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[skygiants]

Long enough ago that I'm sort of embarrassed to admit it, my friend Rahul recommended me Kelly Link's Magic for Beginners. In my defense, I often bounce off of short story collections, which is why it took me so long to get around to it . . . but that's not really an excuse, because this set of stories is kind of amazing!

I don't normally summarize all the stories in a short story collection, but there aren't that many and in this case it's totally worth it, especially since it won't even begin to give you guys an idea anyways:

1. "The Faery Handbag." One of my personal favorites, and I'd actually read it before in a different collection; a teenager, her awesome grandmother, and the magic handbag that holds either an entire town of Eastern European villagers or a demonic black dog that's fond of popcorn depending on how you open it. Reminds me a little of Peter Beagle's "Tamsin" in voice.
2. "The Hortlak." Another favorite; kind of like "Clerks" with zombies! Guest starring the most unnerving set of Lovecraftian pajamas ever to make their appearance in fiction.
3. "The Cannon." Too weird to describe. Including, among other things, the tragic story of a man and his cannon wife who was too large to fit into the wedding chapel.
4. "Stone Animals." Extremely creepy not-quite-ghost story; suburbanites in a troubled marriage move into a house that is haunted by TERRIFYING bunny rabbits. Anya, eat your heart out. Also featuring a giant rubber band ball and a haunted cat in love with an alarm clock.
5. "Catskin." A fairy tale! In the old and very dark sense of the word, where to get the magic catskin and fulfill your mother's dying wish you have to burn a house full of cats alive. Unsurprisingly, I really liked this one.
6. "Some Zombie Contingency Plans." As it says on the label! Plus a teen party and a haunted painting. How can you not love a story that acknowledges the part of all of us that wishes to plan for the eventual zombie attack?
7. "The Great Divorce." Short, creepy, and hilarious; a long-suffering medium helps a man and his dead wife sort out their marital issues.
8. "Magic for Beginners." My favorite of them all! Centering around a middle-school boy who inherits a Vegas wedding chapel and a guerilla cult TV show called "The Library" that depicts tales of wild adventure in a library, and that I really really want to exist. In one episode, the prince is turned into a teapot and the protagonist has to rescue him by battling a GIANT STATUE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON! That falls in love with her! BEST TV SHOW EVER. Also, crazy amounts of meta.
9. "The Lull." A story within a story within a story. The devil, time going backwards, infinite replication of green women, aliens, and a poker game. And drugs.

Guys, you do see why I love this collection, yes?

Comments

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

I highly recommend anything edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. Especially their mythic themes anthologies, The Faery Reel, The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest, and The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales, which I'm currently reading. So much awesome. Also, they have a series of anthologies that are part of the Fairy Tale series that brought us Tam Lin. And Mythspring: From the Legends and Lyrics of Canada is also seriously impressive. And, 'cause I'm that kind of nerd, Esther Friesner's Chicks in Chainmail anthologies are full of delightful asskicking women warriors and a lot of tongue-in-cheek wordplay.

[skygiants]

I think The Faery Reel is actually where I read The Faery Handbag! I haven't read the whole thing - if I am remembering correctly it was in the house of some babysittees a few years back whose parents had an amazing fantasy sci-fi collection for me to read through after the kids had gone to bed - but it seems pretty clear that it was the right kind of thing for me. :D

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

Sounds right. Green Man is, at this point, my favourite of the set, though there are a couple of knockout stories in Coyote Road (Ellen Kushner's Honored Guest in particular, which you, with the whole Mulan thing, might find fabulous) and Faery Reel sucked me in immediately. Charles deLint's piece in Mythspring is utterly beautiful and poignant, though the humour piece with vampire Anne of Green Gables just about made me fall down laughing.

Point being, read more fantasy anthologies so we can talk about them!

[skygiants]

One of these days I will! It's weird - I do always sort of feel like I'm getting more emotional investment out of a novel, so I don't tend to read collections as much. Some stories stick with me longer than novels ever will, though. Maybe because there are less details to remember?

Meanwhile, you should read this collection and talk about it with me! It is completely bizarre and thoroughly awesome.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

I'll add it to my list. I expect to finish Coyote Road this weekend. Victory of Angels comes on Tuesday, will read that by Thursday, when Shadow Queen comes. That ought to be done by Monday and then I will be on to new things...

My library doesn't have it. Hmph.

[skygiants]

Ahahaha. *eyes current twenty-book-tall library backlog pile* Um. Yes.

:O Uncool of your library! I would offer to send it to you, but, uh, I got it out of the library also.

[dramaturgca.livejournal.com]

I'll put it on my To Buy/Beg/Borrow/Steal list. My actual To read list is huge, but certain things get to jump the line. Mythspring and Coyote Road. New Alcatraz vs. books. Stuff like that. I've got three Shakespeare "bio"s in waiting and Coraline and Graveyard Book and Thomas the Rhymer and a stack of other stuff.

[obopolsk.livejournal.com]

I love "The Faery Handbag." I haven't been able to read the rest of the collection yet, because my local library is not awesome enough to carry Kelly Link, but I hope to pick up a copy soon.

[skygiants]

I got all excited when I saw "The Faery Handbag" was the first story in the collection, because I remembered its awesomeness! That is when I knew this was going to be a highly excellent reading experience.

[skygiants]

Yeah, my List mostly tends to be a vague amorphous mess of 'things I will read . . . . when their due date at the library is coming up! OKAY NOW!' *giggles* I am not so organized.

[rahkan.livejournal.com]

Oh man, I forgot about the Hortlak and the Lull, those were great stories. I think I mostly read short story collections these days, which is kind of not healthy for book completion rates, as I never got around to at least one story from at least every one of the fifty collections in my room. Including the Stone Animals from this one, which I never got around to.

I've only read one of the Windling/Datlow collections, which was Snow White, Blood Red...and I did not finish it. Because while I love fairy tale retellings, I often feel unsatisfied if the setting of the retold fairy tale is too medieval and european. Even if this is the kickass remastered feminist version, I still feel like I'm just reading the original.

Now if there was a book called Pale Flesh, Red Bulkheads, which retold fairy tales as being between robots...in space...I'd probably finish that.

[skygiants]

Dude, you never told me that you had an LJ also!

I kept getting this strange feeling of deja vu when I was reading the Hortlak, but I'm pretty sure I never actually read it anywhere before. I think it's just one of those stories. (The pajamas!) Anyways, I used to not read collections at all really, but I'm getting more used to them.

I get that feeling - for me, I still think it's fun reading medieval-era retellings as long as they fill out the personalities of the characters sufficiently. (Because, let's face it, in the originals most fairy tale characters have approximately 0 personality.) But if they don't do anything interesting with the characters or the setting, then it's a bust; I felt kind of that way about Patricia Wrede's retelling of Snow White and Rose Red.

I WOULD SO READ THAT ALSO. You should make that your next project!