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What I Just Finished Reading
Allow Me To Introduce – Lon Milo DuQuette
Allow Me To Introduce is an anthology of forwards DuQuette has authored for other people’s books, meaning everything in it was previously published elsewhere. So why does it read as though the whole thing were typed up by an 8th grader who just remembered his English assignment was due in 40 minutes? Sentences without verbs. Sentences without subjects. Or punctuation. Or spacing between sentences or words. DuQuette even waxes poetic about his favorite actor while misspelling the actor’s name.
Now on to the content, which is cut from the same cloth as another Affectatiously Jovial White Dude’sTM recent Hugo performance: 90 percent self-absorbed reminiscing about his role in the good old days with discussion and contextualization of the actual thing readers are here for relegated to an afterthought.
There are a few interesting summations in two of the chapters, but otherwise, any reader would be better served by skipping this book in favor of the volumes DuQuette penned forwards to. Its lightweight, poorly produced content doesn’t justify its $20 cover price or the time it takes to read it.
Bread And Salt – Valerie Miner
The good: Miner is very good at creating moments of dramatic tension, particularly a sense of impending, unseen threat. She also writes very, very poignantly about grief and loss, and the sadness of unmet expectations. There are some very creepy and very moving passages in many of the collection’s stories.
Her characters have warts and failings: unrealistic expectations of themselves, each other, society. A willingness to look the other way on addiction and domestic abuse until it’s too late. An inability to enjoy life’s pleasures without feeling anxious they’ll be taken away. Impatience with friends and loved ones. Prickliness. Inconsistent viewpoints. And so on.
The neutral: Miner's stories revisit the same core elements in different trappings. There’s nothing wrong with this; plenty of authors have That Thing that drives them to write. But it’s more noticeable in a collection of Miner’s work that it would be as the stories were first published--singly, in literary magazines alongside other authors' works. Almost all of Miner’s stories feature one or more of the following: children from a previous marriage to a dead or divorced spouse; a new same-sex partner, someone with cancer; an ominous or disappointing male relative or ex-partner; people traveling to bring closure or find a new beginning.
The bad: For a short story writer, Miner can be weirdly inattentive to detail. She bungles a routine exchange at a post office; a character doesn’t know basic facts about the institution that employs her. Dialogue is often an afterthought. A character refers to her friend in the third person—while in conversation with that friend—to facilitate exposition Miner wants to deliver. An eleven-year-old speaks in Miner’s adult voice to accomplish the same. A character "snaps a photo with her android,” even though no one thinks of their phone that way, and it’s the sort of simple misstep that jars readers out of the story’s flow.
There’s a lot to like in these stories, particularly if one doesn’t read them all in the space of a few weeks. Had the execution been fine-tuned they would have been even better.
What I Am Currently Reading
1789 – Marc Aronson & Susan Campbell Bartoletti
One chapter in and so far, so good.
The Midnight Queen – Sylvia Izzo Hunter
So far this book is delightful, and I wish I hadn’t waited so long to read it.
The Drowned Country – Emily Tesh
So far this book features the atmospheric description and delightful characterizations of the first, with a change in location and some new circumstances in our heroes’ lives.
What I'm Reading Next
This week I picked up a copy of Emily Tesh’s The Drowned Country and Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby, courtesty of Tor.
これで以上です。
Allow Me To Introduce – Lon Milo DuQuette
Allow Me To Introduce is an anthology of forwards DuQuette has authored for other people’s books, meaning everything in it was previously published elsewhere. So why does it read as though the whole thing were typed up by an 8th grader who just remembered his English assignment was due in 40 minutes? Sentences without verbs. Sentences without subjects. Or punctuation. Or spacing between sentences or words. DuQuette even waxes poetic about his favorite actor while misspelling the actor’s name.
Now on to the content, which is cut from the same cloth as another Affectatiously Jovial White Dude’sTM recent Hugo performance: 90 percent self-absorbed reminiscing about his role in the good old days with discussion and contextualization of the actual thing readers are here for relegated to an afterthought.
There are a few interesting summations in two of the chapters, but otherwise, any reader would be better served by skipping this book in favor of the volumes DuQuette penned forwards to. Its lightweight, poorly produced content doesn’t justify its $20 cover price or the time it takes to read it.
Bread And Salt – Valerie Miner
The good: Miner is very good at creating moments of dramatic tension, particularly a sense of impending, unseen threat. She also writes very, very poignantly about grief and loss, and the sadness of unmet expectations. There are some very creepy and very moving passages in many of the collection’s stories.
Her characters have warts and failings: unrealistic expectations of themselves, each other, society. A willingness to look the other way on addiction and domestic abuse until it’s too late. An inability to enjoy life’s pleasures without feeling anxious they’ll be taken away. Impatience with friends and loved ones. Prickliness. Inconsistent viewpoints. And so on.
The neutral: Miner's stories revisit the same core elements in different trappings. There’s nothing wrong with this; plenty of authors have That Thing that drives them to write. But it’s more noticeable in a collection of Miner’s work that it would be as the stories were first published--singly, in literary magazines alongside other authors' works. Almost all of Miner’s stories feature one or more of the following: children from a previous marriage to a dead or divorced spouse; a new same-sex partner, someone with cancer; an ominous or disappointing male relative or ex-partner; people traveling to bring closure or find a new beginning.
The bad: For a short story writer, Miner can be weirdly inattentive to detail. She bungles a routine exchange at a post office; a character doesn’t know basic facts about the institution that employs her. Dialogue is often an afterthought. A character refers to her friend in the third person—while in conversation with that friend—to facilitate exposition Miner wants to deliver. An eleven-year-old speaks in Miner’s adult voice to accomplish the same. A character "snaps a photo with her android,” even though no one thinks of their phone that way, and it’s the sort of simple misstep that jars readers out of the story’s flow.
There’s a lot to like in these stories, particularly if one doesn’t read them all in the space of a few weeks. Had the execution been fine-tuned they would have been even better.
What I Am Currently Reading
1789 – Marc Aronson & Susan Campbell Bartoletti
One chapter in and so far, so good.
The Midnight Queen – Sylvia Izzo Hunter
So far this book is delightful, and I wish I hadn’t waited so long to read it.
The Drowned Country – Emily Tesh
So far this book features the atmospheric description and delightful characterizations of the first, with a change in location and some new circumstances in our heroes’ lives.
What I'm Reading Next
This week I picked up a copy of Emily Tesh’s The Drowned Country and Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby, courtesty of Tor.
これで以上です。
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