Redundancy Short Reads

My NetGalley November hasn’t been as big as success as I would have hoped when I first thought of doing this, hence why I might carry this over till I go on my Christmas/New Year blog holiday (I still need to figure out when that will be and for how long? It was going to be for a month, but things have changed as I will explained below). 

Reason why? Before I went on my little sunshine/reading holiday, I was suddenly and unexpectedly made redundant. Which was fun (insert heavy sarcasm here). I was made redundant, then went on holiday and then, once I got home, sent next few days trying to find a job. 

So, as you can expect, while I did blitz some NetGalley proofs reading, there were one or two times when my brain went “Nope. I need something short and achievable!”.

The three novellas I did were The Thief by Ruth Rendell, Serpentine by Philip Pullman and The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson. 

The Thief by Ruth Rendell was a Quick Reads novella (2003?) which follows Polly who is a liar and a thief. There was her aunt, a girl in her school, a boyfriend who dumped her. But she stopped and is trying to be better for her new boyfriend. But when a man on the plane leaves her scared and humiliated, she takes his suitcase, not knowing that the things will take a dark turn…

Serpentine by Philip Pullman is set in the His Dark Materials world and is set a year after Lyra’s Oxford. Lyra and her dæmon Pantalaimon have left the events of The Amber Spyglass behind them, though the events still lingers… In this little snapshot of their lives, the pair return to the North, when they discovers somethings aren’t exactly as they first appear…

And, finally, The Christmas Guest by Peter Swanson follows Ashley, an American who is happy to be alone at Christmas. One Christmas Day, she is cleaning her apartment and discovers her diary of 30 years ago when she was an Art student in London and she’s invited by her friend, Emma, to stay at her country home for Christmas. But when she arrives, this Christmas isn’t going to be cosy as the little country village is still recovering from the shocking murder of a woman who looks just like Ashley…

More Short Stories Read During Reading Slump

I think I said in an earlier blog post that I was out of my reading slump. I hope I'm out of my reading slump (goodness helps me if I'm not) and last week, my company went on its annual summer shutdown so my partner and I went away for a free days to Alton Towers and, while there, I decided to read some more short stories from Amazon's Black Stars collection, 

Black Stars is a collection for short sci-fi stories, written by black authors, which can be read within 30-odd minutes. (There are other short story collections on Amazon, ranging from sci-fi, fantasy, contemporary, and others. All of which I will have to investigate)

Now, in an earlier post, I read one of the stories within Black Stars - The Visit by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I did like reading this short, but it's hard to explain this. I keep thinking of it as a gender-flipped Handmaid's Tale told from the point of view of Mrs Dalloway. Plus, it did hit close to the bone as I read within weeks of the US Supreme Court overturning Roe v Wade, making safe abortions illegal in certain states, so that was very much on my mind as I read this. 

After that, I wanted to go back into a novel so I tried to read another Diana Wynne Jones: The Many Lives of Christopher Chant. But I only got to chapter five. It wasn't holding my attention and though I wanted to, I knew I couldn't go on at the current moment. So, I decided to go back on my myself and read some more shorts from Black Stars collection: Clap Back by Nalo Hopkinson, The Black Pages by Nnedi Okorafor and These Alien Skies by C.T. Rwizi. 

Clap Back follows Wenda, a protest performance artist, who doesn't believe the stories about fashion designer and biochemistry, Burra, who's new clothing line will have nanotech weaved into the fabric to tell the wearer about African history and forgiveness. The Black Pages follows Issaka as he returns home to Timbouctou from his studies in the US, only for his family home to be attacked by al-Qaeda. And These Alien Skies follows Msizi as he pilots a spaceship to test a new wormhole jump that could lead to unsettled yet possible habitable planets, but when an explosion causes the ship to go off course, he and his co-pilot fear the worse... 

I'm not going to write full-blown reports on each of these, but I will touch on them in quick summaries of my thoughts. I had high hopes for Clap Back, and it didn't quite hit the right notes for me. I liked the story when it was being told in media reports. But when it switched out of that, I didn't warm to the story. It had potential, but it didn't high the sweet spot for me. 

Black Pages, out of the three, felt the strongest. Maybe because it felt more fantasy than sci-fi, but this felt like a story I could sink into. Plus, it felt like this could be the start of something: a prologue of introduction short story to a novel with these characters and I would have enjoyed seeing more of them.

And These Alien Skies. Sadly, this didn't work for me. It felt as if it was trying to tackle too many things in a short time-frame. Maybe I read this at the wrong time, but it just didn't work for me. 

But collection of short stories are going to be hit and miss. Some stories you are going to love, other stories not so much. I have a few collections that I want to read in the coming months, and we'll see where we go from there. 

But, my reading slump has ruined my reading and I have several novels that I am desperate to read (and I can't wait!). So, might take a week or two off my blog and come back swinging! Wish me luck!

Short Reads I Read During Reading Slump

After finally (hopefully) killing my reading slump with Diana Wynne Jones's Witch Week, I decided that I was going to slowly ease myself back into read. I'm not going to throw self into the deep end. I wanted to take my time and, hell, maybe even read some short stories or novella. A gentle getting back to normal with my reading (not my life. Still trying to figure how to get back to normal on that one!). And, at the same time, I wanted to try something new. But ease of reading. 

So, while snooping on my Amazon's Prime Reading, I discovered some short stories as part of their Short Stories collections and, after having a quick snoop, I downloaded a few (as I have Prime, the stories were free under their Prime Reading). I downloaded a few under the Forward collection (sci-fi about the future), Trepass collection (unsettling stories about nature) and Black Stars (sci-fi stories written by black authors), I dipped my toe in. 

My first was The Visit by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the first short story in the Black Stars collection. In this, gender roles have been flipped and it shows how easy we are conditioned to see the world. Plus, this kinda hits close to current events as the law banning men from masturbating in US and in Lagos are in force with no plans to remove or change, dangerously similar to recent Roe vs Wade events in the US and certain states planning to ban abortions (which won't work. They're banning safe abortions). And while I did like this short as I found the ideas interesting, creepy and frighteningly real, I didn't warm to this. It felt like a cross over between Mrs Dalloway and The Handmaid's Tale. This could have so easily been longer. 

My second was The Tiger Came To The Mountain by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the first short in the Trepass collection. Set in Mexico 1917, at the height of the revolution, two children hide in a cave to stay safe. But a threat is close to them, prowling, waiting... Now, I have tried to read one of Silvia Moreno-Garcia's novel, Mexican Gothic, and I didn't like it. But this shirt fitted my mood wonderfully. I just clicked with this story and it felt delicious to read in almost one sitting. I might need to try this author again in future...

I audiobooked a short audiobook from may local library - Notes on Grief by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Now, I'm not going to write a review about this as it feels wrong to that, but this is a short collection of essays about Chimamanda processing her grief over the death of her father in the high of the COVID pandemic. Now, grief is a complex creature and no two people's grief is the same. But oh, there were moments in this collection that hurt. The last essay/chapter is short and kicks you in the feels (I think every person who has lost someone will get what I mean when you read/hear it!)