Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser

Enchanted Night by Steven Millhauser is a novella published on it's own that I checked out of the library. Over the past few years I've read a lot of Millhauser in anthologies or McSweeney's and without fail his stories are the ones I remember best. His prose is fluid & lyrical, the plots whimsical & dark, funny & poignant. This novella takes place one night in a small town where a lot is uncovered under moonlight. Quick, fantastic read!

Game of Thrones by George R R Martin

So after watching the HBO series and talking to a lot of people about how awesome the show was Heather got me the first 2 books from George R R Martin's series A Song of Ice and Fire. So far I've finished Game of Thrones and have gotten about 150 pages through the second book and so far decree its awesomeness! Even though the series follows the first book closely there were enough differences where I'm glad I read the book. The direwolves are even cooler in the book, some of the love triangle stuff isn't as stressed and the action scenes are a little more savage and excellently described. The only bad thing is that it's so addicting that I'm not really doing anything but read it.

Book Review: The Best American Short Stories 1990

The Best American Short Stories 1990 edited by Richard Ford

So one day a couple of years ago I had a strong buzz going and decided to buy every Best American Short Story book from as far back as I could. Based on what I could find on Amazon used that meant from 1990 on. Long story short I bought them, lined them all up on a shelf and haven't gotten around to reading them. I heard Debra Treisman discussing on the New Yorker Fiction podcast that if you have a lot of writer friends it's hard to keep up. She made me feel a little better about my voracious appetite for reading and my limited time to do so. I'll end up reading them all and I'll keep plugging away probably when I'm reading other things. Apparently 1989 was a great year for short stories because this issue was packed full of fantastic stories from authors like Alice Monroe, Denis Johnson & Steven Millhauser. Millhauser is consistently one of my favorite short story writers and I loved this one as well. To sum up, If you see a used copy, buy it!

Movie review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Couldn't have sucked more. I was all excited from the preview and the movie started out really promising as it looked really cool. There was some mild lazy type action at the beginning, some crying in the middle and a whole lot of anti climatic slow paced who done it towards the end. When the lights went up 3 people in the theater said out loud that they had no idea what happened. If you like old fashion glasses, uncomfortably long pauses before speaking, the late 60's/early 70's, hints at stuff happening and absolutely no action this is the movie for you. It also helps if you're super smart and great with names to follow the plot. I don't know who had the great idea to take an insanely complicated boring plot and decide to make it extra hard to follow by calling the same person by their name/last name/code name all at different times so you had to figure out who they were talking about by context. So pissed, the previews looked amazing and the actors are all great. If someone put a gun to your head and said you need to watch this or bio dome just take the bullet...

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I finally caved and read this book after a lot of hesitation and it was ok. What convinced me to read it was the movie preview they showed at Sherlock Holmes that looks really good. Heather and I figured we'd both want to read the book before seeing the movie and I've been reading a lot of literature lately and figured I could use some lighter fun reads. I can see why this was so popular and why it'll make a really fun movie but the book was just ok to me. I would have preferred a slightly subtler hand at times but the overall story was good. My favorite books for teens read as adults were the Harry Potter series, the Tiffany Aching series by Terry Pratchett and a few of Neil Gaiman's books. What I loved about those and didn't love about this is that those books used simpler language but didn't feel dumbed down at all.

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

The Tiger's Wife by Tea Obreht

I've wanted this book for almost a year and finally got it for Christmas. It was amazing. Tea took her unbelievably good short story and flushed it out into a novel. The story revolves around a young doctor who lost her grandfather and is recollecting him through her memories and through 2 stories of his. The writing is fantastic, the plot is well paced, the characters are interesting and the whole thing comes together beautifully. I would highly recommend this book to any of my friends.