Countdown to 2025: Day 20

 This year I am participating in Countdown to 2025 hosted by Lynn from Lynn's Books. Today is day 20 and the prompt for today is Eggnog – a book that was out of your comfort zone

When I was looking through my list of books read this year I was wondering if I read much that was outside my comfort zone and then I got to this book and I was like....on yes, that's right. There was that one!

I decided to read this because it foodie, and it is set in Scotland, and I was travelling in Scotland at the time. What I hadn't taken into consideration is that this was horror, which I don't really read! This was a very dark and twisted tale which I wouldn't want to read again!

Tomorrow's prompt is Santa’s Snack – a book that was a ‘light read’ between heavier books

Top Ten Tuesday: Short stories

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week is a freebie so we can pick topic whatever we like. I am choosing to share the last ten short stories I have read or listened to, as the case maybe

The Secret History of Christmas by Bill Bryson - I listened to this last year, but decided to listen to it again this year. There's every chance that this might become an annual event. It's full of really interesting facts about the history of Christmas.

The Ex Proposal by Rachael Johns - This was originally published in an anthology but the author has just got the rights back so published it for her fans to read. It's available from her author facebook page.

The Christmas Book Hunt by Jenny Colgan - I got this as part of Amazon First Reads. I think it is now released and it was a bit of fun.

The Yellow Wood by Minnie Darke - This was an Audible only book, with about 4 hours of listening time.

Amelia's Shadow by Marie Benedict - This is part of a collection called Blaze about lesser known but interesting female characters. This one was about Ruth Nichols who was close friends with Amelia Earhart

The Tasting Menu by Stuart Macbride - I was tempted because this was set in Scotland, where I was when I read the story, and it was foodie, but it was a bit too much horror for me.

The Forgotten Chapter by Pam Jenoff - Another entry in the Blaze collection. 

Barriers to Entry by Ariel Lawhon - This is another Blaze book and I really enjoyed it. This one was about a woman who changes the way that people thought about criminal investigations.

The Bookstore Wedding by Alice Hoffman - I haven't read any of Alice Hoffman's full length books, but I have enjoyed these linked short stories 

How Captain Found the Anywhere Hotel by Gisele Stein - Last year I read an imaginative book called The Anywhere Hotel and Captain was the dog in the book. This story tells how he came to be at the hotel. I think this was only available to newsletter subscribers so I can't find a cover image for this one.

This Week...

I'm reading...

Recently I was thinking about my reading. In particular, I was thinking about the fact that my aim for this year is to read just over a book a week. How am I tracking against that target? Well, up until Sunday night I had read one page this week. I'd say it is going well then right?

I did, however, start another audiobook today, despite already only being halfway through the one I was already listening to. I started listening to Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, translated by Geoffrey Tousselot. I started it because it has a really fun premise and because the whole audiobook only takes just over six hours to listen to. The book is actually divided into 4 parts, so I was able to listen to one of the stories whilst working.

The premise is that there is a cafe in Tokyo where you can time travel to the past, but there are very specific rules. You have to sit in a specific chair, you can only see people who come into the cafe and you have to come back to present before the coffee gets cold! 

I am looking forward to listening to more tomorrow!

 

I'm watching....

If I am not reading then I must be watching, right? Well...not really. The only thing we really watched was a couple of episodes of Bobba Fett, and then we started watching season 3 of After Life.

Don't ask me what we have actually been doing!

Life

It's been hot here this weekend, perfect weather for spending some time floating around in the pool, and for spending inside in air conditioned comfort.

We did head into the city yesterday and went to Van Gogh Alive, an interactive exhibition devoted to the art of Vincent Van Gogh. 

This is my lovely husband making a joke about chopping off his ear!

Posts from the week

Top Ten Tuesday: Most Recent Additions to my TBR

Weekend Cooking: The Lights of Sugarberry Cove

Sunday Salon: 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge stats

I've linked this post to It's Monday, what are you reading? as hosted by Book Date

Vintage Weekend Cooking: The Kitchen Child by Angela Carter

Every now and again I come across a post in my archives that I think it would be fun to share again and when that happens I post them as Vintage posts!


When I was doing my Six Degrees of Separation post last weekend, I came across this post from 10 years ago, and I decided that this would be a great post to share again, especially seeing as I relistened to this short story again and still enjoyed it!

This was part of a series of short stories that were released with authors reading short stories. A lot of these authors were people I was unfamiliar with, both the authors and the readers.

The podcasts were, in order:

Philip Pullman reading The Beauties by Anton Chekhov
Julian Barnes reading Homage to Switzerland by Ernest Hemingway
William Boyd reading My Dream of Flying to Wake Island by J G Ballard
Anne Enright reading Fat by Raymond Carver
Colm Toibin reading Music at Annahullian by Eugene McCabe
Margaret Drabble reading The Doll's House by Katherine Mansfield
Jeanette Winterson reading The Night Driver by Italo Calvino
Rose Tremain reading Extra by Yiyun Li
Tessa Hadley reading The Jungle by Elizabeth Bowen
Helen Dunmore reading My Oedipus Complex by Frank O'Connor
Ali Smith reading A Conversation with my Father by Grace Paley
Helen Simpson reading The Kitchen Child by Angela Carter

It is the final story in this list, and my favourite of the 12,  that I want to concentrate on for my Weekend Cooking post this week.

When I mentioned that I hadn't heard of all of the authors, both Helen Simpson and Angela Carter were in this category. From what I can tell by what I have read online Helen Simpson is a short story writer herself, and Angela Carter was known for her fairytale retelling. From what is said it seemed that Carter's fairytale retellings can be somewhat dark and gothic, featuring werewolves and other magical creatures and wikipedia mentions that her works include feminism, magical realism and science fiction.

From the little I knew this short story was not anything like I expected. It is light and frothy, but still with substance, sunny, charming and funny, and well worth spending a few minutes to listen to.

The story is about a young boy whose mother is a cook in a large house. He doesn't know who his father was. All he knows is that he was conceived whilst the lobster souffle his mother was cooking rose ("25 minutes in a medium oven") but the identity of his father remains a mystery. Each year at the time of the grouse shoot, his mother once again cooks the souffle although she doens't overseason it with cayenne as she did that first time due to the shock of being accosted in her kitchen. The boy ("conceived upon the kitchen table, born upon the kitchen floor") is desperate to know who his father was. In this short story we shares his childhood in the kitchen from his birth, his first crib (the copper salmon kettle), the baths in the soup tureen that normally carries turtle soup. The child is precocious, learning the skills of the cook with ease at the foot of his mother. He learns his letters (A for Asparagus through to Z is for Zabligione), makes shortcrust at the age of three, and so on.

Also alluded to in the course of the story are the different levels of the household servants within the big house and the masters who don't seem to have terribly good taste when it comes to food. There is the housekeeper who seems to take her rum with a splash of tea, and who would love to replace the Yorkshire woman who is the cook with a continental chef, with the birth of the cook's baby appearing to be the perfect opportunity, but it doesn't work out that way at all.

I have now listened to this particular short story a number of times now, it doesn't lose it's charm with familiarity. If you have a few minutes spare, I would encourage you to click on link above and lose yourself for just a few minutes in the kitchen of the great house.

Weekend Cooking is open to anyone who has any kind of food-related post to share: Book reviews (novel, nonfiction), cookbook reviews, movie reviews, recipes, random thoughts, gadgets, quotations, photographs, restaurant reviews, travel information, or fun food facts. If your post is even vaguely foodie, feel free to grab the button and link up anytime over the weekend. You do not have to post on the weekend. Please link to your specific post, not your blog's home page

The Deadly Hours

It's not a secret that I am a bit of a Susanna Kearsley fangirl, and I have been for a long time. It was therefore inevitable that when I saw that there was going to be a short story collection that included one of her stories, of course I was going to want to read it. It didn't matter that I hadn't read any of the other authors.

It was only until later that I actually realised that this story includes characters from The Firebird, A Desperate Fortune and also The Rose Garden, which means that it was super cool to revisit these characters.

In A Weapon of Choice, a young couple with Jacobite connections are on their way to Italy to meet the Duke of Ormonde and protect him from an assassin. Before they can reach their destination they are caught up in a massive storm and forced to take refuge in Portofino, along with two other groups of travellers. Before the storm is over, a man will be dead.

One of the travellers is in possession of La Sirene, a watched that has been been cursed after being crafted from gold sacked from Cartagena. It is engraved with a mermaid, and the outer case has a ship in a storm, and it is inscribed with the motto "Je suis le seul maître de mon temps" , which means I am the only master of my time. Legend has it that whoever has the watch will be cursed with bad luck, until the curse is lifted. The only way for that to happen is that the watch must pass through the four elements: water, earth, air and fire.

The next time we see the watch we are in Edinburgh in 1833. In Anna Lee Huber's story In a Fevered Hour, a mysterious illness is sweeping Edinburgh and Lady Darby and her new husband find themselves investigating at the behest of a master criminal. For a short story, this had quite a lot going on and This is part of the Lady Darby series. Normally I don't like to jump in a series part way through, but I enjoyed this story and I would be more than happy to read more.

We then move forward to Christine Trent's story A Pocketful of Death, set in the 1870s. When lady undertaker Violet Harper is commissioned to move the bodies of a newly minted noble family into their new crypt. In one of the graves, she finds a watch so she returns it to the family. It isn't long before there are a number of deaths in their street. Is it because of the curse or is there something else at play? Once again this is part of an existing series which I haven't yet

The final story is called The Sirens Call by CS Harris and is set in a small coastal town in England. The Home Office has observed that there have been a number of coded messages sent to the Germans from the area around the town and so two officers are sent to investigate. When Rachel Townsend-Smythe find her long time friend Major Crosby dead, she notices that one of his prized possessions is missing: a gold watch. As the finger of blame is pointed at various people in town, Rachel helps one of the investigators to find the truth. While I haven't read this author before, I have had the first book in the Sebastian St Cyr series sitting on my bookshelf for many years. Maybe I should actually read it!

I enjoyed following the watch through time and it's a good premise for a short story collection, although it did take a minute to adjust to each new story. While I picked up the book for Kearsley, I stayed for the other stories!

I am counting this as a read for this year's RIP XV challenge.

Rating 4/5

Goodreads

A stellar line-up of historical mystery novelists weaves the tale of a priceless and cursed gold watch as it passes through time wreaking havoc from one owner to another. The characters are irrevocably linked by fate, each playing a key role in breaking the curse and destroying the watch once and for all.
From 1733 Italy to Edinburgh in 1831 to a series of chilling murders in 1870 London, and a lethal game of revenge decades later, the watch touches lives with misfortune, until it comes into the reach of one young woman who might be able to stop it for good.
This outstanding collaboration of authors includes:
Susanna Kearsley – New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of compelling time slip fiction.
C.S. Harris – bestselling author of the Sebastian St. Cyr Regency mystery series.
Anna Lee Huber – award-winning author of the national bestselling Lady Darby Mysteries.
Christine Trent – author of the Lady of Ashes Victorian mystery series.

Tremble by Tobsha Learner

A couple of years ago now I won a giveaway on a blog of three books from Tobsha Learner's backlist. Like so many other books  on my shelves, I hadn't yet gotten around to reading the book so when I saw that TLC Book Tours have a blog tour coming up I jumped at the chance to finally get around to reading it.

It was also a chance for me to read some short stories which I haven't read many of over the last few months. The fact is that, even if I had been reading other short stories, the stories contained in this collection would have been very different anyway. While I was aware that these stories were meant to be erotic in nature, I wasn't really sure what to expect, and if I had to summarise my reaction to the book I would say my reactions were mixed.

In the course of preparing for this post, I did also go and look at a definition for erotica because whilst I read a bit of erotic romance I wouldn't say that I read a lot of erotica. So the definition that I found said

            'Literature or art intended to arouse sexual desire'

Whilst a lot of these stories had sexual elements, I don't think all of them met this definition. Then again, even when reading erotic romances I often find that it feels like the author is trying too hard to make the stories sexually arousing and it doesn't always work. As a reader, I find I need a well crafted romantic scene, which yes, has very sexy interactions in it, rather than just sex, in order to fully engage me.

I am not sure if Learner's books were originally released in the US or not, but this collection is being released there. I do think it is obvious both from the packaging of both this book and also Quiver (which is being reviewed on other blogs as part of the tour) and the timing that it is an attempt to cash in on the current acceptance of more erotic stories thanks to the success of books like 50 Shades and The Crossfire series but I don't think that this book will necessarily appeal to many of those infrequent readers who read those books. Maybe some, but definitely not all.

Overall I liked the writing and I liked the way that Learner combined sexuality and humour (albeit dark humour) with mythology and religion. There were a couple of stories that made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but I suspect that is what the author was trying to achieve, or if not trying, at least won't be disappointed at making readers feel a little uncomfortable.

I liked that the stories were in the most part standalone but that the author did give a one or two line acknowledgement to previous stories which was fun, but there were a couple that I have read so far that are connected.

The author has spent time living is various countries across the world, and I think that comes through in her storytelling, with some of the stories set in Australia, one in Greece (albeit featuring an Australian nun as the main character),  and in America.

As a result of taking the wrong book on the train with me not once but twice this week I still have a couple of stories to read, but here are a few thoughts about the stories in the book that I have read. I will come back and add my final thoughts in the next day or so.

The Root - Dorothy Owen comes from a long line of Owen women who are spinsters. Even most of the women who have children do so by leaving the village, finding a man and then coming back to the village to raise their child. Just before Dorothy's great aunt dies she hints at an inheritance but doesn't give her niece any more information. It is therefore something of a shock when the inheritance is revealed to be a mandrake root, of which legend suggests that a mandrake grows in the place where spilled semen falls when a man is hanged. This story features longing, vengeance, oh, and most notably a disembodied penis.

Rainmaker - A small town in country America has been in the grips of a major drought. Farmers are committing suicide or leaving town. When a rainmaker arrives in town, he promises to bring rain with him, but only if the town is prepared to pay the price. Whilst being prejudiced against is nothing new for the rainmaker, what does surprise him is the connection he feels to one woman in particular. I was quite shocked by the way this one ended and had to go back and read the last few lines again just to be sure I had read it correctly.

Echo - Gavin is a very successful Queensland property developer. He had everything - wealth, a successful business, a beautiful family and a lovely young mistress - or at least he did until his wife demanded a divorce and the price she wants is his pride and joy new development. After visiting a vacant block, Gavin becomes sure that he is being haunted on many levels, forcing him to consult with one of his most ardent environmental foes. This story explores the Green Man myth and I liked the cyclical nature of it.

Virgin - A young Australian nun is having a crisis of faith and so she is sent to spend time on a small Greek island. When she touches one of the island's holy relics a very strange phenomenon affects her. This is one of the stories that made me a little uncomfortable. I am not sure if it is because I found the fact that it was a nun being affected in the way she was a little disturbing or if it wouldn't have mattered who the woman was due to the not-quite-incest-but-very-nearly-so elements. I didn't really get how her faith was meant to be restored through the story either, so if someone could explain that to me it would be good.

The Snore - I think this is one of my favourite stories in the book. Is it a coincidence that this one isn't particularly erotic....not sure. Miriam is a Jewish woman who has only been married for a year or so before her husband dies while they are making love. In life, he was a very loud snorer and so she had trained herself to be need his snoring in order to be able to go to sleep each night, so she is worried that she will not be able to sleep without him being there. It soon becomes obvious that she is being haunted though as all she can hear each night are his snores. Why could he be haunting her? Does it have something to do with the insurance case that he was working on prior to his death? And how can they stop the haunting without getting the rabbis offside.

Hair Shirt - The main male character in this book is Peter, younger brother of Gavin whose story was in Echo. He is a successful manager of a record label. Like his brother before him, he is married but has a mistress on the side.One of the women manages to gather enough hair from him to create a hair shirt and then discovers that she can cause pain and injury as a result (in a similar way that creating a voodoo doll in someone's image and then sticking pins in it is supposed to be able to cause pain.) I found this story interesting because we go to hear from all three of the main characters throughout the story. Once again, the male character is pretty much unlikable, thinking he is untouchable even though his wife has known about the other woman from day one.

Tour Details

Link to Tour Schedule:http://tlcbooktours.com/2013/06/tobsha-learner-author-of-tremble-and-quiver-on-tour-september-2013/
Tobsha Learner's website.
Tobsha Learner on Facebook
Tobsha Learner on Twitter.

About the book

Erotica for the modern woman: nine tales of the dangerous and divine

From Tobsha Learner, the boundary-pushing erotica author of the international bestseller Quiver, comes TREMBLE: Erotic Tales of the Mystical and Sinister (On-sale September 2013/ ISBN: 9780142180372).

In Learner’s steamy collection, she explores the full spectrum of sexuality peppered with elements of the supernatural. Tremble blurs the line between fantasy and reality, depicting the pleasures of new and rediscovered love, lust, and obsession in a world where passion and magic are interwoven—and where boundaries are pushed beyond expectation.

In a Welsh village, a young woman’s sensuality is awakened by an outrageous inheritance; a drought-stricken Oklahoma town is offered salvation by a travelling rainmaker; a Sydney record producer struggles to satisfy his wife and his mistress—until one of them takes matters into her own hands…

The short stories span the eras, from an eighteenth-century biographer who discovers a magic, erotic ritual to a Sydney record producer struggling to satisfy his wife and mistress. Intelligent and highly imaginative, Learner’s brand of erotica will appeal to both first-time and more seasoned readers of the genre.

Cracklescape by Margo Lanagan

I am a big fan of the Twelve Planets series that is currently being published by Australian small press Twelve Planets Press. I look forward to each instalment but I must confess that this particularly instalment was one that I was anticipating more than most! And, of course, given that it is Margo Lanagan telling us short stories, I wasn't disappointed!

The collection opens with The Duchess Dresser. A young man picks up a duchess dresser from the side of the road and decides it will be the perfect piece of furniture for his room in the share house he lives in. The only thing wrong with it is that the drawer doesn't open.... oh and that same drawer rattles and shakes all night, and then there is the spectre of a young woman that seems to call it home. What I thought was interesting about this story is that while the story goes in a certain direction the reader is kind of lulled into thinking they know what is going on until suddenly it ends up somewhere differently but it still makes sense! Then again, that is pretty much trademark Lanagan and I should know that by now!

The next story is called Isles of the Sun and very much evokes the feeling of summer life by the beach. The kids are out playing, the beach is nearby and life is pretty relaxed. When a young boy sees some light beings, he feels called to follow them, and he just knows that they will teach him to fly! As he takes various steps to feel lighter, his convinces his friends and their friends to do likewise and suddenly there is a whole town of kids who are determined to follow and learn. The emotional punch of this stories comes from his mother's view of these events, knowing what she has seen but not being able to believe, and knowing that no one else could possibly believe her version of events either.

Lanagan has the reader questioning how they would react to the unusual when Don and his wife are catching the train to a friend's social event in Bajazzle. When a group of Sheelas sit near Don and his wife in a crowded train carriage he is clearly uncomfortable with the overt sexualisation of these young women and even more so when they start to 'sing' their story. When he comments that he doesn't find their performance entertaining, Don's wife suggests that "Maybe that’s ’cause it’s not put on for your entertainment."

Don is a man who is stuck in the past. He misses the woman his wife was now that she has taken to a much more feminist inspired lifestyle. The reader might hope that when he is tempted into a dilapidated house by a beautiful young woman that his good moral strength will shine through, but that is certainly not the only thing that he leaves behind.

With imagery in the story including inspiration from sheel na gig (according to Wikipedia "figurative carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva") and succubi this story is not only fascinating and challenging but also quite disturbing. There was also a degree of sensuality in this story that I found quite surprising, until it was changed into something completely different in the course of a couple of pages.

The final story.is Significant Dust and takes as it's inspiration the Mundrabilla UFO encounter which happened in the middle of the Nullabor Plain in 1988. Rather than focus directly on this event, we instead meet Vanessa, a young woman, who has come to work in the isolated roadhouse in order to get away from a terrible accident that has basically changed her whole family. With the only interactions being with her misfit co-workers and travellers who pass through, Vanessa looks for ways to assuage her guild about the accident but also the truth about the strange people who sometimes stop in the roadhouse and the odd lights that illuminate her small room late at night.

What makes this collection different from previous short story collections by Lanagan is that there are only four stories, each approximately the same size, and that the setting for these stories is much more clearly Australian in setting than most of her other short stories. For these differences though, there are many similarities. Lanagan's writing is, as usual, pitch perfect and her ability to tell a complete story within such a small landscape is amazing.

I still have a few of Lanagan's stories to read which I must get to. Then again, I could quite easily reread this collection time and again and I am sure I would find something new each time. I think this is particularly true of the final two stories.

Rating 4/5

A presence haunts an old dresser in an inner-city share house. Shining sun-people lure children from their carefree beachside lives. Sheela-na-gigs colonise a middle-aged man’s outer and inner worlds. And a girl with a heavy conscience seeks relief in exile on the Treeless Plain.

These stories from four-time World Fantasy Award winner Margo Lanagan are all set in Australia, a myth-soaked landscape both stubbornly inscrutable and crisscrossed by interlopers’ dreamings. Explore four littoral and liminal worlds, a-crackle with fears and possibilities.

I read this short story collection for the following challenges

PS If you want to find out more about the Twelve Planets series check out my previous reviews which includes details of the collection as a whole.

The Boat by Nam Le

I don't often reread books but every now and again I will do so. It might be because I want to reread the story or it might be some other form of obligation. Over the last few days I reread The Boat by Nam Le because it was the October book for my book club.

I thought it might be fun to revisit my review of the short story collection that I wrote over three years ago and see what has changed and what has stayed the same.

I thought I would repost my original comments about each story and then add my further thoughts. If you just want to reread my original thoughts without all the added extras then the original review can be found here.

In Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice, the voice is that of a writer in his late 20s who is struggling to meet the deadline for an essay that is due, and with the visit by his father. Despite being of Vietnamese our writer has chosen to try and avoid telling the refugee stories that he knows, but during this visit by his father he gets to hear at least one more story of how his dad came to be living in Australia.

I actually didn't reread the first story in the collection because I had already reread it earlier this year when it was released as a Penguin Shorts e-story. I wrote a whole post on it at that time which you can read here.

Having read that first story, it was something of a surprise to realise that the next story, Cartagena, is told from the point of view of a 14 year old hit man from the barrios of Columbia who needs to face up to the consequences of at least some of his actions.

I am going to talk a little bit about memories of reading a collection a bit further in relation to one of the other stories. This was probably the story that I remembered most about when I started rereading it. One of the things about reviewing is trying to get the heart of a story or a book without giving too much away. When I look at that sentence above, I couldn't help but think at how inadequate that sentence was. Whilst it does cover a portion of the story, there was so much more that could be said. In that one sentence I could have included that it was about friendship and loyalty and betrayal and violence (good job Le came up with a more succint title than that, unlike the first story that I mentioned above!)

Meeting Elise is another complete change of pace. This time the story is written from the perspective of an older man who is fast coming face to face with his mortality. He is hoping to meet up with his estranged daughter, but there is nothing at all certain in the arrangements.

Of all the stories in the collection, I think this is one that I struggled with the most this time around. Nam Le goes from a meta type narrator in the first story, to a young boy in the second story. In this story, we meet an old man - a famous artist who is facing his own demise. He has been separated physically and emotionally from his daughter but now he has just one chance to reconnect.  I am not sure why I found it difficult to warm to the main character. Maybe it was his obsession with his younger lover or his unpleasant behaviour but it was something. And yet, the author still managed to have me empathising with him as the story came to its end.

The fourth story is probably my favourite, Halflead Bay. The main character is a young boy who is trying to deal with his mother's serious illness, and with the budding attraction he feels to Alison, who just happens to be connected with the town bully. My teaser from Teaser Tuesday came from this story.

It is interesting that I chose this one as my favourite of the collection the first time around. It is the biggest story in the collection. As I was reading this I found myself thinking that I couldn't possibly have read this story because I didn't remember a single thing until we got to very near the end. Memory is a funny thing - you would have thought that if it was my favourite then that would make me more likely to remember this story but not the others, but apparently not! I also didn't find myself as moved by this story as I did some of the others. Is that a sign of being in a different mood this time around when I read it, or perhaps even something that has changed within me over the last 3 years. I am not sure but it is interesting to contemplate.

If I had to pick my least favourite of this collection it would probably be Hiroshima. Le once again assumes a female voice, this time a young girl who is living in Hiroshima in the days before the end of WWII. Despite saying that it was my least favourite it was still a very poignant story, especially as the young girl comments about being able to differentiate between a squadron of planes flying overhead, and the war time slogans such as "do without until victory". One question that this story did make me think of is whether there are any historical fiction novels that are out there that speak about the Japanese WWII experience. There are a few that are set in Germany, but I don't know of any set in Japan about the normal Japanese persons experience.

My reaction to this story was similarly very different to my reaction the first time around. Far from being my least favourite I would say that this time it was up there with my favourites. Whilst it was a story that was still difficult to read, I found it incredibly moving and very interesting. It was also the story that prompted nearly all of the bookclub discussion. The discussion talked a lot about WWII prisoner of war experiences that one of the members had heard from her father who was a POW, as well as a pretty in depth discussion about the differences between that war and the current situation that our soldiers find themselves in in places like Iraq. One of our members had actually lived in Hiroshima for a while so it was fascinating to hear her talk about her experiences there, the conversations that she had with people who lived through the dropping of the atom bomb and so much more. 

In Tehran Calling, a young woman is trying to escape her broken romance and goes to visit her best friend who is now living in Tehran, and who is agitating for women's rights. Sarah and her friend Parvin had been somewhat estranged, but Sarah sees this as a chance to rectify that, but her visit to Tehran surprises her in many ways.

Not much to say about this one. I guess I don't really get what the point of it was, especially the ending!

The final story in this collection, The Boat, is the story of a young girl who is trying to escape from Vietnam as one of the boat people. The boat is barely seaworthy, and very overcrowded, and it isn't long before the journey becomes perilous in many ways.

This time reading the collection, this was my favourite of the stories. In a few short pages, Nam Le manages to tell us of the harrowing journey a young girl takes on a boat from Vietnam. In addition to what I noted above, there isn't enough food or water and when a storm damages the engine, the boat drifts aimlessley for days. On the overcrowded boat, illness soon becomes the biggest danger, but it isn't the only problem that these people who are desperately seeking a better life face.

I think part of the reason why this story has resonated so much more this time is that over the last couple of years there has been a lot of focus on refugees here. This has been both in terms of those who want to 'stop the boats' but also in terms of programs like Go Back Where You Came From which have attempted to show the kind of dangers that people have experienced in their lives that makes getting on a leaky boat that may or may not make it to countries like Australia a better option than staying in their homelands.

In summary, Nam Le's chameleon like ability to write different characters and settings once again shone brightly, easily standing up to a reread. I did however find myself wondering when we might see a new collection from this author, or maybe a novel, or just something really! I haven't seen anything about any new works but I will be sure to be reading whatever he decides to come out with next.\

Last time I read this I gave it a rating of 4/5 and that hasn't changed this time around!

I also read this book for the following challenge:

Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice by Nam Le

Over the last couple of months, at least two of the big publishers here in Australia have started putting out ebook only individual short stories by some well known Australian authors!  When I saw them on Netgalley I jumped at the chance to read at least a couple of them.


I was especially pleased to see a new Nam Le story, having read and enjoyed his very successful collection, The Boat, several years ago. I possibly should have read the description because it turns out that this story is one that was previously published in that collection. In other words, this ended up being a reread for me. Not that this was a huge hardship though.


It is interesting to revisit a short story several years after you first read it, particularly in the context of being a standalone story and not part of the collection. In The Boat, this was the first story  and so the other stories built on top of this one. At one point, the character Nam (who does seem to share a lot of characteristics with the author Nam) makes references to other stories which turn out to be the other stories in the original collection.


Our character, Nam, is a writer who is just about to finish his time at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is, however, very blocked creatively and is resisting as much as possible the idea  of writing an ethnic story like the one that is the story of his family. With a deadline looming, the last thing he needs is the added pressure of his dad coming all the way from Australia to spend some time with him.

The relationship between the two men has been precarious for a long time. Nam thinks he knows his father's story that led him to escape to Australia as a refugee, but does he really? His father doesn't necessarily understand Nam and his modern ways. This is a common immigrant story - the disconnect between the two generations who have very different life experiences and who have two very different cultural experiences.


As the deadline for his submission continues, he decides that he will write his father's story, but is it possible for the son to understand exactly what it was that the father went through as a young boy in the Vietnam war; his loss, his actions, the lasting impact both on his father as a man and as a family man who now lives in a far away country.


It's a bit meta, with Nam the character taking on some of the story of Nam the author, but ultimately it is a compelling short story to read to occupy a few minutes in your day.


Now, I need to keep on waiting for the next new story from Nam Le.

Synopsis

A young Vietnamese-Australian named Nam, in his final year at the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is trying to find his voice on the page. When his father, a man with a painful past, comes to visit, Nam’s writing and sense of self are both deeply changed.


Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice is a deeply moving story of identity, family and the wellsprings of creativity, from Nam Le’s multi-award-winning collection The Boat

The Firefly Dance anthology

It has been more than a year since we had a new novel from Sarah Addison Allen. Thankfully, there is news of her next book coming out in 2013 and the title will be Lost Lake. Because there has been no new book, the instant I saw this book on Netgalley I had to have it. To be honest, the only thing I knew about it was that it contained a new Sarah Addison Allen story. I hadn't even heard of any of the other authors, didn't know what the theme of the collection was or anything like that.

I was actually contemplating only reading the SAA story, but to have done so would have short changed myself and the publisher who made it available on Netgalley. I did have to force myself to read the others, not because I didn't want to but rather because the file was about to expire so I was running out of time.

First story is The Stocking Store by Phyllis Scheiber features a young woman looking back to the regular trip that she made with her mother to the stocking store, and in particular to a meeting with another young girl from her class whose mother was a survivor of the concentration camps of Europe. This was a very short story but it was quite poignant, looking not only at the issue of the survivors but also on how times have changed over the years.

There is also an excerpt from this author's book called The Manicurist.

Petey by Kathryn Magendie was the longest of the stories and there were times in the narrative that the story just leapt off the pages. There were, however, other times when the pace just was too slow.

The story focused on a young girl named Petey who was moving from her idyllic life in North Carolina amongst the mountains to the hot, dusty plains of Fort Worth, Texas due to her father needing to find work. The whole family seemed to be unhappy at the move and the new house that they are going to be living in,, but it is nothing compared to the despair they face not long after arriving. At this stage, the narrative felt quite oppressive and it really only changed with the introduction of the character of Anna. It was a little too obvious that she was introduced as a catalyst to change things for both Petey and the rest of her family. Towards the end of the novella though I was definitely enjoying the transition that was happening, especially with Petey's mother, and I was definitely hungry as I was reading.

The Sarah Addison Allen 'story' is titled In My Dreams, and is in effect a collection within the anthology because the story is made up of six different vignettes that let us glimpse into specific events in the life of a young girl named Louise who lives with her mother (her father having died recently in the first story), and next door to her great aunt Sophie. The stories weren't actually written as one group of anecdotes either as evidenced by the fact that the copyrights on the individual stories range from 2006 to 2008

Of the characters in this collection, Sophie is definitely one that I could see making the transition to SAA's other works. Whilst the southern charm that forms such a strong part of SAA's other books is there, there is none of her other trademark that I like to think of as magical-realism-lite.

The first story was Fly by Night; Louise is staying the night at her great aunt Sophies and watching her mother. Her father has died not too long ago but the question is how well is her mother dealing with her grief.

In Nothing Disastrous Louisa's mother has had breast cancer and is celebrating the first anniversary of losing her breasts (kind of timely seeing as SAA has been going through her own battle with the disease. The preacher's new wife comes to town.

The third story is Lazarus and Louise's mother is getting remarried and no one can find her wedding shoes.

In The Wayfarer Louise's grandfather comes to visit. Great Aunt Sophie never approved of the man that her sister ran off with. Louise has never met him before, but she is not the only one to learn something new.

In God's Honest Truth at the Fashionette, Sophie is late for her weekly appointment at the hair salon and in I'll See You in My Dreams we hear the story of how Sophie met her husband, Harry. "Never marry a man who can't dance."

The Resurrection by Augusta Trobaugh - I will admit to skimming this one because from the very beginning I had no clue what was going on with this story! I kind of got what the author was trying to do with it, but it just didn't work for me at all.

According to the publisher blurb below, the link between these stories is supposed to be the challenges faced by children, but I am not sure that the link is all that obvious if you just read the stories themselves. As a collection, this one didn't really work for me. I may be a little cynical, but I wasn't quite sure what the point of releasing the Sarah Addison Allen stories were other than having something out there during the gaps between the last book and her next one, and also that the publisher hung the collection around the fact that there was a big name author involved. I guess that isn't really that unusual really.

Rating 2.5/5

Bright lights flicker in the dark evenings of summer. Pinpoints of hope float against the black descent of night. The sweetest of small and innocent creatures finds its way through the shadows. Fireflies seem to dance on sheer air, illuminating the space between heartbeats.

Children give off a similar brave glow, despite the challenges of their young lives. The lessons of childhood are often painful, the shedding of fragile wings in the gloam of an uncertain future. These rich novellas are small jewels reflecting the essence of what it means to grow up dancing among the shadows of life, carrying a brave, small beacon because you know that even the brightest days always, always, end in darkness.

Childhood can be so sweetly sad and sadly sweet, profound and deceptively easy to categorize, yet poignant to remember.

New York Times bestselling novelist Sarah Addison Allen (GARDEN SPELLS, SUGAR QUEEN, THE PEACH KEEPER) anchors THE FIREFLY DANCE with her wistful and funny novella about Louise, a North Carolina girl whose keen observations of the lives around her weaves an unforgettable spell with just a hint of everyday magic.

Phyllis Schieber's Sonya, a child of Holocaust survivors, is confronted with the responsibilities of her legacy when she has a poignant encounter with a classmate, another child of survivors, and her mother, in a local shop in their 1970's New York neighborhood.

Kathryn Magendie’s Petey deals wryly with her family’s move from the cool blue mountains of North Carolina to the hot flatlands of Texas.

Augusta Trobaugh’s stoic Georgia girl leads us through her surreal encounter with a mysterious backwoods toddler who turns out to be anything but ordinary.

Showtime by Narrelle M Harris

Showtime is the fifth of the Twelve Planets books to be released, and the third that I have read...so far.

Don't know about the Twelve Planets series? Here's a very brief summary from the publisher's website

The Twelve Planets are twelve boutique collections by some of Australia’s finest short story writers. Varied across genre and style, each collection will offer four short stories and a unique glimpse into worlds fashioned by some of our favourite storytellers. Each author has taken the brief of 4 stories and up to 40 000 words in their own direction. Some are quartet suites of linked stories. Others are tasters of the range and style of the writer. Each release will bring something unexpected to our subscriber’s mailboxes.

Last year I read and reviewed Love and Romanpunk by Tansy Rayner Roberts and Nightsiders by Sue Isle, and other authors are involved in the project include Margo Lanagan, Cat Sparks and more! The best news that has happened since last year is that the books that have previously been published are now available on ebook so people outside of Australia can get hold of them. If nothing else, I would suggest getting hold of Love and Romanpunk at the very least (mainly because that is where I started) if you are interested in trying some different Australian spec-fic authors.

Whereas the two previous Twelve Planet books I have read had a similar structure in that the four individual short stories were linked through either narrative or characters, Showtime featured four stories that were not connected at all with each other. It also doesn't feature the same types of paranormal creatures in each story. We do have a couple of vampires, but there are also ghosts and zombies found in the pages.

The first of the stories in the collection is Stalemate and I must confess that, at first, I was a little perplexed because it doesn't actually seem all that speculative in nature, but the reader does gradually get to see how this  particular story very definitely sits within the remit of a speculative fiction collection. The story is quite mundane  to begin with - a woman who has been unwell has had her mother staying with her to help look after her. The stay is getting to the point where it has been too long and the house guest is not quite as welcome as she initially was or could be and every little thing is becoming intolerable. (I totally related to this particular aspect of the story!). There was a very satisfying twist in the tale in this story.

If I had to pick an absolute favourite of the collection (you know, picking just one!) then it would be the second story, Thrall. Dragomir has been a vampire for several hundred years. He is struggling a bit now. In this modern age, the blood he ingests just isn't as pure as it once was, he keeps on getting filmed and ending up on the news and Youtube, and truth be told he is kind of short and his physical presence is not as dominating of the general population as he once was. Even ordering a cup of tea is nowhere near as simple as he would like it.

He returns to his ancestral home with a view to taking refuge away from the modern world. In order to do this, there are certain requirements that must be fulfilled and so he sends a summons to the family who have been sworn to do his bidding for centuries. They always send the strongest man so he is not best pleased when the person who answers his call is a middle aged woman called Erszebet, but beggars can't be choosers.

Zombies are the focus of the third story, The Truth About Brains, and from a pure, smiling-while-reading it perspective, this was nearly my favourite mainly because I really liked the voice of the teenage protaganist, Amy. She is supposed to keep her eye out on her younger brother Dylan, but that gets a bit wearing after a while so she sneaks off with her friends, leaving him to his fate. As a result of some misadventure, he becomes a zombie. Amy knows that her mum is going to be VERY annoyed when she finds out and so she has to try and work out how it happened, and how to fix it fast! There is also a hint of an older story in the pages, one that it would also be interesting to read.

Here are a couple of quotes from early on which give a good idea of the tone of the story. Firstly, the opening paragraph:

My little brother Dylan is dead, but that doesn't stop him from being a pest. He still follows me everywhere, and Mum still makes me take him with me when I go to the shops.

and then a couple of paragraphs later:

He's only been like this for a few days. I thought it would be cool, having a zombie for a brother, but it's not. The fact is that it stinks. Literally. And it's getting worse every day. Maybe it's okay in Europe or whereever, but Australian summers are bad news. Nothing's fallen off him yet, but it's only a matter of time. I hate to think what's going to happen when school starts again in February. I don't think Mr Browning is going to let Dylan on the school footy team this year.

The final story, and the one that gives the collection its title Showtime, is connected to Narrelle's previous novel called The Opposite of Life which features a less-than-enthusiastic vampire, Gary and his human friend, Lissa, who is a librarian in her day job. I haven't read The Opposite of Life and, given the choice, I would not normally read a series out of order, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do. I do now have the book waiting for me to pick up from the library after having to get it sent over by interlibrary loan.

Gary is somewhat different to the other vampires that you read about. He doesn't enjoy being vampire. He likes Lissa because she reminds him what it means to be human, really human. What could be more human than spending the day at the show (kind of like a big country fair in the city in case you don't know about the show). There's so much to do - you can see the cake decorating, the wood chopping, look at the animals (although they do tend to react badly to a vampire being in their midst) and not forgetting the sideshows with the rides, including the haunted house.

I can't remember the last time I went to the show, and I wouldn't normally spend a lot of time down Sideshow Alley even if I did go. Let's just say I would be even less likely to visit Sideshow Alley after having read this story because there could be all sorts of nefarious dealings going on down there!

This was another fun collection of stories from the Twelve Planets series. I definitely can't wait to see the next books when they arrive in my mailbox!

Rating 4/5

Family drama can be found anywhere: in kitchens, in cafes. Derelict hotels, showground rides. Even dungeons far below ruined Hungarian castles. (Okay, especially in Hungarian dungeons.)

Old family fights can go on forever, especially if you’re undead. If an opportunity came to save someone else’s family, the way you couldn’t save your own, would you take it?

Your family might include ghosts, or zombies, or vampires. Maybe they just have allergies. Nobody’s perfect.

Family history can weigh on the present like a stone. But the thing about families is, you can’t escape them. Not ever. And mostly, you don’t want to.

"It’s a beautiful collection of pieces, each one utterly classic and completely new at the same time… In Narrelle’s hands, everything old is new again, and everything new has the weight of age. There’s magic in that, and in this book." — Seanan McGuire

I read this book for the Aussie Author Challenge and The Australian Women Writers Challenge.

If my review has piqued your interest, there are currently a couple of giveaways happening of this collection at Goodreads. If you are an Australian interested in reading the book click here, and for US, Canada or Britain this is the link. Good luck!

Black Juice by Margo Lanagan

This is my third Margo Lanagan short story collection, and once again her storytelling has really amazed me! I still have Red Spikes to read of her collections, but I think I am going to read her new novel, Sea Hearts, next as I haven't read any of her novels yet.

Some of her stories move me (in one case to tears), some confuse me, and some are clever, whilst all of them have me thinking about them. One thing I do find is that I often need a gap between one story and the next. I can't just read through them one after another as I need time to digest exactly what happened.

Here is a very brief description of the ten stories in this collection:

Singing My Sister Down - if there can only be one stand out story in a collection then this is it! Incredibly powerful and moving, this is a story that you could read over and over again and even with familiarity you would still be moved. As punishment for killing her husband, a young woman is sent out to the tar pits. Her family has time to say goodbye to her as she slowly drowns. We don't know why she did it. I certainly felt that it may have been in self defense. In the end, we don't really need to know why, because the story is powerful enough without having that additional information. Incredible.

My Lord's Man - Berry is Mullord's man through and through, and he knows that his wife isn't good enough for his boss. When Mullady disappears with what appears to be a band of gypsies, Berry accompanies Mullord to look for her amongst her people, expecting that Mullord will be furious with her. Instead he begins to see things differently.

Red Nose Day - A couple of snipers bring their own form of justice against the rich and powerful of their town, who all happen to dress as clowns. Powerful imagery and narrative - it was so vivid that I could almost feel the recoil of the gun.

Sweet Pippit - This story is told from the perspective of a group of elephants. When one of the elephants goes crazy and kills a human, the keeper is arrested and locked up. The elephants that are remaining go looking for their keeper. Lovely story

House of the Many - Dot was bought up under the strict rules of the Bard, on a kind of commune. When he comes of age he escapes to the city and finds a different kind of life, not realising what has been left behind.

Wooden Bride - To the surprise of her family, Matty Weir elects to follow the traditions of her city and become a bride. She is not marrying another person, it is more a religious tradition. It takes two years of learning about the traditions, she is dressed perfectly for the ceremony, but it doesn't all go to plan on the big day.

Earthly Uses - A young boy has been living with his abusive grandpa and his brow beaten grandma. She is the only one who has shown him any kindness. Now that she is on her deathbed, the boy is sent to get the angels to come, with surprising consequences.

Perpetual Light - A young woman attends her grandmother's funeral despite the danger that it poses to her health because the place where the funeral is to be held is contaminated. The world in this one is quite interesting - it seems to be an Australia of the future where the world is very polluted and everyone reliant on. If there is one story that didn't work for me as well as the others, then this would be it.

Yowlinin - This and the next one were the other stand outs for me. A young girl lives on the edge of society as a result of having lost her parents to the yowlinin plague when she was a very young girl. She has formed an attachment to the boy Harrow, who actually doesn't know she exists. When she sees evidence that the yowlinin are coming back, not everyone believes her.

Rite of Spring - There is a religious rite that must be performed each spring. With both his mother and his brother are ill, the job falls to an ill-prepared young man. No one believes that he can do it. He must find the strength with himself to endure and get the job done.

Rating 4/5

This book counts for the Aussie Author Challenge and the Australian Women Writers Challenge.

Synopsis

Black Juice is a book of breathtaking stories that defy boundaries. They are dazzling, ruthless, tender, fierce, unique - ten deeply moving stories from an exceptional author

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