Reading roundup

[hamsterwoman]

Wrapping up 2006:

37. Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners -- I was curious but apprehensive about Kelly Link after she won all those awards. Because I often find that award-winning fantasy ends up being too pretensious (and self-impressed and post-morder and whatever) for my taste. So, I finally picked up the book, not necessarily expecting to like it

Comments

[loupnoir]

I've been wondering about the Kelly Link book. For some reason, I thought it was a novel, not a short story collection. D'oh!

I'm between real reads. There are three or four books that I'm picking at, but mostly not.

[hamsterwoman]

I wouldn't have minded if Magic for Beginners *had* been a novel -- an expanded version of the novella it actually is -- but no such luck.

Are you less interested in reading it if it's a collection of short stories? (I find it easier to embark on a new author via short stories -- more varied sample, less of a commitment -- but in the case of Kelly Link, I'm actually not sure if she's written any longer works -- at least, I couldn't dig up references to any... so this seems to be her genre.)

There are three or four books that I'm picking at,

I love that description! I spent a lot of last year doing that -- briefly interrupted for obsessive reading of George R.R. Martin towards the end -- and am still not entirely out of that phase. I hate being between reads -- makes me feel like I'm missing something, or slacking off...

[loupnoir]

I'm not much of one for short stories. Hadn't really noticed until my husband pointed that out. He loves short stories and keeps bugging me to focus on writing those for a bit. I like novels. The depth is more appealing to me personally. Short stories, especially a lot of the more -- dare I say it? -- modern versions, fail for me as a whole. I like a beginning, a middle and an end, and many "modern" short stories are vignettes or character studies or some...thing that my brain doesn't appreciate.

I haven't run into a new author in years that made me plow through multiple books. The closest would have been Patricia Cornwell, and after book five?, my interest took a nose dive. I haven't felt that obsessive itch to read a corpus in way too long.

So, other than GRRM, do have any recs? I've got that restless need right now.

[hamsterwoman]

Yeah, I see what you mean with modern short stories -- I'm not a huge fan of short stories where nothing happens, or ones where you can't tell what's happening because they're all about being arty rather than intelligible. I did discover at least one author that I absolutely love through short stories -- Terry Pratchett, whose "Troll Bridge" I read in an anthology of some sort, and was completely blown away but what I didn't then realize was the signature mix of humour, spot-on satire, and actual poignancy/profundity. So, I'm grateful to short stories at least for that. (Another favorite genre short story is Neil Gaiman's "Chivalry," but I didn't actually encounter that one until I was already a Gaiman fan, so it's not the same.)

I was actually just browsing my "reading" tag the other day, and so now have a pretty good recollection of the books that I got really, really excited about over the past several years, so, in addition to GRRM:

- Neil Gaiman's American Gods
- Emma Bull's War for the Oaks (which I'm probably the last