2016 books: 13-16

[the_siobhan]

So the last time I posted one of these I said I was going to start reading books that serve as examples of what I want to do and alternate them with books that will make me feel better about how I'm not (anywhere close to) there yet.

    

Skin Folk by Nalo Hopkinson Skin Folk is a collection of short stories on the theme of skins and what is hidden behind them. I often find that compilations on a single theme get repetitive after a while; this collection is anything but. She borrows from cyberpunk, Caribbean folklore and Grimm fairy tales, switching voices between stories. I couldn't have picked a better book to start with. Hopkinson's writing is lush and gorgeous. It was especially cool that because the stories are from different points in her career you can really see how her voice developed over time.

    

METAtropolis edited by John Scalzi Apparently this started out as an audio book. Another collection of short stories, this time by different authors. According to the editors notes, they collectively designed the universe and went on to write individual stories that take place in it. (Scalzi claims in the intro that this is the first time this has been done, but the Thieves World anthologies came out in the 70s.) The stories all take place in the near future where globalization has crippled governments, infrastructure is fucked, corporations own everything, and the rest of us scramble to survive. I particularly liked the stories that take place in Detroit; those stories felt very real to me. My least-favourite-but-still-excellent choice would be the story about entire societies built in virtual space. That one felt like a reach.

    

So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Science Fiction & Fantasy edited by Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan. I found this collection to all over the place - there were stories that I would classify as "standard" style SF, wish-fulfillment fantasy, even fanfic. The writing styles were really diverse, so while I found a few stories that weren't really my thing there were also a lot that I really loved. My favourite was about a group of humans who were "rescued" from a destroyed earth and resettled on another planet, but who don't actually know for sure whether the aliens are being honest about what happened to their former home.

I recently signed up for Bookbub, which is a website that sends you lists of e-books that are on sale, based on your genre preferences and reading platform. Since I have a kindle most of my offers come from Amazon. I selected SF, fantasy and horror. Every day I get an email and I download the ones that are listed as free.

So long story short, that part about reading books that make me feel better about my skill level? Well handled.

A lot of the downloads turned out to be Book #1 of an ongoing series and the author (or Amazon) is trying to generate interest in purchasing the rest of the books. And it is entirely probably that by the time they get to Book #17 or whatever, they have mastered their chosen art and their writing is really good. But in most cases those Book #1's aren't really ready for prime-time.


    

Dark Realms by Kristen Middleton A collection of short stories by a self-published horror & romance writer who is apparently on the GoodReads best-seller list. I really really encourage you to go look at her website, because those cover images are awesome. Cheesy stories about plucky (and hot) heroines encountering the supernatural. They are terrible and they are wonderfully entertaining in their terribleness. Great fun.