories , Arnason tries to invent a folk figure for the technological age, and the result, as I write in the review, feels like a cross between Brer Rabbit and Doctor Who --which is to say, utterly delightful.