Impossible Things

By -
Impossible Things, by Connie Willis

I found myself on blog hiatus when life got super-busy and the kids got sick at pretty much the same time.  The kids are still sick--they are on the couch watching Tintin cartoons right now--but I think I can tell you a bit about the many books I've got lined up for posts!

Last week I was struck down with a cold and spent most of the day on the couch.  Kristen R. happened to post that morning about reading Impossible Things and mentioned a particular story, and I own Impossible Things, so I went to read the story, and the next thing I knew I'd read the whole collection.  A dose of Connie Willis was just what I needed to help the day go by.

This is a collection of some of Willis' best SF stories; a couple of them have won prizes.  They are a varied lot--there are some really funny ones, some tragic, and some just strange. "Ado" is a literary story a bit like "Harrison Bergeron."  "Time Out" has time travel, romance, and chicken pox.  "Spice Pogrom" is the kind of screwball SF that Willis specializes in.   I don't even understand "Jack."  And "Even the Queen" has a humorous take on the one thing that nobody ever writes stories about.

I always love Willis' oddball sense of humor.  She's a lot of fun.  This made me want to read To Say Nothing of the Dog yet again, but then I kind of want to read Doomsday Book before I do that, and it's so sad that I'm not sure I do want to read it.

Comments

  1. DebDMarch 14, 2013 at 4:10 PM

    I really liked Connie Willis time travel book (the name escapes me - but it was very fun). I'd not heard of this one... thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Monika @ Lovely BookshelfMarch 14, 2013 at 5:11 PM

    I haven't read anything by Connie Willis, but I love both sci-fi and short stories. I'll have to give these a try!

    ReplyDelete
  3. JeanMarch 15, 2013 at 6:39 PM

    Oh, Monika, you have to try Connie Willis then! She is very good at SF short stories.

    Deb, Willis wrote several time travel books: Doomsday Book, To Say Nothing of the Dog, and then Blackout/All Clear, plus some short stories.

    ReplyDelete
  4. jrleekMarch 17, 2013 at 9:23 PM

    If you own this, can I borrow it?

    ReplyDelete
  5. JeanMarch 17, 2013 at 10:53 PM

    Sure. I'll just want it back again someday.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the source of the s
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he defeats or avoids th
Read more