“The
Ocean at the End of the Lane” by Neil Gaiman. Bought
it to give it to my mother. It was so beautiful. Short, and no words were
wasted.
“Radiant
Days” by Elizabeth Hand. Got it for Christmas because I asked
for it. EH’s short story collection “Errantry” blew me away -- it had more
memorable stories than most collections do – the themes and characters really
resonated. This was what I had meant to read after the KJF last month. EH is a
punk rock star, wow.
“Siberian
Dawn” by Jeffrey Tayler. He had exerpts in The Atlantic, I think.
The current page-a-day has portions set in Russia, so I thought I’d give it a
shot. It had a map in the front! That makes it a fat fantasy, as far as I’m
concerned. The book is a travelogue of JT’s trip from eastern Siberia to Poland
in 1993. It was delightful, especially the parts where he keeps trying to tell
Russians that the US is not perfect, has corruption too, etc. They never seem
to get it, and he never seems to get why they don’t. The ice road vodka drunks
reminded me of my zombie novel, which I should go back and look at when I’m
done WWS. Ed picked it up when I was done and found it depressing.