This week was all about the short stories. Many available free on the ‘net
From the World SF blog. The City of Silence by Ma Boyong. A little too easy update of 1984 for the web ruled city. I suspect that there is better material by the same writer.
The House of Aunts. Zen ChoTo at GigaNotoSaurus. I don’t usually read horror. I loved this one. A teenager hemmed in by a passel of nosy, interfering, undyingly loyal aunties. A girl’s first crush and a lot of humor.
I read a couple of stories written by someone I sort of know that disappointed me greatly. There is zero chance that he’d find this little post and yet… I can’t bring myself to point you all to an instructive example of flat writing. Conflict avoided by writing about the conflict rather than the stories — whew.
I’m reading a lot about the act (crime?) of writing. Mostly web stuff — mostly lost in space.
On the longer form front.
An Everlasting Meal — Tamar Adler. A cookbook worth reading for both the ideas and the prose. I’ve just started. Pleased with it.
Tons of stuff landing on the Kindle and in the post office box. A Dorothy Parker bio, Fran Lebowitz (smart ass girls — could it be a theme?) Osama — Lavie Tidhar (alternate present political), Palimpset — CV (how cities grow — folkloric.) Samples of a handful of things.
It was a week for hunting and gathering and plundering other peoples’ reading lists. Next week — cooking and eating my haul.
Happy Friday my dears.